V

The Two Ways of Life

The primary subject of the conversation described in the Hiero is not the improvement of tyrannical government, but the difference between tyrannical and private life with regard to human enjoyments and pains. The question concerning that difference is identical, in the context, with the question as to whether tyrannical life is more choiceworthy than private life or vice versa. Insofar as “tyrant” is eventually replaced by “ruler,” and the life of the ruler is the political life in the strict sense,1 the question discussed in the Hiero concerns the relative desirability of the life of the ruler, or of political life, on the one hand, and of private life on the other. But however the question discussed in the dialogue may be formulated, it is in any case only a special form of the fundamental Socratic question of how man ought to live, or of what way of life is the most choiceworthy.²

In the Hiero, the difference between the tyrannical and the private life is discussed in a conversation between a tyrant and a private man. This means that the same subject is presented in two different manners. It is presented most obviously by the explicit and thematic statements of the two characters. Yet none of the two characters can be presumed to have stated exactly what Xenophon thought about the subject. In addition, the two characters cannot be presumed to have stated exactly what they themselves thought about it: Hiero is afraid of Simonides, and Simonides is guided by a pedagogic intention. Xenophon presents his view more directly, although less obviously, by the action of the dialogue, by what the characters silently do and unintentionally or occasionally reveal, or by the actual contrast as conceived by him between the tyrant Hiero and the private man Simonides. Insofar as Hiero reveals himself as a citizen in the most radical sense and Simonides proves to be a stranger in the most radical sense, the dialogue presents the contrast between the citizen and the stranger. At any rate, Simonides is not a “private man” simply,3 and he is not an ordinary representative of private life. However silent he may be about his own way of life, he reveals himself by his being or by deed as a wise man. If one considers the conversational setting, the dialogue reveals itself as an attempt to contrast the tyrannical life, or the life of the ruler, not simply with private life but with the life of the wise man.⁴ Or, more specifically, it is an attempt to contrast an educated tyrant, a tyrant who admires, or wishes to admire, the wise, with a wise man who stoops to converse with tyrants.⁵ Ultimately, the dialogue serves the purpose of contrasting the two ways of life: the political life and the life devoted to wisdom.⁶

One might object that according to Xenophon there is no contrast between the wise man and the ruler: the ruler in the strict sense is he who knows how to rule, who possesses the most noble kind of knowledge, who is able to teach what is best; and such knowledge is identical with wisdom.⁷ Even if this objection were not exposed to any doubts, there would still remain the difference between the wise man or ruler who wishes to rule or does actually rule, and the wise man or ruler (e.g., Socrates and the poet Simonides) who does not wish to rule and does not engage in politics, but leads a life of privacy and leisure.⁸

The ambiguity that characterizes the Hiero is illustrated by nothing more strikingly than by the fact that the primary question discussed in the work does not receive a final and explicit answer. To discover the final answer that is implicitly given, we have to start from the explicit, if provisional, answers. In discussing both the explicit or provisional and the implicit or final answers, we have to distinguish between the answers of the two characters; for we have no right to assume that Hiero and Simonides are in agreement.

Hiero’s explicit answer is to the effect that private life is absolutely preferable to tyrannical life.⁹ But he cannot deny Simonides’ contention that tyrants have greater power than private men to do things by means of which men gain love, and he spontaneously praises being loved more highly than anything else. It is true, he retorts that tyrants are also more likely to incur hatred than private men; but Simonides succeeds in silencing this objection by implicitly distinguishing between the good or prudent and the bad or foolish tyrant. In his last utterance, Hiero grants that a ruler or tyrant may gain the affection of his subjects.¹⁰ If one accepts Hiero’s premise that love, i.e., being loved, is the most choiceworthy thing, one is led by Simonides’ argument to the conclusion that the life of a beneficent tyrant is preferable in the most important respect to private life. As the conclusion follows from Hiero’s premise and is eventually not contested by him, we may regard it as his final answer.

Since Hiero is less wise, or competent, than Simonides, his answer is much less important than the poet’s. Simonides asserts first that tyrannical life is superior to private life in every respect. He is soon compelled, or able, to admit that tyrannical life is not superior to private life in every respect. But he seems to maintain that tyrannical life is superior to private life in the most important respect: he praises nothing so highly as honor, and he asserts that tyrants are honored above other men.11 With a view to his subsequent distinction between the good and the bad tyrant, we may state his final thesis as follows: the life of the beneficent tyrant is superior to private life in the most important respect. Simonides and Hiero seem to reach the same conclusion by starting from different premises.

