I'm very house great. I'm welcome to know. Thank you. I'm your house.
I'm working for you. What's that award? Johnny joining me as always. Is always his daddy and my good friend.
I was pretty. And my own in my own in my own in my own friend. Good at what's for you. Okay.
I really thank you so much. Welcome back to the show. That's so cute. I mean, she's a little confused.
She said she spoke about me as though I weren't her daddy, which is just odd. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It was super cute. Almost makes me want to have kids. Yeah.
There's some days where I questioned that. What I was going to do for the answer to the show is to remind people, please rate us. Oh, yeah. It's not that we're trying to sell out and get NPR toke bags, like partial exam in life.
But speaking of this, tyrannical urge imprinted on our souls darker than to stain on Lady Macbeth to spread her wisdom as far and white as possible. And when you don't like our show and rate it, we were just not as successful as we wish to be. So please do that. We have five.
How are you? Also joining us is Greg McBrayer. Hey, there. So good to be with you guys.
This is going to be a great episode for all the Greg fans because we're doing Zetaphon. Oh, this is a Greg episode. Just have a crowd. I love them.
I'm out. They're Greg. So it's our first day on episodes on Family Guy. People just tune out.
It's our first episode on Zetaphon. Greg. Now, how exciting question for you? What translation are you using of the best available translation is the one in Leo Strauss's on speaking to your mic speaking to your mic.
Sorry. The best available translation from my money is the one in Leo Strauss's on tyranny. It simply could not be surpassed. And I would go so far as to say anybody who tried to issue their own new translation, most implicitly questioned the judgment of the great Leo Strauss book.
What are you using? The same one. Well, everybody knows Greg. For those who don't know, Greg edited an edition of Zetaphon's shorter writings for Cornell University Press.
And I have to say, this is a great translation. I read both in preparation for the episode. And it's a great translation and a great essay by David Leidring. If you're looking for a introduction, he amends his death to Strauss on a couple of footnotes.
And I read all of the Strauss this week, as well as Projev's response to it, and then Strauss's restatement is response to Projev and Vogelen. And Levi's essay, if you're looking for something that's shorter, like, what is it 25 pages like that? Yeah. It's a great place to start because you'll get a glimpse of what Strauss goes into much more detail.
Yeah, nice. Just a quick. No, no, no. Just two small points.
One is David Leidring wrote the essay. It's very good. I agree with Alex, but the translation, I didn't do the translation actually was David O'Connor professor at the University of Notre Dame. And he's not saying.
Yeah, he's in philosophy. Oh, okay. And I don't want to speak yellow, but I have an older edition of it. I think Alex, actually, because we have Zoom, I can see an older edition of the Auntyering of the Ostrass, which includes a translation by Marvin Kendrick.
It is good, but I understand in recent editions, they've revised it because there were some translation problems with it, which is where it's where, but still very good translation. I think better than you and did some of the revisions. Yeah, you did the revisions. I think this is the most updated version.
Greg, the cover, but I think the cover. Okay. To get both and get to Chicago for the Co-Chap and then Greg's obviously because it's Greg, but it's a number of Xenophon shorter writings. It's not all of them, in fact, except for the Scribe ones.
I'll plug my own book here. It's actually the only English translation available that has all of Xenophon's minor non-Socratic writings. And that's interesting, Greg, because Cornell has been putting together all of Xenophon's writings, throwing missing one book, which is the Hellenica. Yeah, I'll translate that.
Yeah. You're real. Come on, it. I'm on it.
I'm on it. I'm on it. All right. Who is that?
Sharpie. You got a haircut? I just go with my hair tonight. I watch one.
Looks really nice. Thank you. I did not get a haircut. Greg, as the resident Xenophon expert on the New York breed, and by your claim, the greatest expositor of Xenophon's thought.
Living or living or dead. Living or dead. That included not just Strauss, but also Machia. Clearly.
Yeah. Yeah. So, and also Xenophon. Don't forget the Earl of Shaftsbury.
Yeah. That's true. The Earl Shaftsbury. These guys are great writing some play to it, Xenophon.
They're very long. So, I think before that you have succeeded in understanding Xenophon better than he understands himself. Correct. Yeah.
So, tell us a little bit about Xenophon. I'll try to see if I explain it to your small brains. Now, spring or wisdom on this. Best I can.
Who was Xenophon? I mean, like, I hope funny enough, I'm sure like, you know, our audience supports somewhat mixed half of them are like, I see really I'm just telling us who's Xenophon is and the other half is this guy I've never heard of. So, Xenophon was a Athenian. He was a student of Socrates.
He's sort of the lesser known, Socratic student, Plato being his sort of classmate of sorts, I suppose. He's very famous for having been in addition to a student of Socrates. He was also a very famous general. He led a very successful military retreat of 10,000 Greek mercenaries out of Persia after a failed attempt to overthrow the Persian Empire by Cyrus the younger.
He sort of retired just outside of Sparta. But I guess before retirement, when he was still outside of Sparta, he sort of also engaged in some military actions there. He seems to have been exiled from Athens. So, he wasn't allowed to return.
So, he was on bad terms with his homeland. What else would I say about Xenophon? But, you know, he was kind of a tough guy. Apparently, I think he sort of seemed to have tried to make his reputation as a tough guy.
He's a military leader and in the number of texts. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.
