Authoritarianism Archives

Why the Tyrant Is the Unhappiest of People

The Sword of Damocles hanging over a tyrant

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Essay substantially revised on 18 August 2026.

Tyranny is back on the table, but the ancients thought hard about how to avoid it. One of their most interesting arguments is that the one who suffers most in a tyranny is… the tyrant himself.

When Lydia (in modern-day Turkey) was conquered by Persia in around 540 BCE, the Greek cities of Ionia, along the Aegean coast, were ruled by tyrants nominated by the Persian satrap in Sardis, the former Lydian capital. These tyrants, backed by the Persian power, had no need to moderate their rule, and began to give tyranny, and Persia, a bad name to the Greeks.

King vs Tyrant

The definition of ‘tyrant’ is malleable, and has shifted many times over the centuries. All in all, a tyrant is an absolute ruler who is illegitimate and/or unrestrained by law. To maintain himself in such a precarious position, he (for it is invariably a ‘he’) usually resorts to oppression and cruelty. Even then, ‘the strangest thing to see is an aged tyrant’—as the philosopher Thales of Miletus (a city of Ionia) noted more than 2,500 years ago.

In On Clemency, written for the emperor Nero, the Roman philosopher Seneca (d. 65 CE) says that clemency is the quality that most distinguishes a king from a tyrant: ‘A tyrant differs from a king in his behaviour, not his title … It’s because of clemency that there’s a big difference between a king and a tyrant.’ For Seneca, a ruler’s glory depends not on his power, but on its proper exercise. Moreover, if people can see that their ruler is ‘for them as much as he is above them’, they will be loyal to him and act as his eyes and ears. Clemency, then, not only ennobles rulers but keeps them safe: ‘It is at one and the same time an adornment of supreme power and its surest security.’

Fear and Trembling

The calm and deliberate exercise of power, says Seneca, is like a clear and brilliant sky, but when the ruler is unrestrained all becomes murk and shadows: ‘People on every side tremble and start at sudden sounds, and not even the one who causes all the alarm is left unshaken.’ The tyrant is then caught in a vicious circle: he is hated because he is feared, and must make himself feared because he is hated. For everyone he kills, there are fathers and sons, brothers and friends, who will rise up in their stead. In time, the tyrant cannot travel freely, sleep soundly, eat confidently, speak openly, or trust even those closest to him.

In 68 CE, abandoned by the Praetorian Guard and declared a public enemy by the Senate, Nero fled Rome. As soldiers approached to arrest him, he preferred suicide to capture. But he did not have the courage to wield the dagger himself, and his freedman Epaphroditus helped him drive it into his throat. His last, deluded words were, Qualis artifex pereo: ‘What an artist dies in me!’

Socrates on Tyranny

One of Socrates’ most famous arguments is that no one ever knowingly does evil. People do wrong not because their ethics are overwhelmed by a desire for pleasure, as is often thought, but because they are unable to weigh up pleasures and pains. They act with recklessness or cowardice or foolishness or vice (which are really all one and the same thing) because, from their limited perspective, it seems like the right or best thing to do. But in the longer term, their actions undermine both their and our happiness—and never more so than if they happen to be a tyrant.

In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates makes the case that the tyrant is the most miserable of men because he is in a stronger position to harm himself and others—which is why those whom Homer has in Hades suffering eternal torment are not ordinary people but potentates such as Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Tityus.

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates ranks people according to how much of the ideal Forms their souls are supposed to have seen, with philosophers, artists, and true lovers in the first class, followed by kings and generals in the second class … and tyrants in the ninth and final class.

In Book 9 of the Republic, Socrates calculates that the king is precisely 729 times happier than the tyrant. He derives this number, which happens to be the cube of 9, through some fanciful Platonic arithmetic, following his argument that there are three kinds of pleasure corresponding to the three parts of the soul.

Plato and Aristotle on Tyranny

The best rulers are those who are most reluctant to govern, and the most eager the worst—said Plato.

Plato did not care for Athenian democracy, but the tyranny of his own aristocratic relatives had proven much worse. In the Republic, he claims that the degeneration of the ideal state ends in democracy, followed by tyranny.

