Hiero

That sounds incredible (exclaimed Simonides); if it were really so, how do you explain the passionate desire commonly displayed to wield the tyrant's sceptre, and that too on the part of persons reputed to be the ablest of men? Why should all men envy the despotic monarch?

For the all-sufficient reason (he replied) that they form conclusions on the matter without experience of the two conditions. And I will try to prove to you the truth of what I say, beginning with the faculty of vision, which, unless my memory betrays me, was your starting-point.

Well then, when I come to reason[13] on the matter, first of all I find that, as regards the class of objects of which these orbs of vision are the channel,[14] the despot has the disadvantage. Every region of the world, each country on this fair earth, presents objects worthy of contemplation, in quest of which the ordinary citizen will visit, as the humour takes him, now some city [for the sake of spe