Thirty Tyrants

“ During his reign the empire was ravaged by a fearful pestilence; and the chief cities of Greece were sacked by the Goths, who descended on the Greek coast with a fleet of five hundred. His generals rebelled against him in almost every province of the empire, and this period of Roman history came to be called the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. Nevertheless, these usurpers probably saved the empire at the time, by maintaining order and repelling the attacks of the barbarians. ”

“ From 403 to about 380 B.C. his industry must have been incessant. The notices of his personal life in these years are scanty. In 403 he came forward as the accuser of Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty Tyrants. ”

“ One thing is certain. A worse man cannot harm a better. But if the Athenians kill Socrates they will harm themselves. For they will lose the stimulus of his exhortations—and his poverty is a sufficient witness that he was sincere. Not that he would engage in politics. If he had done that he would have perished long before, [14] as he nearly did for his independent vote after the battle of Arginusae, and for disobeying the murderous command of the Thirty Tyrants.
But have not Socrates's disciples, Alcibiades, Critias, Charmides, proved bad citizens? He has no disciples. ”

“ They too are such arch deceivers,
⁠That, when in power, they ne'er will be deceived." Smith.
See note on Aves, 451. ↑ The long lapse of time will hardly allow us to refer this to the flight of the country people into the city in accordance with the policy of Pericles. "This difficult passage probably refers to the times of the Thirty Tyrants, when no assemblies were held in the Pnyx, and the orators were not allowed to speak." Droysen. ↑ See note on Vesp. 451. ↑ See Krüger, Gr. Gr. §50, 8, obs. 3. ↑ One of the demagogues of the day. His father was a potter. ”

“ What could be free, when lawless beasts obey'd
And ev'n the Elements a Tyrant sway'd?
In vain kind seasons swell'd the teeming grain,
Soft show'rs distill'd, and Suns grew warm in vain;
The swain with tears to beasts his labour yields,
And famish'd dies amidst his ripen'd fields.
No wonder savages or subjects slain
Were equal crimes in a despotic reign;
Both doom'd alike for sportive Tyrants bled,
But subjects starv'd while savages were fed.
Proud Nimrod first the bloody chace began,
A mighty hunter, and his prey was man. ”

“ Even the good qualities and courage of such subjects are their misfortune, by strengthening the wicked hands of their brutal masters, and strengthening their own chains. Tyrants consider their people as their cattle, and use them worse, as they fear them more. ”

“ Such is the spirit and effects of lawless power, lodged in one man; every officer and creature of his will have it; and, by setting up one tyrant, a thousand are set up. As this power is never to be got or preserved, but by violence and oppression; all men who have any share in executing and ministering, and defending the same, must be oppressors too. As no man is an oppressor for the mere pleasure and security of another, but only for his own sake and gratification; so all the servants of tyranny do, in their master’s name, but rob and spoil for themselves; and every servant is a master. ”

“ They have usurped government with the weapons of the coward and assassin, and they maintain themselves in power by the most approved practices of the most odious of tyrants. These men have shed as much innocent blood as the bloody triumvirate of Rome. To-day, red-handed murderers and assassins sit in the high places of power, and bask in the smiles of innocence and beauty. ”

“ Nothing that is good or desirable can subsist under tyrants, nor within their reach; and they themselves subsist upon nothing but what is detestable and wicked. They are supported by general ruin; they live by the destruction of mankind: And as fraud and villainy, and every species of violence and cruelty, are the props of their throne; so they measure their own happiness, and security, and strength, by the misery and weakness of their people ”

“ When tyrants come to violent deaths, there is constantly a belief, engendered of terror, that they are not dead after all, but that they will reappear, to take vengeance on those who have rejoiced at their fate. ”

“ I am not one to dispute the will of God , divine will becomes our lot , but I question the right of tyrants . Charred cities after their sacking , the cries of dependent humanity , sent to feed searing flames , the weak , meek and lame , no daylight dawns again , a winding trail of chains and clubs , the gathered wounded ; conquered , these tyrants do not govern , they seize and consume their fill , then hunger rumbles again , they repeat their atrocities , till the Fates pluck them . ”