On closer examination, it appears, however, that Simonides’ praise of the tyrannical life is ambiguous. In order to lay hold of his view, we have to distinguish in the first place between what he explicitly says and what Hiero believes him to say.¹² Secondly, we have to distinguish between what Simonides says in the first part of the Hiero in which he hides his wisdom, and what he says in the second part to which he contributes so much more than to the first part, and in which he speaks no longer as a somewhat diffident pupil but with the confidence of a teacher. We have to attach particular weight to the fact that Simonides’ most emphatic statement regarding the superiority of tyrannical life occurs in the first section in which he hides his wisdom to a higher degree than in any subsequent section.¹³

Simonides states to begin with that tyrants experience many more pleasures of all kinds and many fewer pains of all kinds than private men. He grants soon afterward that in a number of minor respects, if not in all minor respects, private life is preferable to tyrannical life. The question arises whether he thus simply retracts or merely qualifies the general statement made at the beginning: Does he believe that tyrannical life is superior to private life in the most important respect? He never answers this question explicitly. When comparing tyrannical and private life with regard to things more important than bodily pleasures, he uses much more reserved language than he did in his initial and general assertion. In particular when speaking about honor, he says, after having enumerated the various ways in which people honor tyrants: “for these are of course the kinds of things that subjects do for the tyrants and to anyone else whom they happen to honor at the moment.” By this he seems to say that the most outstanding honor is not a preserve of tyrants. On the other hand, he says almost immediately thereafter that “you (sc. the tyrants) are honored above (all) other men.” What he says in the first part of the dialogue might well appear to be ambiguous or inconclusive to the detached reader of the Hiero as distinguished from the rather disturbed interlocutor Hiero.14 In the second part he nowhere explicitly says that tyrannical life is superior to private life in regard to the greatest pleasure. He does assert that the life of tyrants is superior to private life in regard to love. But he never says anywhere in the dialogue that love, or friendship, is the most pleasant thing.¹⁵

To arrive at a more exact formulation of the difficulty, we start again from the crucial fact that Simonides praises nothing as highly as honor. His contribution to the first part culminates in the assertion that the characteristic difference between the species “real man” and the other kinds of living beings, ordinary human beings of course included, consists in the desire for honor which is characteristic of the former, and in the suggestion that the most outstanding honors are reserved for rulers, if not for tyrants in particular. It is true, he declares in the same context that no human pleasure seems to be superior to the pleasure deriving from honor, and he thus seems to grant that other human pleasures might equal it.¹⁶ On the other hand, he nowhere explicitly excludes the possibility that pleasure is not the sole or ultimate criterion. We have already observed that in the second part of the dialogue the emphasis tacitly shifts from the pleasant to the good and the noble.¹⁷ This change reaches its climax in Simonides’ final statement (11.7–15). At its beginning he indicates clearly that the noblest and grandest contest among human beings, and hence the victory in it, is reserved for rulers: victory in that contest consists in rendering very happy the city of which one is the chief. He thus leads one to expect that no human being other than a ruler can reach the summit of happiness: can anything rival victory in the noblest and grandest contest? This question is answered in the concluding sentence, according to which Hiero, by becoming the benefactor of his city, would be possessed of the most noble and the most blessed possession to be met with among human beings: he would be happy without being envied. Simonides does not say that the most noble and most blessed possession accessible to human beings is victory in the most noble and most grand contest among them. He does not even say that one cannot become happy without being envied but by making the city which one rules most happy. In the circumstances he had the strongest reasons for praising the beneficent ruler as emphatically, as explicitly as possible. By refraining from explicitly identifying “making one’s city most happy” with “the most noble and most blessed possession,” he seems to suggest that there are possibilities of bliss outside of, or beyond, the political life. The very phrasing of the last sentence seems to suggest it. The farmers and artisans who do their work well, are content with their lot and enjoy the simple pleasures of life, are at least as likely to be happy without being envied as rich and powerful rulers however beneficent.18 What is true of the common people is equally true of other types of men, and in particular of that type which seems to be most important in the conversational situation: those who come to display before the tyrant the wise or beautiful or good things which they possess, who share in the amenities of court life and are rewarded with royal munificence.¹⁹ The highest goal which the greatest ruler could reach only after having made the most extraordinary exertions, seems to be within easy reach of every private man.