That's exactly what I was hoping you touch on. Unlike Plato, who's I guess like his letters with standing, we just have dialogues. Xenophon is to speak to us a number of different types of philosophic writing teaching each other. Sure.
I mean, the main two types ofocratic writings, and I think this is, I mean, now it's just rather Shrallstone. I think I'm not saying anything too original, but the two principal types of writings that is engaged in were Socratic works. He wrote four works where Socrates is the main character, the Norvillea, which is simply like memories or recollection, something like that. The Symposium, apology of Socrates to the jury, which is very similar to the title of a plate comic dialogue and the economics, which means the one skilled at ruling a household or the economist or something like this as Pangletransix.
So, there's these four Socratic works. There are these two big books that are works on a guy named Cyrus, although they're on different sirens. One, probably my favorite book in Tarkov's Denon Show and Chris Vellincien on show with that number of guys say that this is their favorite book. It's called the Education of Cyrus.
And then there's this book about the younger Cyrus called the Analysis or the March Up Country. Sometimes it's called literally, this means the Ascent of Cyrus. So the Education of Cyrus and the Ascent of Cyrus, I heard recently somebody say like, the word Cyrus in Greek actually seems to be derived from a Persian word for Lord. And so it could be the rise of the Lord and the Education of the Lord.
So we're going to tie this. Yeah. And we don't want to be too friendly because Alex get this is where his ego and the Persian stuff, right? Well, you know, I was almost leave Cyrus.
I wish you'd been named Cyrus. Yeah, but they're going to do it with the French pronunciation, which is see who's see who's that's a little less intimidating, but horrible. Fine. So there are these two, these two principal kind of writers, Socratic writing and these writings on Cyrus seems like philosophical writing is a global right.
Then he also has these series of sort of weird, like treatises seemingly on like skills that dudes should have, like how to hunt with dogs and how to ride a horse or taking care of horses, I suppose more generally the one is called the Connecticut or something like this and the other ones that hit on horse and there's another one on horses called How to lead a cavalry or something like this. So there are all these weird skill ones. And then there's this one that's an outlier that's sort of all by itself, the one that you want me to translate the one you keep getting on about, which seems to be nothing more than a history of the end of the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath. It appears to be or it seems self-consciously to be a continuation of the very famous account of the war between Spartan Athens by Thucydides.
And I think Zenithin, there's this really interesting line in Dijus Laird as we talked about the relationship between Thucydides and Sathamu, we don't have to go in that now. So you have all these, you have these Socratic writings, these Sirens writings, these weird treatises on skills, this weird history. And then you have some political very narrowly understood political writings, a treatise on the regime of Athens, a treatise on the regime of Sparta. And then the thing we're reading today, this treatise on, treatise is probably the wrong word, actually it's a dialogue, but it's on tyranny.
I don't go through this too much, but I think if you go through the six classic regime types, you might find that actually Zenithin treats the various regime types in these different works. So he treats democracy in his Catholic regime of Athens, he treats, let's just say oligarchy in the regime of Spartans, here we get tyranny and there are other sort of things going on in other works. What a busy, that's a little bit sorry. Yeah, I look at the busy fever.
I once made the an hour. And Winston Churchill, as a kind of philosophy for states and potential doesn't arise, his enophons height philosophically, that is, it's amazing he was able to do all of this. A little writing seemed to maybe to match in the history of Marlboro, for example, but you don't see anything in Churchill that matches the Cyrus stuff, I think, or even the Socrates stuff. And his manner of writing, Greg, is famously subtle to the point where some of the historical neglect, if you look this up, I think this is actually what I'm about to say is people simply thought that Xenophon was a dollar, like he just wasn't as smart.
I always think that I think, I don't think that. But we're seeing a revival now. I think that's the largest part to me, as the sole single greatest living ex-loders. I'm just a one who comes and the one who rediscovered something else.
I decided to not try to fight back against this false bragging and just I'm just going to lean into it. That's my strategy. So you're right. So one of the things I was going to try to find a citation, but in the the analysis, the rise of Cyrus, which is the account of Cyrus younger, Xenophon himself is actually on trial at one point.
His soldiers put him on trial for his life as he behaved poorly as a general. He successfully defends himself, but at the very end during the course of defending himself, he says, you know, actually, I think it's more noble, more pious, more just to remember the good things than the bad. I paraphrased, I wish I found the precise quote. But this is a sort of nice way of capturing.
Xenophon never says very rarely does Xenophon say anything negative about anyone. And so what he'll do is he'll sort of praise people and you'll have to sort of compare lists to see what he's actually saying negative about. This is just like you, Greg. Also, I try not, especially publicly, I try not to say anything negative about anyone.
I think I'm very, very afraid for me to hear you bad enough. Yeah. But the difference is Xenophon will very clearly, I think, criticize people, but he does it by omission. So this is the example I was giving class.
I can't remember. I think I stole this from a teacher. But the premise is you have to imagine that I actually dated two girls in college. That's the sort of premise.
I know that's the part we have to kind of suspend your imagination. So I dated two girls in college, Betsy Liu and Betsy Sue. Yes. No, no, no.
Well, sure. What the heck? Betsy Liu, she was class president. She was she volunteered at her church.
She volunteered at a soup kitchen. She was captain of the lacrosse team. She won a chess championship. She was beautiful.
By the way, she was gorgeous. She came from a very good family. She was kind. She was kind to children.