“ THE TYRANNICIDE A man forces his way into the stronghold of a tyrant, with the intention of killing him. Not finding the tyrant himself, he kills his son, and leaves the sword sticking in his body. The tyrant, coming, and finding his son dead, slays himself with the same sword.—The assailant now claims that the killing of the son entitles him to the reward of tyrannicide. ”

“ Till a noble Purpose smites them and melts them into one.
While the sands are free, O Tyrants! like the wind are your steel and speech;
Your brute-force crushes a legion, but a soul it can never reach. ”

“ That they are absolved from all allegiance to those Tyrants, who still persist in forcibly subjecting them to perpetual 'Bondage,' and that all friendly connection between them and such Tyrants, is & ought to be totally desolved, And that as free and independent citizens of these states, they have a perfect right, a sufficient and just cause, to defend themselves against the Tyrrany of their oppressors. ”

“ Similarly, the more tyrants pillage, the more they crave, the more they ruin and destroy; the more one yields to them, and obeys them, by that much do they become mightier and more formidable, the readier to annihilate and destroy. ”

“ This is what he says about it:
‘It is not weapons, not armed men – cavalry and infantry – that defend tyrants, but, however hard to believe, three or four men support a tyrant and keep the whole country in servitude to him. The circle of people closest to the tyrant has always consisted of five or six men. These men have either wormed their way into his favour, or been chosen by him, in order to be the accomplices of his cruelty, the companions of his pleasure, and to share in his robberies. ”

“ What unutterable and increasing woe must be the lot of their poor subjects under continual harrows of iron, made daily more poignant and heavy! Nor is the killing of a tyrant any cure, unless the tyranny be killed with him. The nature of this power breaths nothing but destruction, private ruin, and publick desolation; the common maxims of justice and mercy are not known to him, or known only for high treason; the very contrary are constantly practised; and his ministers, to be faithful servants, must be the worst of men, and all of them tyrants like himself. ”

“ Nor, let them plunder and butcher as they will, is there any redress to the oppressed and expiring people; for though the imperial oppressor often forces his ministerial oppressors to disgorge, and spoils the spoiler of his booty and his life, where he dares; yet, there being no restitution made, the condition of the oppressed is not mended: It is mock-justice, and worse than none; every act of power, every degree of office there, is robbery and violence, and every officer, the least and lowest, is an irresistible tyrant. ”

“ The Tyrant is borne through the streets, the people shouting, and the maidens strewing flowers at his feet. The telegram has been despatched from the revolutionary committee to the Roquette, and the answer is a corpse that quivers, the parricide’s shroud, and the headsman’s bloody axe. ”

“ It is indeed impossible for the subtlety of traitors, the malice of devils, or for the cunning and cruelty of our most implacable enemies, to suggest stronger motives for the undermining and overthrow of our excellent establishment, which is built upon the destruction of tyranny, and can stand upon no other bottom. ”

“ They are indeed so manifestly the authors of all that is ruinous and wicked, that if God Almighty had left it to Satan to invent an engine for the destroying of the world, and for defacing every thing beautiful, good, or desirable in it, that minister of vengeance, and enemy to God and man, would doubtless have invented tyrants, who by their wonderful success in such ministration, have ever shewn, and do still shew, their eminent fitness for it. ”

“ Aroused in Thunder, awful they appear, With proud Deliverance stalking in their rear: While Tyrant Foes their pallid Fears betray, Shrink from their Arms, and give their Vengeance way; Sec, in the unequal War, OPPRESSORS fall, The Hate, Contempt, and endless Curse of all. ”

“ It is really a farce, but a melancholy one, to hear the word justice come out of the mouth of a tyrant; who, by being so, is a settled enemy to the common laws of justice and mercy, and common sense, and to all that is good or lovely, or desirable amongst men. ”

“ Tyrants, feeling themselves at war with the universe, were always on their guard; and as they owed their safety only to terror, the punishment which they inflicted, if victorious, was extreme in its atrocity. ”

