Politics of Obedience

meant when he said he would rather save one citizen than defeat
a hundred enemies.) For it is plainly evident that the dictator
does not consider his power firmly established until he has
reached the point where there is no man under him who is of any
worth. Therefore there may be justly applied to him the reproach
to the master of the elephants made by Thrason and reported by
Terence:
Are you indeed so proud
Because you command wild beasts?
This method tyrants use of stultifying their subjects cannot be
more clearly observed than in what Cyrus did with the Lydians
after he had taken Sardis, their chief city, and had at his mercy
the captured Croesus, their fabulously rich king. When news was
brought to him that the people of Sardis had rebelled, it would
have been easy for him to reduce them by force; but being
unwilling either to sack such a fine city or to maintain an army
there to police it, he thought of an unusual expedient for
reducing it. He established in it brothels, taverns, and public
games, and issued the proclamation that the inhabitants were to
enjoy them. He found this type of garrison so effective that he
never again had to draw the sword against the Lydians. These
wretched people enjoyed themselves inventing all kinds of
games, so that the Latins have derived the word from them, and
what we call pastimes they call ludi, as if they meant to say Lydi.
Not all tyrants have manifested so clearly their intention to
effeminize their victims; but in fact, what the aforementioned
despot publicly proclaimed and put into effect, most of the others
have pursued secretly as an end. It is indeed the nature of the
populace, whose density is always greater in the cities, to be
suspicious toward one who has their welfare at heart, and
gullible toward one who fools them. Do not imagine that there is
any bird more easily caught by decoy, nor any fish sooner fixed
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