She was kind of animals. She had a dark secret of hardcore porno. No, no, no, no, no, no. She took a cook.
She was very sweet. But then the other girl I dated, Betsy Sue, she was very pretty. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right.
And so right there. That's not even right there, right? So I didn't say anything at all nasty about Betsy Sue, but you realize after this laundry list of virtues about X about why I only say this one positive virtue. So therefore you have to put together for yourself that all the omissions meant that she's none of those things.
She was actually a vicious horrible human being who broke my heart, pulled it out on the ground. And I think the Santa Fontequin would be that's interestingly revealing about Greg that he'll date both a woman of immense virtue and attractive woman of no redeeming qualities. I've learned it was a lot. And at the same time, which shows your qualities, right?
Who among us when young wasn't lured in? No, near a real mirror of Prince's Greg. So yeah, right, very subtly. And David, you mentioned this right, the 19th century, 18th, 19th century, or 19th and 20th century, I suppose, has been a reputation really, really went away.
People have been prior to that. Right. Right. Yeah.
And just who was his major praise, I sprays from my view. The great example of this is Machiavelli, right? Right. He does course, the only ancient texts he really sort of names my name, right?
His education of Cyrus and he also alludes to his titles. Yes. And then his reception amongst the French authors. Yeah.
Well, I've just written a piece on that you'll have to rush out by the Brill companions of the Xenophon reception series. Yeah. So I think there's an interesting question here about the rise of the Academy and its sort of priorities of intellectual probity and honesty, right? And, you know, jargon, sophistication, and then the decline of Xenophon's opinion and the sort of steady rise of Plato's way, right?
And he's also academic types. Now, obviously, this doesn't justice to Plato, but you can't help but notice that that major surface difference between him and Xenophon's sophistication of philosophical language, right? Strauss mentions that it's a decline in our appreciation for rhetoric that leads us not to take seven series and I'll tease that out. I suspect that what Strauss is saying is, as good Democrats, small D, we'd no longer believe that rhetoric is necessary.
And we think it's kind of somewhat morally despicable to speak less than honestly, because we believe in sort of fundamental human equality. And so we've become very suspicious of a notion that wise people would speak in precisely the way that I just tried to outline. And so because Xenophon seems, it's easier for us as small D Democrats to believe that Xenophon was simple than that he was extremely misleading in what he wrote. So I connect our democracy to our, the district in which rhetoric is held.
And Xenophon's called a rhetorician by some earlier thinkers. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because when you look, Plato in a way has suffered the same favor in a more piecemeal fashion, right, where they'll call dialogues like the Theogies or the Clyta Faun or the Hippious Major, spurious, right? Right, right, right. They would do the same with the Hippious Minor if Aristotle did mention it in the metaphysics and what they say it's early.
This is so unsophisticated as though a mature philosopher would never write something about it, a very simple interlocutor like you, the Frour or Hippious, right, a person who might be ridiculous. There might be some experience there. So it's interesting, but Xenophon is in a way more willing to let people think poorly of him, right? So there's a great sense of humility, I think, and a willingness to be misunderstood in a way that's very socrotic.
And he also thinks all that happens. That's right. Yeah. But I think there's, it's more than that.
I think there's probably some pleasure he took in having people, he've probably done this before, right? Everyone's done this. You've all played stupid before. There's a kind of pleasure in allowing other people to take you for less than what you are, I guess.
He's sort of bae laughing at you, but really you're laughing with them. No? I'm quite serious about that. I do, Alex and I talked about this before.
I think part of the reason, one of the reasons this happened is able to present himself is so less than he is, is because of Plato. I think he sort of counts on the success of Plato for part of the reason that his writing for him to be read. But that's not all I think. But it's one of my Plato's and he's not all, because he's ever stopping, he's mentioned himself, not to my knowledge, no, nothing off top of my head.
And I can't think of an Aristotelian mention himself and either Plato doesn't mention him, but either a pretty clear illusion is the most clear that I can think of on top of his and the laws. But maybe also on the oscillator, so I think laws. So let's get into this text. We need a funeral.
Yeah. This is so, it's interesting. Strauss writes a whole book on this. It publishes in 94 days.
It's a short, I recommend you get it. You know, there's a bigger edition of Chicago, but there's also a shorter edition, which I think is a public domain and now, really available, but about 100 pages, something like that commentary. And his reasons for selecting is that he thinks that it's one of the closest meeting points between ancient and moderns, because specifically the text begins with sort of introductory conversation between hero and this Greek poet, Simonides, which Simonides raises the question of which life is preferable to tyrannical or the private life. And he asked, here, this because he was a private man and like all tyrants, he had a common time, right?
He had to become a new surfer. And then, you know, they go through it. And he really is for reasons we'll probably discuss feels compelled to really downplay the goodness of the tyrannical life and talk about how much worse it is that the private life stress arises, I think rightly because he fears that Simonides is a wise person might contrive something against him. This eventually leads to monadies after he's gone really over-borsions criticism.
This leads to Monadise, say, well, look, if you're having such a hard time leaning into what heroes are rhetorical, which is not merely rhetorical, but Simonides then says, well, actually, no, you can make the tyrannical life much better and give us some advice about how to be a better tyre. And in reality, if you could be a good enough tyre, you might be the happiest person in the world, according to this account. And a lot of the advice sounds a lot like Machiavelli, right? Oh, yeah.
