This text is part of:
ἠλευθέρωσε -- διένειμεν: fulfilling the hopes held out by him as προστάτης (566 A note). A redistribution of landed property was one of Dionysius' earliest measures after he had established himself in the tyranny (Grote X pp. 221 ff.). As Mr Giles points out, such a step would tend to keep up the enthusiasm of the πλῆθος, especially when the tyrant succeeded to an oligarchy which had added field to field by lending on mortgage to the small farmers and selling them up after a bad year. It would be easy enough to carry out, because the tyrant's opponents would have fled the country: cf. 566 C. For the aorists see 548 D note πρὸς τοὺς ἔξω ἐχθροὺς κτλ.: ‘in his relations to foreign enemies’ etc. With the construction of τοῖς μὲν κτλ. cf. IX 591 E—592 A ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ τιμάς γε— τῶν μὲν μεθέξει καὶ γεύσεται ἑκών, ἃς ἂν ἡγῆται ἀμείνω αὑτὸν ποιήσειν, ἃς δ᾽ ἂν λύσειν τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν ἕξιν, φεύξεται ἰδίᾳ καὶ δημοσίᾳ. In both cases the idiom resembles so-called partitive apposition, for which see IV 431 A note πολέμους τινὰς κτλ. Cf. Arist. Pol. E 11. 1313^{b} 28 ff. ἔστι δὲ καὶ πολεμοποιὸς ὁ τύραννος, ὅπως δὴ ἄσχολοί τε ὦσι καὶ ἡγεμόνος ἐν χρείᾳ διατελῶσιν ὄντες. The history of Dionysius the elder is again in point: see Grote X pp. 224—331.
The Republic of Plato. James Adam. 1902. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.