Sublime

And there was no end to his rash promises of debt relief (one of the most despicable forms of radicalism in the eyes of the Roman landed classes) or to his bold threats to take out the leading politicians and to put the whole city to flames.

“The mission of the tyrant,” says Aristotle, “is to protect the people against the rich; he has always commenced by being a demagogue, and it is the essence of tyranny to oppose the aristocracy.”

This plebeian aristocracy soon had the qualities which ordinarily accompany wealth acquired by labor — that is to say, the feeling of personal worth, the love of tranquil liberty, and that spirit of wisdom which, though desiring improvements, fears risking too much.

The quarrel between the kings and the aristocracy assumed the character of a social struggle. The kings sided with the people, and depended for support upon the clients and the plebs. To the patrician order, so powerfully organized, they opposed the lower classes, so numerous at Rome. The aristocracy then found itself threatened by a double peril,

Solon had maintained the republican forms; now the people still entertained a blind hatred against these forms of government under which they had seen, for four centuries, nothing but the reign of the aristocracy. After the example of many Greek cities, they wished for a tyrant.

The essay focuses on the anger of those in positions of power over others.

“The means of arriving at a tyranny,” he also says, “is to gain the confidence of the multitude, and one does this by declaring himself the enemy of the rich. This was the course of Peisistratus at Athens, of Theagenes at Megara, and of Dionysius at Syracuse.”583 The tyrant always made war upon the rich. At Megara, Theagenes surprises the herds of