Creating prizes for benefactors of the city. Don't make yourself hated. Yeah, yeah. If you're going to do something evil, do it through intermediaries.
Have somebody do it. Have a story about mercenaries is a topic. Yeah. So if you're interested in the history of political philosophy, you're kind of ancient, some modern sort of confrontation, and you don't have a lot of time.
This 20-page tax, 1520-page tax is a place to start. Yeah. So okay, if I back up just one second and talk about the title of this, because I can, the form, this is a dialogue you mentioned. The other reason I want to do this is because I think it'll have a situation.
The more I read Zenithin, I think this is probably true of Plato, right? The more you read Plato, you realize that certain dialogues have to be brought into dialogue with one another to understand what's really going on, right? So you can see that you can see the relationship between the symposium and the Phaedrus, for example, or the gorgias and the Phaedrus, all these sort of things. So here, I think the title of hero makes clear a couple of things that Zenithin's trying to do here.
First thing I'll say is there are only two works of play of Zenithins that are dialogue strictly speaking. And that's this and Zenithins' economicus, which is a dialogue where Socrates is the chief interlocutor. So Zenithin only wrote two dialogues. He only wrote one's the credit dialogue.
Now, he wrote another one called the memorabilia, but that's not simply a dialogue, it's sort of recount stories and these kinds of things as well. So the two that are strictly one is with a tyrant and a poet and the other is with a philosopher and a gentleman. So the natural question there is what's the relationship between poet-philosopher, what's the relationship between gentlemen and tyrant, and what's the relationship between all four? You can draw a little tree, right?
So that's the first dialogue or that's the first work of Zenithin that sort of seems like a natural pair to sort of try to compare with. The second one is we haven't mentioned yet that the hero actually has a subtitle and it's on hero or ceramicus, which I don't see him to put notes, right? I didn't see whether that's supplied by later editors or how we derive that. Do you know?
I mean, I suspect strongly there was Zenithin, this is a matter of some dispute, of course, in the same way it is with Plato, but in Zenithin, as the manuscripts have come down to us, there are two works that have subtitles or excuse me, not subtitles, alternative titles. So it's hero or tyrannicus. Now, what tyrannicus is going to be one of two things. It's a noun in Greek that's masculine and ending and it means skilled.
So it can either mean hero or the guy who's a really good tyrant, the guy who skilled a tyranny, or it can mean something like hero or the arguments because logos is masculine, the this feature argument about the skill of tyranny. So that's the subtitle there. The only other work of Zenithin that has an alternative title is what we have traditionally called Ways and Means. Which is a treatise about how Athens can improve its political economy.
The title there, it's Ways and it's, I don't know how to do this actually, it's just Ways and Means or on how to get money, something like that. And so the way to bring those two into some dialogue, I think, is that that's a treatise about how Athens can improve its economy. This seems to be a dialogue about how to improve tyranny. So the two works hero and Ways and Means seem to be works about regimes and specifically it's about how those regimes could be improved and how those defective regimes could be improved insofar as to both democracy and tyranny are defective, also trying to jump in and apologize.
Yeah, if somebody wants to read the Ways and Means, where can they get a translation? I mean, the best available, really the only translation worth the paper is printed on and papers really cheap these days is Cornell University Press, Zenithin, the shorter writing is edited by, as you've mentioned several times, the greatest living stuff in his father Gregory Aimee, Ray. I used to say Ways and Means was translated by Wayne Ambler, former guest on the show and future rights, joining us to talk about Aristophanes Peace later this time. The one thing I wanted to add about the dialogue for was that it strikes me that one fundamental difference between the dialogues and I'll push back a little bit against your characterization.
These are only two dialogues is that in a way, none of them seem to be dialogues because in Plato, it's always somebody else speaking, but in Xenophon, he's always there to some degree, he is just saying he said and then he said, right? Okay, all the dialogues he always has some. And so in a way, Xenophon's choice of this conversation and then following this conversation with another one in the case of the memorabilia gives them a kind of unified style. I forget somewhere somewhere, I think in Ontario somewhere Strauss says, I might be misremembering here, so take this forward.
He says not to write any dialogues, if I remember correctly, that they're not strictly speaking in the way that even the republic which is narrated, it's not because he's narrating it on a particular occasion. Right? So that's the dialogue. And as one works through, so think that that's a helpful note on dialogues, I'll just add a question to that.
When there are indications to the gods, this both like by Zeus, are we looking for with the attentive reader be looking for the same road science that they would be looking for in Plato? So is the map of reading? Does it resemble the kind of map or orientation guy that one uses to read the platonic dialogues or his tropes different? What do you think those are for Plato?
Or what do you mean? I suspect there's some more things going on. Yeah, I think they'll like to buy the gods by Zeus. Right?
Right? There's some funny things going on, I think in Plato with oaths and I think that there's some funny things going on in Senephan. I dare say, Zenephan's use of oaths becomes funnier. He has a dog square by Zeus at one point, which I take to be quite blasphemous to be quite honest.
So there's, I think he's being somewhat playful with these. And the same way that Plato was, I think, you know, when it's actually swears by a female deity or by the Egyptian dog or something like this, I think they're both being somewhat playful. Yeah. But it's always a sign.