This interpretation is open to a very strong objection. We shall not insist on the facts that “being happy” in Simonides’ final sentence (“while being happy, you will not be envied”) might very well mean “being powerful and wealthy”²⁰ and that tyrants are superior to private men in regard to power and wealth as not even Hiero can deny. For Simonides might have understood by happiness continuous joy or contentment.²¹ Suffice it to say that precisely on account of the essential ambiguity of “being happy” the purport of Simonides’ final sentence depends decisively on its second part, viz., the expression “you will not be envied.” What this expression means for the decision of the crucial issue becomes clear if we remind ourselves of the following facts: that the purpose of the Hiero is to contrast the ruler, not simply with private men in general, but with the wise; that the representative of wisdom is Socrates; and that Socrates was exposed, and fell victim, to the envy of his fellow citizens. If the beneficent ruler can be “happy” without being envied, whereas even Socrates’ “happiness” was accompanied by envy,²² the political life, the life of the ruler or of the tyrant, would seem to be unambiguously superior to the life of the wise man. It would seem then that Simonides’ praise of tyranny, in spite of his ironical overstatements and his pedagogic intention, is at bottom serious. True happiness—this seems to be Xenophon’s thought—is possible only on the basis of excellence or superiority, and there are ultimately only two kinds of excellence—the excellence of the ruler and that of the wise man. All superior men are exposed to envy on account of their excellence. But the ruler, as distinguished from the wise man, is able to do penance for his superiority by becoming the servant of all his subjects: the hardworking and beneficent ruler, and not the retiring wise man, can put envy at rest.23

This must be taken with a grain of salt. It goes without saying that the prospect by means of which Simonides attempts to educate Hiero is incapable of fulfillment. Xenophon knew too well that if there are any forms of superiority which do not expose their possessors to envy, political power, however beneficent, would not be one of them. Or, to put it somewhat differently, if it is true that he who wants to receive kindness must first show kindness, it is not certain that his kindness will not be requited with ingratitude.²⁴ The thought that a superior man who does not successfully hide his superiority would not be exposed to envy is clearly a delusion. It forms the fitting climax of the illusory image of the tyrant who is happy because he is virtuous. Its aptness consists precisely in this: that it makes intelligible the whole illusory image as the momentary illusion of a wise man, i.e., as something more than a noble lie invented for the benefit of an unwise pupil. Being wise, he is most happy and exposed to envy. His bliss would seem to be complete if he could escape envy. If it were true that only experience could fully reveal the character of tyrannical life—it is this assumption on which the explicit argument of the Hiero is largely based—the wise man could not be absolutely certain whether the beneficent tyrant would not be beyond the reach of envy. He could indulge the hope that by becoming a beneficent tyrant, i.e., by actually exercising that tyrannical or royal art which flows from wisdom (if it is not identical with wisdom), he would escape envy while retaining his superiority. Simonides’ climactic assertion that by acting on his advice Hiero would become happy without being envied intimates the only reason why a wise man could be imagined for a moment to wish to be a ruler or to envy the man who rules well. It thus reveals the truth underlying Hiero’s fear of the wise: that fear proves to be based on a misunderstanding of a momentary velleity of the wise. It reveals at the same time the constant preoccupation of Hiero himself: his misunderstanding is the natural outcome of the fact that he himself is greatly tormented by other people’s envy of his happiness. It reveals finally the reason why Simonides could not possibly be envious of Hiero. For the irony of Simonides’ last sentence consists, above all, in this: that, if per impossibile the perfect ruler would escape from envy, his very escape from envy would expose him to envy; by ceasing to be envied by the multitude, he would begin to be envied by the wise. He would be envied for not being envied. Simonides could become dangerous to Hiero only if Hiero followed his advice. Hiero’s final silence is a fitting answer to all the implications of Simonides’ final statement.

