Despots and despotic power
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 4 anchored passages
Despotic rule over unwilling subjects · despotic power · despotic rule · despots · despot’s course
in the texts
On the Peace
Unbounded coercive rule, used as an analogy for Athens’s and Sparta’s imperial behavior.
we must abhor all despotic rule and imperial power, reflecting upon the disasters which have sprung from them;
they, it is true, have less freedom than their private citizens to do wrong, yet are much more enviable than those who hold despotic power by force;
But I do not fail to realize that while you accept readily what I say about the rule of despots, yet you hear with intolerance what I say about the empire of the sea.
Economics
Rule by compulsion over unwilling people, treated as a miserable inferior counterpart to willing obedience.
Despotic rule over unwilling subjects they give, I fancy, to those whom they judge worthy to live the life of Tantalus, of whom it is said that in hell he spends eternity, dreading a second death.