One thing I always try to hammer home with students is that when these guys are swearing, I mean, this, that's a sort of sign of like, at least feigned outrage, if not genuine outrage, like you're trying to hammer home a point or your anger, you know, when do you cost an English? When do people cost, not like you and Alex who costs all the time for another reason, but like ordinary decent folk, when would they curse? And it's a sign that something's going on. I think, and so you count them in the way.
I sort of try to silence for sure. It's there in the education of Cyrus for sure. Also there's this, Cyrus almost always wears by Greek deities. There's this one notable, or there's this one place where he swears by a Persian deity, if memory serves, and there's also a place where he swears by a Spartan deity instead of Ares, which is sort of interesting.
Great. What makes you say your curses? Well, you drive them to golly gee, sometimes if I'm really hot under the collar, I'll think you for works. I do say for a time instead of what?
Instead of, um, instead of Jake bleep that out. So it sounds like that. So let's get into this. So, uh, let's do it.
So the dialogue, or whatever form you want to say this has, it's about, can we just call it dialogue? Let's just call it dialogue. So I have to say, like this is the first Zenithin we're doing, like I'm teaching you guys, this is, it's 945 on a Sunday night. I just taught a three hours, seven hours apart.
Okay, good. I'm so tired. You're, you're, I mean, you've told me that you could teach Zenithin your sleep, right? I have.
Yeah. You told me that you ghost wrote Thomas Pangos last two books on Zenithin. Just the first four chapters that we'd aggressive to build for us. So, uh, it's about 20 pages, 11 chapters.
We give it kind of outline, right? The first chapter is, the most dialogic part in that it has the most exchanges. There's 41 exchanges by my account and 28 of them are the first chapter. Um, that seems to be Zenithin's, sorry, semodities, this poet trying to push here and more and more into engaging in a outright blame of tyranny.
He's pushing back a little bit more. No, it sounds great. Um, which is in having hero, I think, confess the sort of his, the badness of tyranny where we're exaggerated, um, taking out of semodities now that makes it a little more safe for semodities, right? Yeah.
So the explicit question, and by the way, the vast majority of the, the conversation where there's a given response occurs back at the end. So it's like bookends, right? The very beginning is somewhat, is a little more, is a lot more dialogical, very, and is more dialogical in the middle. You sort of have a long speech from hero, and then, and then you turn to a conversation, excuse me, semodities, and then a long speech from hero, and then you get the sort of conversation.
But the whole question now, what you said a while ago, but since we're back in the text, let's not get too far away from this is the ostensible question under investigation in this dialogue is which way of life is better? The life of the tyrant or the life of the pirate man, private man, private man, private man. Now, that may not be the actual question the dialogue is seeking to raise, but at least that's at least what it seems to be from the start, right? Which way of life is better?
Sorry, David. I guess my opening question was, I got him back at St. Charles. Well, for all of the dangers associated with conversations with tyrants, why do you guys suspect that hero agrees to discuss anything, semodities?
I mean, it's a good question. This is one that St. Charles spends a lot of time on, and his answer is, he's afraid to sort of extend. He points to, why is it there in the first place to be?
Maybe more interesting question. Yes, we are trying to do it. Yes, such with them being both at leisure, which implies that one or both of them had some business, either with one another or separate from this. I took it the way I was thinking about it was, oh, maybe hero was busy, right?
Semodities is greater leisure. And now they're both leisure. I took it to also mean that Semodities were waiting for his moment to attack, so to speak. I also suspect that they're alone.
Although I have, I, it seems by all accounts that there's no one else present listening to this. Zero indication. Yeah. I can pick up at least on.
Now, the question seems to be the private, which is the most kind of private conversation we can have, by the way, which is very important. Yeah, it has to be a private conversation. I agree with that. So you have to imagine the guards have to be close, right?
That's what he's going to do about these guards. The one thing that St. Charles wants to do is a chapter five, in this point where he says, he says early on twice at least that Semodities is wise. And then in the beginning of chapter five here, it says, I'll tell you of another difficulty suffering, a difficult suffering of tyrants.
They recognize no less than private persons, the well-ordered and wise and just, but instead of admiring them, they fear them. Specifically with the wise, they hear that they'll contrive something, right? That they'll be up to something. My sense is that, or Strauss therefore argues that, well, it follows just almost logically then that Semodities is someone for hero to fear, the deams and wise.
Now, I don't think wisdom is enough. I think it's a combination of wisdom and kind of mat manliness because he talks about a lot about being an on-air, a true man, a manly man. Not, yeah. And so there might be a sense that, and I think Semodities has to downplay how manly he might be to sort of calm down here, but that might be the first thing.
And this then brought me to think that maybe the real issue is not about the private person versus the tyrant, but really the first question, which is, would you be willing hero to tell me about something is likely you know better than I? I think he wants to know how wise hero is. That's really what it is. Do you know something better than I?
But more importantly, since you're in a political position, are you even willing to tell me? Right? That's the inverse. Is that the inverse of what's happening in Herodotus with Solwan and the tyrant?
It's similar, right? It's a wise man who's gone to cresis, right? And but there, the same issue comes up on either happiest, but he really wants to know how happy he is. So you don't think Alex and David that what's going on here is Semodities, the wise poet, is trying to lay the groundwork to be able to offer hero advice.
But in order to do so, he must pretend like what he has this genuine question in mind, which life is better. I'll lay a little bit on the table. I think Semodities does not believe that the life of the tyrant is better than life of the private man. But I think he might think the life of the private man who gets to be friends of the tyrant is a pretty good life.
