True.
The people have a protector who, when once he tastes blood, is converted into a tyrant. The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness.
Yes, that is their way.
[D] 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 [E]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 favourite method of false accusation he brings them into court and murders them, 275 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 [566]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?