The transition from democracy to tyranny is one of the most striking passages in the Republic. Democracy prizes freedom above all else, until freedom itself becomes excessive: children cease to respect their parents, pupils their teachers, and citizens any form of authority or restraint. Into this disorder steps a popular champion who promises to protect people from their enemies. He accuses his opponents, disposes of rivals, redistributes property, and, when threatened in return, asks the people for a bodyguard. The protector has turned tyrant.

In Book 9 of the Republic, Plato gives a detailed account of the origins, mindset, and modus operandi of the tyrant, thereby demonstrating that this most unjust of men is also the most slavish and unhappy. The soul of the tyrant is so disordered that he is unable to do, or even know, what it truly desires—which is, of course, to be happy, and therefore good.

Plato begins his psychological portrait with our dreams. Even in respectable people, he says, there is a ‘terrible, savage, and lawless’ element that emerges during sleep, entertaining desires that reason would never permit in waking life. In the tyrannical man, these lawless desires have escaped from the night and taken command of the day.

At first, the tyrannical man spends his money satisfying them. When the money runs out, he borrows. When borrowing is no longer enough, he cheats and steals. He exploits his parents, betrays his friends, and eventually becomes capable of any crime. The man who appeared to be supremely free has become the slave of his strongest appetite.

And what happens within the individual, Plato argues, also happens within the state. The political tyrant must continually manufacture enemies, because conflict makes the people dependent upon their leader. He must remove anyone courageous, intelligent, wealthy, or independent enough to threaten him. As the better sort disappear, he becomes increasingly dependent upon flatterers, mercenaries, and slaves. Power progressively deprives him of the very people whom he might have trusted.

The tyrant has conquered everyone except himself.

The life of the political tyrant is even more wretched than that of the private tyrant, first, because the political tyrant is in a better position to feed his disordered desires, and, second, because he is everywhere surrounded and watched by his enemies, of whom he is, in effect, the prisoner.

The Republic ends with the Myth of Er, according to which the souls of tyrants and murderers are barred from reincarnation and condemned to an eternity in the underworld.

Aristotle too suggested that there is no worse criminal than the tyrant: ‘Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold; and hence honour is bestowed, not on him who kills a thief, but on him who kills a tyrant…’

In Book 2 of the Politics, Aristotle says that the Carthaginian constitution is so superior to any Greek one that the Carthaginians have never suffered a rebellion or been ruled by a tyrant.

How to Protect against Tyrants

So, what might the ancient philosophers have to say about today’s democracies?

First, we need to ensure that a life spent in politics remains an attractive prospect, or at the very least a tolerable one, or else sensible people will be put off from going into politics, hollowing out the centre and leaving us to be governed, or misgoverned, by disturbed and power-hungry fanatics.

Second, we need to think more carefully about education, and what it means to be educated. Unless we transform ourselves by carrying out the work of the mind, we could be rich, powerful, and famous, like Nero, or Putin, and still be utterly miserable. Playing the tyrant, and taking everyone down with us, is not, as Seneca reminds us, what human beings are for. The best bulwark against tyranny is the existence of a large and historically aware middle class.

It is not merely that educated people know more facts. A population with some knowledge of history is more likely to recognise the old methods when they return: the invention of internal enemies, the attack on independent institutions, the demand for personal loyalty, the contempt for established restraints, and the insistence that one man can save us. Tyranny changes its garb more readily than its methods.

The Internet once promised to become the greatest educational tool in history. Instead, it has also become the demagogue’s greatest megaphone, enabling him to bypass traditional institutions and appeal directly to the fears and resentments of millions.

Third, a country’s constitution or political settlement must contain sufficient safeguards to prevent or arrest the rise of a potential tyrant, or simply of a less than decent or competent leader. This is not the case in the U.S. and no longer the case in the U.K. where recent changes to how the main political parties select their leaders have enabled the rise of such improbable figures as Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson, who, as prime minister, purged his party of competent moderates and attempted to prorogue Parliament.

Of course, constitutions are only as strong as the people prepared to uphold them. Safeguards can be ignored or circumvented, offices captured, institutions intimidated. So it is not simply a matter of writing a fail-safe constitution.

Since the time of Plato, humanity has made great strides in science and technology, but far less progress in politics. The world, now armed with nuclear weapons, and faced with problems that Plato could scarcely have imagined, is still crying out for fail-safe systems of government.

That, surely, is not beyond us.