I think that's I think that's fair. Yeah. So the question posed, I mean, I think trying to figure out exactly what Semodities want is that it's conversation is very difficult. Very obviously fraud.
It's also interesting that whereas it's a sort of interrogation, questioning, right? And psychologically that it's not Socrates, a philosopher, but a poet, right? Implying that this is not something Socrates would put himself in a position. It's a kind of blueprint one might observe being used by men like Henry Kissinger, who come within the orbit of the most powerful men, like kind of presidents, but understand kind of how to play them and that the power and the role of the advisor, the Kissinger is no philosopher.
It is an interesting question of what it would look like. Why not Socrates? Why not of philosopher, right? But then in the memorabilia, Zenithin does report, in fact, a conversation between Socrates and at least someone who's called a tyrant, Critius.
And the point almost seems to be there that a dialogue or conversation between a socratic and a tyrant is not possible. That seems to be the implication, but maybe that's just the inference that Zephyr wants you to draw because this is the next best thing. It seems here a hero. Because I mean, what we have is a socratic account of a poet having a conversation with a tyrant.
And by the way, Socrates gets in very deep trouble very quickly with this would be a purported tyrant. Critius is Critius' friend, he's to kill him, basically. But if this is Simonides' plan, Greg, when you laid your cards out on the table, it's very simple. He's supposed to say that hero is able or open to learning.
I think he has to prod him into being open to learning. So I think what he asked us to list it is, if hero is perfectly happy, so by the way, I suspect therefore that there now at leisure means that Simonides has had some opportunity to observe hero and it confirmed himself, thanks that he might have suspected about hero, that he's unhappy with tyranny for some very obvious reasons. Yes, you have access to great food. Yes, you have access to great sex.
But the food you're always worried is poisons. This is one of the most terrifying moments to me that really brings us home. And there was a movie a few years ago, Gone Girl, do you remember this? Did you guys see this abomination of film?
I wouldn't just lose some listeners there. But like, he points out that like, yeah, I get to do all this lovemaking, but the whole time I'm worried that they might try to kill me. And that just kind of probably has to rob just a little bit of the pleasure of the act out from these things. So I think that what you see is hero trying, excuse me, Simonides trying to elicit from hero, one of those things in particular that he's dissatisfied with and see if he can use those to maybe try and correct tyranny a little bit.
And I think he thinks the biggest one is he recognizes that hero like a lot of political men, what he wants most deeply, and this is perhaps kind of intuitive to be loved. Yeah, tonight, this is where I think is interesting, is the complaints that he gets hero to give about tyranny. Right. Right.
Now, the most important thing is not being loved. And this ends up having being a kind of emaciated form of patriotism, I think in the course of the conversation, deeply emaciated because it's almost about like just sexual reciprocation. But it seems like what he wants is to be loved by the most beautiful youths, right? In his home city, right?
And he's very troubled. And he talks about this a couple of times, there's some subtle illusions to piety where he's a little concerned about what he does with temples. And he's also worried a little bit, it seems like about the gods. It comes up a little bit.
And I think what Simonides ultimately does is he sort of brings out this concern with being loved. He then promises that he's got the solution to all his problems and to make him most loved at all. And then specifically, the last question that's asked regarding mercenaries, right? Mercenary guards.
Simonides has like, yeah, you can't get rid of those people still like you. Yeah, you got to keep the guard. And so there's a lot of big deal is made about Strauss and by Strauss and by Levy about why is it silent at the end? I think that's the right question asked, right?
Why does it? Who's silent at the end? So the folks don't know. Hero is right.
So Simonides is going to all be like, yeah, this is great advice. I'm going to be a good tyrant now. But he doesn't. And I think the reason he doesn't leave is very good on this.
But the reason he doesn't is that it seems like he's left in a kind of impasse, right? On the one hand, right? I've admitted and I do really feel this, even though he exaggerates at someone, I've admitted I do really want to be loved by my citizens, like the ones I want. On the other hand, on the other hand, and for that reason, I'm very much attracted to this advice that Simonides says.
But then it's nice owners. And so he's left him with a kind of perplexity to recognize his own moral dilemma, that is not just a matter of cold calculation. And I guess none of these youths really want to sleep with me. But he's brought out this yearning.
And that's going to be something that hero has to think about it. The only thing I would modify or change there a little bit is that the beginning point are these are erotic or sexual relationships. But then in the third chapter, we switch and start talking about non-sexual love, Felia, friendship. And so it's almost masterful of if that's where Simonides is heading is, you don't talk about non-sexual love.
It's sort of masterful that one would begin by talking about simply the erotic, simply the sexual. It's as though he recognizes that he or himself, I haven't fully worked this out, but he or can't quite bring himself to say that he just wants to have sex with these people. He wants it to be more than sex. So how genuine is that concern that gets sort of inflamed in chapter three?
Because he talks about some tyrants are killed by their children, some tyrants are killed by their children, some brothers are killed by their children, some brothers are killed by their children. So he's talking about family love at a certain point too. Yeah, I would kill Simonides if I was here at the end of this conversation. Maybe that's what happens.
He's destabilized my day. He's writing my day. He's not questioning everything. And one of the questions I would have is, is this kind of reciprocal, genuine love more possible under a democratic divide with I was a democratically elected leader?
