The Republic of Plato

by Plato

And is there any man in whom you will find more of this sort of misery than in the tyrannical man, who is in a fury of passions and desires?

Impossible.

[B] Reflecting upon these and similar evils, you held the tyrannical State to be the most miserable of States?

And I was right, he said.

Also the tyrannical man is most miserable. Certainly, I said. And when you see the same evils in the tyrannical man, what do you say of him?

I say that he is by far the most miserable of all men.

Yet there is a still more miserable being, the tyrannical man who is a public tyrant. There, I said, I think that you are beginning to go wrong.

What do you mean?

I do not think that he has as yet reached the utmost extreme of misery.

Then who is more miserable?