At any rate, the wise are not envious, and the fact that they are envied does not impair their happiness or bliss.25 Even if they would grant that the life of the ruler is in a certain respect superior to the life of the wise man, they would wonder whether the price which has to be paid for that superiority is worthwhile. The ruler cannot escape envy but by leading a life of perpetual business, care and trouble.²⁶ The ruler whose specific function is “doing” or “well-doing” has to serve all his subjects. Socrates, on the other hand, whose specific function is “speaking” or discussing, does not engage in discussion except with those with whom he likes to converse. The wise man alone is free.²⁷

To sum up, Simonides’ final statement does not imply the view that political life is preferable to private life. This conclusion is confirmed by the carefully chosen expression which he uses for describing the character of happiness unmarred by envy. He calls it “the most noble and most blessed possession to be met with among human beings.” He does not call it the greatest good. The most noble and most blessed possession for human beings is choiceworthy, but there are other things which are equally or more choiceworthy. It may even be doubted whether it is simply the most choiceworthy “possession.” Euthydemus, answering a question of Socrates, says that freedom is a most noble and most magnificent possession for real men and for cities. The older Cyrus says in a speech addressed to the Persian nobility that the most noble and most “political” possession consists in deriving the greatest pleasure from praise. Xenophon himself says to Seuthes that for a real man and in particular a ruler, no possession is more noble or more splendid than virtue and justice and gentility. Antisthenes calls leisure the most delicate or luxurious possession.²⁸ Socrates, on the other hand, says that a good friend is the best, or the most all-productive, possession and that no possession is more pleasant for a free human being than agriculture.²⁹ Xenophon’s Simonides agrees with Xenophon’s Socrates and in fact with Xenophon himself by failing to describe “happiness unmarred by envy” as the most pleasant possession for human beings or as the most noble possession for real men or simply as the best possession.³⁰ We need not discuss here how Xenophon conceived of the exact relation between “possession” and “good.” It is safe to assume that he used “possession” mostly in its less strict sense according to which a possession is a good only conditionally, i.e., only if the possessor knows how to use it or to use it well.31 If this is the case, even the possession which is simply best would not be identical with the greatest good. While people in general are apt to identify the best possession with the greatest good, Socrates makes a clear distinction between the two things. According to him, the greatest good is wisdom, whereas education is the greatest good for human beings,³² and the best possession is a good friend. Education cannot be the greatest good simply, because gods do not need education. Education, i.e., the most excellent education, which is education to wisdom, is the greatest good for human beings, i.e., for human beings as such, for men in so far as they do not transcend humanity by approaching divinity: God alone is simply wise.³³ The wise man or the philosopher who partakes of the highest good will be blessed although he does not possess “the most noble and most blessed possession to be met with among human beings.”

The Hiero is silent about the status of wisdom. Although most explicit about various kinds of pleasure, it is silent about the specific pleasures of the wise, such as, for example, friendly discussion.³⁴ It is silent about the way of life of the wise. This silence cannot be explained by the fact that the thematic subject of the dialogue is the comparison of the life of the ruler, not with the life of the wise man, but with private life in general. For the thematic subject of the parallel dialogue, the Oeconomicus, is the economist, or the management of the household, and yet its central chapter contains a most striking confrontation of the life of the economist (who is a ruler) with the Socratic way of life. The Hiero is reserved about the nature of wisdom because the purpose of the dialogue, or of Simonides, requires that “wisdom” be kept in its ordinary ambiguity. If we consider, however, how profoundly Socrates or Xenophon agree with Simonides regarding tyranny, we may be inclined to impute to Xenophon’s Simonides the Socratic view that is nowhere contradicted by Xenophon, according to which wisdom is the highest good. Certainly, what Simonides says in his final statement in praise of the life of the ruler accords perfectly with the Socratic view.

In the Hiero, Xenophon indicates his view of wisdom by incidental remarks entrusted to Simonides and by the action of the dialogue. Simonides mentions two ways of “taking care” of things which lead to gratification: teaching the things that are best (or teaching what things are best), on the one hand; and praising and honoring him who executes what is best in the finest manner, on the other. When applying this general remark to rulers in particular, he does not mention teaching at all; he silently limits the ruler’s ways of taking care which leads to gratification, to praising and honoring, or more specifically to the offering and distributing of prizes. The specific function of the ruler appears to be strictly subordinate to that of the wise man. In the best case imaginable, the ruler would be the one who, by means of honoring, to say nothing of punishing, would put into practice the teaching or the prescriptions of the wise man.35 The wise man is the ruler of rulers. Similarly, the ruler is supposed merely to encourage the discovery of, or the looking out for, “something good”; he is not supposed to engage in these intellectual activities himself.³⁶ It deserves mention that the passage in which Simonides adumbrates his view of the relation of wisdom and rule is one of the two chapters in which the very term tyrant is avoided: Simonides describes by the remarks in question not merely the tyrant, but the ruler in general.³⁷