Is it simply incompatible with the political life? I think it is being loved by your citizens in compatible with life. I think it's not simply a question, switching the regime type. You'll never get the universal love.
Yeah, I think that's universal is the key there. I think the education of Cyrus teases is out to a full extent. So I suspect that some political leaders could recognize the limits of how much their citizens could love them. And they could also recognize the limits that it's never going to be like fatherly love or something like this.
They're not going to love me like they love their fathers. And so I think if there's a more modest hope to be loved by one's fellow citizens or by one's subjects, that might be achievable, making the bill statues to you this other. But to be loved universally, no, I don't think that's possible. And to be loved as a tyrant, that probably seems like an even more narrow range of possible.
Maybe you can make X, Y, and Z love you the people at the top. But the most you'd hope for from these other people is not to be hated or something like this. And then the middle class just be indifferent because you leave them alone and give them festivals and these kinds of things. Yeah, I think it's a really good question.
Why doesn't that is it or does hero murder, do you have somebody else to ask, does hero murder, semodities just as a sort of thought experiment? We just were historical people, by the way. So we do know the answer to this in fact, no, the answer. No, the answer to that.
But what is his, what is his disposition towards semodities? I was thinking about this in connection with the quiet. So there's two possibilities. One, he doesn't actually walk to be loved back.
Perhaps he's just saying this, like, in semodities cares about that. In that case, I think at the end of this conversation, you know, any hope he had for this advice was just like, you make my life a little easier, but no, you can't. All right, well, whatever. See you later.
But this is not a real threat. I think he kind of convinces him that he's not that concerned with seizing ground. On the other hand, if what he does really want is love, right, then he has shown him greater care than semodities. So I think, in a way, this is to go back to the kind of mirror of princes genre in a way, right, that this is a, this is maybe semodities cultivating relationship between a wise man and a tyrant that puts him in a position of advisor or something like that.
Yeah. Another reason why Socrates would do this, because I don't think he would be interested in this same way, but it's a peculiar dilemma, right? Well, there are a few things. I mean, the tyrants, I mean, on the one hand, if this is a decent guy, let's just pause at that for a moment.
He acquired his rule by unsavory means, but now he wants to rule in a good way. That's one possibility. But we learn about hero that he's, he is a nasty human being. I mean, in addition to wanting to have all these sort of various sexual relationships, all these various types of human beings, we learn that he takes pleasure in killing people, for example, and it does not appear to be limited to his foreign enemies.
So I mean, he's, he's not only a tyrant, as far as he sort of usurped authority, he's a tyrant, I think, in some of his tyrannical longings. And so, I mean, for, you know, in order truly to be loved, could he continue to have his tyrannical soul? And there I think probably answers no. So then, but could some people grow to love him in some way?
Maybe that's a different question. I mean, you know, this is a sort of interesting thing that happens with his relationship, heroes relationship to justice. Yeah. Chapter one, section 12.
He refers to his ability, or lack of ability to take revenge on those who perpetrate the injustice against him by deposing him, right? So there, it's unjust for him to be overthrown, right? You didn't go to chapter four, section 11 is the very end of chapter four, page 18 in the edition by Dr. McGregor, Greg makes us refer to him like that.
But as tyrants are most forced to steal unjustly from temples and human beings, because I've always needed more money for necessary expenses, even though it's necessary, which would somewhat absolve certain amount of taking money from human beings, at least he now views himself as unjust, which would mean that throwing him out would be just, right? And this comes up again in chapter seven, section seven on, he says, how could we claim that people who are forced to rise from their seats rise in order to honor those who do injustice, he's talking about compulsory praise of the tyrant, or that those who make way on the road for stronger people, make way in order to honor those who do injustice, right? And then a little further in section 10, as if just worthy of death for injustice by all human beings. So now he's moved from seeing himself as unjustly deposed, originally, to now perfectly justly deposed, right?
And worthy of this from all human beings, which I take to be a sort of confession that he knows what he's doing is wrong, right? You know, even though it's necessary, there's still a sense of guilt in those moments, right? And that usually necessity absolves you of wrongdoing, right? You could not do otherwise.
But here, he still holds the guilt, which makes you what are unnecessary it is. And I think that means that he might want some way in which it's not necessary so as to absolve him of this guilt. And I think that speaks to the fact that I think he or does actually feel some sort of vestigial moral sentiments of desire to be loved, not to be deemed unjust, but to be a great benefactor. There's the great takeaway from this, so is the audience of this dialogue, especially from thoughtful people like ourselves?
Is it for there would be a philosopher-advisor on telltale things to spot in your homegrown tyrant and how to play off that to effectuate some kind of moderation in the soul of the tyrant? I mean, what's the lesson here? So there are a number of different lessons, philosophically, if you're just analyzing this as two types of souls, a tyrannical soul, a poetic soul, the interaction there. But is there a practical lesson that this should be read with?
I don't know if this is a question to that for Greg. I don't know. I don't know. I've got a question also that I also think Greg can probably speak too pretty well, which is isn't it risky for Xenophon to write this where he's trying to give advice?
Yeah. And then also, it just seems to imply by the end that if you this is a point that Levy brings out again, but it seems to lead to the conclusion that the tyrant is happiest of all and can be the greatest person is the peak of virtue. That's a crazy thing for Xenophon to say. So yeah, I don't know.
