Tyrant

Use in the book

At 134e–135a2 Socrates imagines a sick person who may do whatever he wishes, lacks medical understanding, and tyrannizes so that no one can rebuke him. The consequence is likely bodily ruin. The dramatic force lies in making tyranny ridiculous and dangerous at the scale of a single sick body. Being able to silence correction is no advantage if correction is what competent care requires.

The ship example follows: unchecked control without piloting sense and virtue will kill the controller and his companions. Socrates generalizes to cities and forms of authority that lack virtue, then concludes that one should procure virtue, not tyranny, for oneself or one's city if happiness is the aim (135b). Both beneficiary and audience broaden: the ambition for unanswerable power imperils the people subject to it as well as its holder.

The passage does not present a classification of constitutions or assert that every monarchy is tyranny. Earlier royal education could be used as a positive challenge to Alcibiades, while the end attacks unqualified and uncorrectable command. Its target is the equation of maximal power with a successful life. Until Alcibiades has virtue, being guided by someone better is preferable to exercising that power himself.

Places to read

1. 134e–135a2The sick man tyrannizes by preventing rebuke, despite lacking medical judgment
2. 135a–135bThe destructive ship analogy leads to the explicit rejection of tyranny as the desired possession

Translation in this edition

The edition deliberately keeps “is a tyrant” for the patient's τυραννοῦντι, so that the bodily example's link to the political conclusion remains visible. “Domineers” would capture the immediate behavior but hide the repeated family of words.

τυραννέω / τυραννίς

Attested: τυραννοῦντι (tyrannounti; 135a); τυραννίδα (tyrannida; 135b). At 135a: The sick man domineering so that no one can rebuke him. At 135b: Tyranny as a possession to reject in favor of virtue if happiness is sought. Lexical identification: family label: τυραννέω / τυραννίς. See Tyranny.

Use in the book

At 138b Socrates asks the name of one man who orders a city rightly. The accepted answer pairs tyrant and king, and the corresponding crafts are treated as identical with the previously established knowledge. Tyrant then appears again in the comprehensive list at 138c. Its inclusion is one of the most exposed features of the passage.

The qualification “rightly” explains part of the move: the argument begins from competent good order and then attaches names to its agent. Yet the names are not politically innocent. The dialogue offers no sustained examination of how rule was acquired, whether subjects consent or how a tyrant differs from a king. It acts as though those title distinctions do not affect the knowledge now under consideration.

A charitable interpretation is that the same knowledge would be required to order rightly, whatever the officeholder is called. A more critical reading sees the conflation as too quick, especially if illegitimacy or coercive rule affects the nature of the political task. The text does not adjudicate between these readings; it records assent and continues toward household rule.

The term is therefore not a license to claim that the dialogue endorses cruelty, nor should it be quietly omitted to make the final unity less troubling. The supplied edition itself singles out the issue by contrasting the Statesman, which separates tyrant and king at the relevant point. The lexicon preserves the surprise rather than smoothing it away.

Places to read

1. 138bτύραννός τε καὶ βασιλεύς — The two titles are paired in the answer about right sole rule.
2. 138cβασιλική, τυραννική, πολιτική — The tyrannical craft remains in the final unity list.

Translation in this edition

Notes 28–292 supply the historical nuance and the comparison with Statesman 276e; the longer unification of governing knowledge is located at Statesman 258e–259c. These are the edition’s references, not works named within the Lovers. The difference between the dialogues should remain a difference rather than be resolved by importing the other dialogue’s distinction here.

Use in the book

The designation enters after a list of rulers and a comparison with oracle-singers' common title. Theages identifies Hippias and Periander as tyrants (124e). Socrates then infers that whoever wants to rule everyone in the city desires the same rule as these men, tyrannical rule. The boy grants that this follows from what he has said, and Socrates jokingly rebukes him for wanting to be “our” tyrant.

The personal pronoun and address sharpen the political comedy. A vague educational aspiration now looks like a threat to the speakers themselves. The father, too, is mockingly blamed for withholding the means of producing a qualified practitioner. The tyrant-teacher turns the familiar request for a sophist into an unsettling apprenticeship (125a).

The inference nevertheless needs qualification. Governing the same population does not by itself establish the same manner or warrant of government. Theages later identifies exactly such a difference: he seeks willing subjects rather than force or the conduct of tyrants (126a). His earlier answer was insufficiently specified; Socrates' inference makes that insufficiency visible. It is not an independent proof that all comprehensive civic leadership is tyranny.

Theages also admits he would pray to become a tyrant over everyone, or as many as possible, and even to become a god (125e–126a). This admission prevents the correction from becoming a simple declaration of republican modesty. He distinguishes an expansive hypothetical wish from the educational desire he was trying to state. The dialogue reports this distinction without resolving all its moral tensions.

