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;
for they know well that those who held despotic power before them have been put out of the way, some by their parents, some by their sons, some by their brothers, and some by their wives and, furthermore, that the lineage of these rulers has been blotted out from the sight of men.
But it is in the nature of things that those who attempt a despot’s course must encounter the disasters which befall despotic power and be afflicted by the very things which they inflict upon others.
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.