Page - 1261 - in The Complete Plato

That is exactly the truth. Then come impeachments and judgments and trials of one another. True. The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness. Yes, that is their way. This, and no other, is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector. Yes, that is quite clear. How, then, does a protector begin to change into a tyrant? Clearly when he does what the man is said to do in the tale of the Arcadian temple of Lycaean Zeus. What tale? The tale is that he who has tasted the entrails of a single human victim minced up with the entrails of other victims is destined to become a wolf. Did you never hear it? Oh, yes. And the protector of the people is like him; having a mob entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen; by the favorite method of false accusation he brings them into court and murders them, making the life of man to disappear, and with unholy tongue and lips tasting the blood of his fellow-citizens; some he kills and others he banishes, at the same time hinting at the abolition of debts and partition of lands: and after this, what will be his destiny? Must he not either perish at the hands of his enemies, or from being a man become a wolf—that is, a tyrant? Inevitably. This, I said, is he who begins to make a party against the rich? The same. After a while he is driven out, but comes back, in spite of his enemies, a tyrant full grown. That is clear. And if they are unable to expel him, or to get him condemned to death by a public accusation, they conspire to assassinate him. Yes, he said, that is their usual way. Then comes the famous request for a body-guard, which is the device of all those who have got thus far in their tyrannical career—“Let not the people’s 1261