A necessary result.
Then some of those who joined in setting him up, and who are in power, speak their minds to him and to one another, and the more courageous of them cast in his teeth what is being done.
Yes, that may be expected.
He gets rid of his bravest and boldest followers. And the tyrant, if he means to rule, must get rid of them; he cannot stop while he has a friend or an enemy who is good for anything.
He cannot.
And therefore he must look about him and see who is [C]valiant, who is high-minded, who is wise, who is wealthy; 277 happy man, he is the enemy of them all, and must seek occasion against them whether he will or no, until he has made a purgation of the State.
Yes, he said, and a rare purgation.
His purgation of the State. Yes, I said, not the sort of purgation which the physicians make of the body; for they take away the worse and leave the better part, but he does the reverse.
If he is to rule, I suppose that he cannot help himself.
[D] What a blessed alternative, I said:—to be compelled to dwell only with the many bad, and to be by them hated, or not to live at all!