SOCRATES: You see that it is not safe for a man either rashly to accept
whatever is offered him, or himself to request a thing, if he is likely to
suffer thereby or immediately to lose his life. And yet we could tell of
many who, having long desired and diligently laboured to obtain a tyranny,
thinking that thus they would procure an advantage, have nevertheless
fallen victims to designing enemies. You must have heard of what happened
only the other day, how Archelaus of Macedonia was slain by his beloved
(compare Aristotle, Pol.), whose love for the tyranny was not less than
that of Archelaus for him. The tyrannicide expected by his crime to become
tyrant and afterwards to have a happy life; but when he had held the
tyranny three or four days, he was in his turn conspired against and slain.
Or look at certain of our own citizens,--and of their actions we have been
not hearers, but eyewitnesses,--who have desired to obtain military
command: of those who have gained their object, some are even to this day
exiles from the city, while others have lost their lives.
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