The poetic claim that tyrants are wise through association with wise people (125b) then directs attention to instruction. What must such companions know? The craft substitutions do not produce an answer, and the Callicrite joke provokes protest. No functioning tyrant-school is finally discovered. The term remains an instrument for exposing ambition and testing the teacher model, rather than the name of a program the dialogue endorses.

Places to read

1. 124eτύραννοι — Theages' designation of Hippias and Periander
2. 124eτυραννικῆς — The alleged character of the rule he desires
3. 124e–125aτυραννεῖν … ἡμῶν; τυραννοδιδασκάλου — The personal rebuke and imagined instructor
4. 125aσοφὸς … τύραννος — The proposed outcome of association
5. 125eἐπίσταται τυραννικά — The Callicrite quotation's “tyrannical things”
6. 126aοὐδ’ ὥσπερ οἱ τύραννοι — Theages' explicit correction concerning mode of rule

Translation in this edition

Burnet brackets διδασκάλου before τυραννοδιδασκάλου at 125a; the English omits the bracketed word. Note 16 describes the compound as perhaps coined for the joke and notes a later occurrence in Cassius Dio. This does not authorize a confident claim about its first invention. The Key Words note that “tyrant” need not mean cruel in every historical use, while this dialogue eventually makes force Theages' explicit contrast.

Be a tyrant — τυραννεῖν (tyrannein)

τυραννεῖν (tyrannein)

Be a tyrant. The boy is mockingly said to desire tyranny over the present speakers. Attested: τυραννεῖν (124e). Tyranny, the tyrant, and the tyrant-teacher.

Tyrannical — τυραννικός (tyrannikos)

τυραννικός (tyrannikos)

Tyrannical. The kind of rule Socrates infers from the boy's comprehensive ambition. Attested: τυραννικῆς (124e). Tyranny, the tyrant, and the tyrant-teacher.

Tyrant-teacher — τυραννοδιδάσκαλος (tyrannodidaskalos)

τυραννοδιδάσκαλος (tyrannodidaskalos)

Tyrant-teacher. The comic imagined specialist to whom the father has failed to send his son. Attested: τυραννοδιδασκάλου (125a). Tyranny, the tyrant, and the tyrant-teacher.

Tyrants — τύραννος (tyrannos)

τύραννος (tyrannos)

Tyrants. Theages' familiar title for Hippias and Periander. Attested: τύραννοι (124e). Tyranny, the tyrant, and the tyrant-teacher.

From what I said (contextual phrase)

124e: Ἔοικέν γε ἐξ ὧν ἐγὼ εἶπον. Theages' concession is qualified by the words he has supplied. “It seems so … from what I said” acknowledges the apparent implication of his answer while leaving room to correct that answer's incompleteness. At 126a he does so by requiring willing subjects. The phrase is not a confession that every fuller statement of his aim must be tyrannical. See Tyranny.

Use in the book

The tragic fragment calls Fortune tyrant over all the gods and dismisses other divine names as vain additions. The extreme image gives Fortune sole governance. It is the fragment’s claim, not an editorial resolution of the anthology’s differing accounts of providence and chance.

Places to read

1. I.6.16Fortune is portrayed as supreme ruler over the gods.

Translation in this edition

“Tyrant” preserves the force of domination; “ruler” alone may soften the statement.

Use in the book

The Life twice detects tyranny in its beginnings. At the dinner, a feast-master’s coercive drinking command is presented as a miniature rehearsal of domination, and Empedocles prosecutes him and the host. After Meton’s death, Neanthes’ account makes faction a threat answered by civic equality. Plutarch adds conviction of leading citizens for outrage and misappropriation of public resources. These stories share a moral structure in which private arrogance or elite self-interest prefigures political oppression. They are not a continuous constitutional history, and their differing actions should not be combined into one securely dated overthrow. The dinner narrative’s executions are especially important: the source praises vigilance against tyranny through legal coercion, not merely persuasion. Reporting the event requires retaining both the claimed public benefit and the severity of the response.

Places to read

1. A 1 §§ 64–66 (biography)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 64, reporting Timaeus. Interprets symposium coercion as the start of tyranny and narrates prosecution and executions.
2. A 1 §§ 73–74 (biography)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 72–73, reporting Neanthes. Connects Meton’s death, faction, and the danger of tyranny.
3. A 13–A 14 (biography)Plutarch, Against Colotes. Connects elite abuses with civic liberation.

Translation in this edition

In Plutarch the phrase translated “set the city free” is supplied in angle brackets. The text’s anti-tyrannical narrative should not be turned into independently verified legal or political proceedings.