Hiero
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~15,800 words · 75 passages
Cite this work
- APAXenophon. (n.d.). Hiero. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/xenophon/hiero
- MLAXenophon. "Hiero." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/xenophon/hiero.
- ChicagoXenophon. Hiero. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/xenophon/hiero.
What it is about
A conversation between a tyrant and a poet on whether power makes one happy. The tyrant says no, and explains at length why.
Context and history
One of antiquity's sharpest texts on the loneliness of power: the ruler can trust nobody, not even the affection he receives. Leo Strauss devoted a whole book to it in 1948 — On Tyranny — which opened a famous quarrel with Kojève about philosophy and politics.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though there is doubt about some of these) is: Work Number of books The Anabasis 7 The Hellenica 7 The Cyropaedia 8 The Memorabilia 4 The Symposium 1 The Economist 1 On Horsemanship 1 The Sportsman 1 The Cavalry General 1 The Apology 1 On Revenues 1 The Hiero 1 The Agesilaus 1 The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians 2 Text in brackets "{}" is my transliteration of Greek text into English using an Oxford English Dictionary alphabet table. The diacritical marks have been lost. HIERO The Hiero is an imaginary dialogue, c. 474 B.C., between Simonides of Ceos, the poet; and Hieron, of Syracuse and Gela, the despot. HIERO, or "THE TYRANT" A Discourse on Despotic Rule I Once upon a time Simonides the poet paid a visit to Hiero the "tyrant," (1) and when both obtained the leisure requisite, Simonides began this conversation: (1) Or, "came t← Back to Xenophon