The superiority of the wise man to the ruler is brought to light by the action of the dialogue. The tyrannical life, or the life of the ruler, is chosen by Hiero not only prior to the conversation, but again within the conversation itself: he rejects Simonides’ veiled suggestion to return to private life. And Hiero proves to be less wise than Simonides, who rejects the political life in favor of the wise man’s private life.³⁸ At the beginning of the conversation, Simonides suggests that not he, but Hiero, has a better knowledge of the two ways of life or their difference. This suggestion does not lack a certain plausibility as long as one understands by the two ways of life the tyrannical life and private life in general; it proves to be simply ironical if it is considered in the light of the setting, i.e., if it is applied to the difference between the life of the ruler and the life of the wise man. For Hiero proves to be ignorant of the life of the wise man and its goal, whereas Simonides knows, not only his own way of life, but the political life as well, as is shown by his ability to teach the art of ruling well. Only Simonides, and not Hiero, is competent to make a choice between the two ways of life.³⁹ At the beginning, Simonides bows to Hiero’s leadership; he even permits Hiero to defeat him. But in the moment of his victory Hiero becomes aware of the fact that far from really defeating Simonides, he has merely prepared his own downfall. The wise man sits leisurely upon the very goal toward which the ruler is blindly and furiously working his way and which he will never reach. At the end, Simonides’ leadership is firmly established: the wise man defeats the ruler. This most obvious aspect of the action is a peculiarity of the Hiero. In most of Xenophon’s dialogues, no change of leadership takes place: Socrates is the leader from the beginning to the end. In Xenophon’s Socratic dialogue par excellence, the Oeconomicus, a change of leadership does occur; but it is a change from the leadership of the wise man (Socrates) to the leadership of the ruler (the economist Ischomachus). Whereas in the Oeconomicus the wise man surrenders to the ruler, in the Hiero the ruler surrenders to the wise man. The Hiero, and not the Oeconomicus, reveals by its action the true relation of rule and wisdom. In addition, the Hiero is that work of Xenophon which draws our attention most forcefully to the problem of that relation. It can be said to do this for several reasons. In the first place, because its primary subject is the difference between private life and the life of a certain type of ruler. In the second place, because it does contrast a wise man and a ruler more explicitly than any other Xenophontic writing. And finally, the Hiero’s most obvious practical aim (the improvement of tyranny) is hardly capable of fulfillment, which precludes the possibility that the obvious practical aim of the work coincides with its final purpose. Here again we may note a profound agreement between Xenophon and Plato. The precise relation between the philosopher and the political man (i.e., their fundamental difference) is the thematic premise, not of the Republic and the Gorgias in which Socrates as citizen-philosopher is the leading character, but of the Politicus in which a stranger occupies the central position.

From what has been said it may be inferred that Simonides’ emphatic praise of honor cannot possibly mean that he preferred honor as such to all other things. After all, his statement on honor belongs to that part of the dialogue in which he hides his wisdom almost completely. Besides, its bearing is sufficiently qualified by the sentences with which it opens and ends.40 One might even think to begin with that his praise of honor can be explained completely by his pedagogic intention. His intention is to show Hiero, who reveals a remarkable indifference to virtue, a way to virtuous rule by appealing, not to virtue or the noble, but to the pleasant; and the pleasure deriving from honor seems to be the natural substitute for the pleasure deriving from virtue. Yet Simonides appeals in his teaching primarily not to Hiero’s desire for honor, but to his desire for love. It could not be otherwise since Hiero had bestowed spontaneously the highest praise not on honor, but on love. We may take it then that by extolling honor Simonides reveals his own preferences rather than those of his pupil⁴¹: Simonides, and not Hiero, prefers the pleasure deriving from honor to the other pleasures explicitly mentioned by him. We may even say that of all desires which are natural, i.e., which “grow” in human beings independently of any education or teaching,⁴² he considered the desire for honor the highest because it is the foundation of the desire for any excellence, be it the excellence of the ruler or that of the wise man.⁴³