“ He always works by means, and means he'll bless, With approbation, often with success. Nor prayers nor tears will revolutions make, Tyrants pull down, or irksome bondage break; 'Tis our own business; and He lets us know, What is our business, he expects we'll do. * God punishes bad kings and oppressors, as he does the rest of mankind—through his instruments, The, People. It is the only way by which he has ever made an example of tyrants as a terror to others. Tyrants sometimes in Revolutions fall, Though their destruction's not design'd at all ”

“ Thus a Tyranny is the worst and most miserable State of all. Not only are the citizens in it reduced to slavery, and distracted by fear and grief, but the Tyrant himself, with all his power and splendour, never knows the blessings of peace and friendship. Like some great slave-master in a desert, he lives alone in a crowd: shunned and detested by those about him, tortured by remorse, and haunted by a lifelong terror, he himself the most pitiable slave of all.
The only pleasure that such a man ever knows is mere sensual enjoyment—in itself worthless and fleeting. ”

“ He must have a band of standing cut-throats to murder all men who would sacrilegiously defend their own. And both his cut-throats and his deceivers must go shares with him in his tyranny.
Men will naturally see their interests, feel their condition; will quickly find that the sword, the rack, and the sponge, are not government, but the height of cruelty and robbery; and will never submit to them, but by the united powers of violence and delusion: Their bodies must be chained, their minds enchanted and deceived ”

“ Tyrants use the force of the people to chain and subjugate—that is, enyoke the people. Then they plough with them as men do with oxen yoked. Thus the spirit of liberty and innovation is reduced by bayonets, and principles are struck dumb by cannonshot ”

“ OF A BLOODY DECREE, PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND AGAINST THE CONFESSORS OF THE HOLY GOSPEL; IN CONSEQUENCE OF WHICH MUCH BLOOD WAS SHED AMONG THEM, A. D. 1401.
Tyrants generally find a reason for their tyranny, in the orders which they have received from their superiors in authority; this is for them a wide cloak, which can cover much evil. In the meantime they vent their anger, yea, rejoice in their wickedness, while the unoffending and innocent have to suffer. ”

“ Their Disobedience and Restlessness is of a long standing; it will be but reasonable that our Arms [47] add one Victorious Day to so many Turbulent Years, that so we may lay the Ax to the Root of Rebellion. They call us Tyrants ”

“ Tyrants lose all respect for humanity in proportion as they are sunk beneath it;—taught to believe themselves of a different species, they really become so; lose their participation with their kind; and, in mimicking the God, dwindle into the brute! ”

“ It is what we desire." The tyrant, with rage painted in every feature of his countenance, ordered the venerable old man to be stretched on the ground, and thirty men, fifteen on each side, to pull and haul him by cords tied to his arms, legs, and other limbs, so as to dislocate and almost tear them asunder; and two hangmen in the mean time to scourge his body with so much cruelty, as to mangle and tear off the flesh in many parts: under which torment the martyr expired. ”

“ Such a King, by the grace of his soldiers, was called a "Tyrant" and during the seventh and sixth centuries before our era every Greek city was for a time ruled by such Tyrants, many of whom, by the way, happened to be exceedingly capable men. ”

“ And here is to be noted, how pestilential and inhumane the cruelty of these Tyrants hath been, and how violently exercised, when as in two or three years space, they were all slain, and the Country wholly desolate and deserted, as those that have been Eye-witnesses can testifie; they having acted like Merciless Men, not having the fear of God and the King before their Eyes, but by the instigation of the Devil ”

“ A tyrant or a cabal may oppress a nation for long years. Their word may be thought absolute, their power irresistible. Tyranny seems to paralyse the courage of resistance, like the fabled head of Medusa. Remove its fascination [Pg 123] of corruption, and men become men, and not machines, once more. ”

“ Tyrants are so sensible, that when they have lost their army, they have lost all, that amongst their other destructive expedients to preserve themselves, whatever becomes of their people, one of their methods is, to lay whole countries waste, and to keep them waste, to prevent an invader from subsisting ”