Whereas Simonides is concerned with honor, he is not concerned with love. Hiero has to demonstrate to him not only that as regards love tyrants are worse off than private men, but even that love is a great good and that private men are particularly loved by their children, parents, brothers, wives, and companions. In discussing love, Hiero feels utterly unable to appeal to the poet’s experience or previous knowledge as he did when discussing the pleasures of the table and even of sex. He urges him to acquire the rudiments of knowledge regarding love immediately or in the future without being in any way certain Simonides would wish to acquire them.44

Just as desire for honor is characteristic of Simonides, desire for love is characteristic of Hiero.⁴⁵ In so far as Hiero represents the ruler and Simonides represents the wise man, the difference between love and honor as interpreted in the Hiero will throw some light on Xenophon’s view of the difference between the ruler and the wise man. What Xenophon has primarily in mind is not simply the difference between love and honor in general: Hiero desires to be loved by “human beings,” i.e., not merely by real men, but by everyone regardless of his qualities, and Simonides is concerned with admiration or praise, not by everybody, but by “those who are free in the highest degree.”⁴⁶ The desire which Xenophon or his Simonides ascribes to Hiero, or the ruler, is fundamentally the same as the erotic desire for the common people which Plato’s Socrates ascribes to Callicles.⁴⁷ Only because the ruler has the desire to be loved by “human beings” as such is he able to become the willing servant and benefactor of all his subjects and hence to become a good ruler. The wise man, on the other hand, has no such desire; he is satisfied with the admiration, the praise, the approval of a small minority.⁴⁸ It would seem, then, that the characteristic difference between the ruler and the wise man manifests itself in the objects of their passionate interest and not in the character of their passion itself.⁴⁹ Yet it is no accident that Simonides is primarily concerned with being praised by the competent minority, and not with being loved by them, whereas Hiero is primarily concerned with being loved by human beings in the mass, and not with being admired by them. The characteristic difference between the ruler and the wise man may therefore be presumed to manifest itself somehow in the difference between love and admiration.

The meaning of this difference is indicated by Simonides in his praise of the beneficent ruler. The beneficent ruler will be loved by his subjects, he will be passionately desired by human beings, he will have earned the affectionate regard of many cities, whereas he will be praised by all human beings and will be admirable in the eyes of all. Everyone present, but not everyone absent, will be his ally, just as not everyone will be afraid that something might happen to him and not everyone will desire to serve him. Precisely by making his city happy, he will antagonize and hurt her enemies who cannot be expected to love him and to extol his victory. But even the enemies will have to admit that he is a great man: they will admire him and praise his virtue.50 The beneficent ruler will be praised and admired by all men, whereas he will not be loved by all men: the range of love is more limited than that of admiration or praise. Each man loves what is somehow his own, his private possession; admiration or praise is concerned with the excellent regardless of whether it is one’s own or not. Love as distinguished from admiration requires proximity. The range of love is limited not only in regard to space, but likewise—although Xenophon’s Simonides in his delicacy refrains from even alluding to it—in regard to time. A man may be admired many generations after his death whereas he will cease to be loved once those who knew him well are dead.⁵¹ Desire for “inextinguishable fame,”⁵² as distinguished from desire for love, enables a man to liberate himself from the shackles of the Here and Now. The beneficent ruler is praised and admired by all men, whereas he is loved mainly by his subjects: the limits of love coincide normally with the borders of the political community, whereas admiration of human excellence knows no boundaries.⁵³ The beneficent ruler is loved by those whom he benefits or serves on account of his benefits or services,⁵⁴ whereas he is admired even by those to whom he has done the greatest harm and certainly by many whom he did not serve or benefit at all: admiration seems to be less mercenary than love. Those who admire the beneficent ruler while loving him do not necessarily make a distinction between their benefactor and the man of excellence; but those who admire him without loving him—e.g., the enemy cities-rise above the vulgar error of mistaking one’s benefactor for the man of excellence.⁵⁵ Admiration is as much superior to love as the man of excellence is to one’s benefactor as such. To express this somewhat differently, love has no criterion of its relevance outside itself, but admiration has. If admiration does not presuppose services rendered by the admired to the admirer, one is led to wonder whether it presupposes any services, or any prospect of services, by the admired at all. This question is answered explicitly in the affirmative by Hiero, and tacitly in the negative by Simonides.⁵⁶ Hiero is right as regards the ruler: the ruler does not gain the admiration of all men but by rendering services to his subjects. Simonides is right as regards the wise man: the wise man is admired, not on account of any services which he renders to others, but simply because he is what he is. The wise man need not be a benefactor at all in order to be admired as a man of excellence.57 More precisely: the specific function of the ruler is to be beneficent; he is essentially a benefactor; the specific function of the wise man is to understand; he is a benefactor only accidentally. The wise man is as self-sufficient as is humanly possible; the admiration which he gains is essentially a tribute to his perfection, and not a reward for any services.⁵⁸ The desire for praise and admiration as distinguished and divorced from the desire for love is the natural foundation for the predominance of the desire for one’s own perfection.⁵⁹ This is what Xenophon subtly indicates by presenting Simonides as chiefly interested in the pleasures of eating, whereas Hiero appears to be chiefly interested in the pleasures of sex: for the enjoyment of food, as distinguished from sexual enjoyments, one does not need other human beings.⁶⁰

The specific function of the wise man is not bound up with an individual political community: the wise man may live as a stranger. The specific function of the ruler on the other hand consists in rendering happy the individual political community of which he is the chief. The city is essentially the potential enemy of other cities. Hence one cannot define the function of the ruler without thinking of war, enemies, and allies: the city and her ruler need allies, whereas the wise man does not.⁶¹ To the specific functions correspond specific natural inclinations. The born ruler, as distinguished from him who is born to become wise, must have strong warlike inclinations. Hiero mentions the opinion according to which peace is a great good and war a great evil. He does not simply adopt it, however, for he feels too keenly that war affords great pleasures. When enumerating the very great pleasures which private citizens enjoy in war, he assigns the central place to the pleasure which they derive from killing their enemies. He notes with regret that the tyrant cannot have this great pleasure or at least cannot openly show it and boast of the deed. Simonides does not reveal any delight in war or killing. The most he says in favor of war is that Hiero had greatly exaggerated the detrimental effect on appetite and sleep of that fear which fills men’s minds before a battle.⁶² Not victory in war as such, but the happiness of one’s city, is described by him as the goal of the noblest and grandest contest.⁶³ Hiero’s statement about peace and war⁶⁴ doubtless serves the purpose of drawing our attention to the particularly close connection between tyranny and war.⁶⁵ But a comparison of this passage with what Xenophon tells us about the inclinations of the king Cyrus makes it clear that he considered a streak of cruelty an essential element of the great ruler in general.66 The difference between the tyrant and the nontyrannical ruler is ultimately not a simple opposition, but rather that in the case of the tyrant certain elements of the character of the ruler are more strongly developed or less easily hidden than in the case of the nontyrannical ruler. Nor is it necessarily true that the pleasure which the ruler takes in hurting enemies is surpassed by his desire to be loved by friends. To say nothing of the fact that what Hiero enjoys most in his sexual relations are the quarrels with the beloved one, he apparently prefers “taking from enemies against their will” to all other pleasures.⁶⁷ According to him, the tyrant is compelled to free the slaves, but desirous to enslave the free:⁶⁸ if he could afford to indulge his desires everyone would be his slave. Simonides had limited himself to stating that tyrants are most capable of hurting their enemies and helping their friends. When reproducing this statement, Hiero puts a considerably greater weight on “hurting the enemies” than on “helping the friends”; and when discussing it, he implies that Simonides has an interest of his own in helping his friends but none in hurting his enemies: he can easily see Simonides helping his friends; he cannot see him as well hurting his enemies.⁶⁹ Since the wise man does not need human beings in the way in which, and to the extent to which, the ruler does, his attitude toward them is free, not passionate, and hence not susceptible of turning into malevolence or hatred. In other words, the wise man alone is capable of justice in the highest sense. When Hiero distinguishes between the wise and the just man, he implies that the just man is the good ruler. Accordingly, he must be presumed to understand by justice political justice, the justice which manifests itself in helping friends and hurting enemies. When Socrates assumes that the wise man is just, he understands by justice transpolitical justice, the justice which is irreconcilable with hurting anyone. The highest form of justice is the preserve of those who have the greatest self-sufficiency which is humanly possible.⁷⁰