I think that's similar to that. Like what's the payoff here? Yeah. I mean, I don't know that I have a good answer to what's the practical takeaway, but it's I think fundamentally the fundamental question that was repetitive, redundant, sounds stupid, therefore, but is is the tyrannical life superior to the private life or not?
And I don't think you get an answer that question at least superficially for a couple of reasons. One is that I don't think hero is the best spokesman on behalf of the trampoline, which means I think if you really want to think it through, I'm sorry, he's too thoughtful. He's not thoughtful enough. Okay.
And so I suspect that if in other words, if the or one of the fundamental questions of philosophy is how I to live, I think that means a serious thinking through of the alternatives, especially the chief alternatives. And I think that the tyrannical life is one of the chief alternatives. And so I suspect that most people for moral reasons, and by the way, hero seems as Alex just rightly sort of pointed out, hero seems limited by moral concerns as well. I think if you want to think this question through philosophically, you have to try and cut through those moral questions, push them aside as it were.
In other words, what would this conversation look like if it were I just started reading at the encouragement of a colleague of mine and biography of Mao. Mao seems much nastier. He probably still was clouded by moral concerns, but he seems to have been much more clearly pursuing his own tyrannical excellence. He wanted to be the tyrant, I suspect.
And so I, you know, who tries it in a way, he was a petty tyrant. In the Prince Machiavelli, I don't think it's an accident that Machiavelli lists hero at the end of chapter six after he's gone through the foremost excellent princes. It marks a clear decline as you turn to chapter seven, he even sort of indicates that it's a decline. So how would the other folks he alluded to previously respond?
Could they put better arguments on behalf of tyranny forward better than what he wrote could do? And you also have to keep in mind, of course, the hero is allerted, the point out, you know, pointing out following Strauss, hero has no incentive to be as clear as he could about these things. Like he has no reason to be completely honest with seminities. So what's the clique, what's the practical takeaway?
I mean, I think the practical takeaway is that tyranny is a bad regime. It could be improved in these sort of very tangible ways that actual tyrants could be more secure and might actually be more beloved by their citizens if they were less tyrannical, if they sort of left people alone with some basic liberties and rights and sort of didn't tax them heavily through parties for them, honored the gods and these kinds of things. So I think that's a practical takeaway. I don't know.
I mean, you're right, I think it's dangerous for something to write. I don't know if I answered that. Does that jump in? There's a lot there's a lot there.
Yeah, sorry. The way I was trying to think through it, yeah, maybe this is off limits though, where it changes everything is sort of, if you think of hero in the abstract and instead of imbuing him with like arms and medals surrounding him, if he's just Jeff Bezos. So I don't know Jeff is tyrannical probably, but so a tyrannical soul. So I just think of the type rather than the particulars or is what's necessary in this for this dialogue to be properly understood, he's hero with all of his particular relatives.
As a matter of we talked about this beforehand, I can't one of the things I wondered about was I wondered if one of the takeaways or someone living in the Daugherty Revis is right, actually, actually the best life is all of the stuff you can have all of the stuff hero has without the political element in the majority. Thanks to money. So in other words, yeah, maybe this is a good way to bring it off for students too. Like this one, I mean, absent, they're like killing people.
I mean, let's be honest, most of the students I taught at most universities, not the place I'm currently because they're all noble decent human beings, but most places in the past, right? They want to make a lot of money and they want to do whatever they want. And that has a huge appeal to it. Now, if you think that through fully, I think you realize that the political element might also be necessary.
But are these people who are immensely wealthy and who are seemingly exempt from the ordinary rules that you and I and Alex have to follow it? Is that a better life than my Uncle Joe or something like this? So that's the question I put. What word to your life right now?
And I think there's an authentic answer is no, but I mean, the official answer is no, right? But I wonder if Zenf is going to give you a thing through like, I mean, like, what is life like in the 5th century BC? Like what wouldn't this be better? Like to have, I feel like I need a human being, but like, you know, like working and toiling all day, every day from Sunnath's all sundown or like having people do stuff for you and having money and having people have sex with and having good food.
Although funny enough, I imagine that three of us, I'd probably eat better than, you know, a tyrant from the 5th century DC. True. Yeah. I'm sorry.
I mean, the lesson that I would, yeah, I mean, I would just say look, scale it back. And in fact, yeah, like these those until are more, I would argue certain executives are more powerful than the president who still have constraints. We've talked about this on other episodes, but the notion of the president as puffed up, right, with regalia and procedure and all that sort of stuff, but it's, I think it always involves the sort of learning the lesson of your limits, right, and how limited you actually are. This is something Anton brought up right about how you're most of the executive branches.
Oh, that was the Anton. That's right. You're in public the reason. But Anastoppo is very good on this.
It's a book on a constitution. Can I bring on one more? I do suspect one small point on the BZos system and T.O. I forget what else you mentioned.
They do seem to me to exhibit this to random longing to be loved by large numbers of people. Yes. That's the point of politics. Right.
And whereas the Socratic, I think, wants to be loved to the extent that Satchis is not immune to the desire to want to be loved. He's much less under its spell. I don't think he's under its spell at all in fact. But he's fine with it.
But he wants to be loved by those who are worthy of loving him. And so it's not this universal thing that the tyrant seems to be animated by. I mean, he wants friends. I mean, I would say it's completely reasonable to want those who are good to love you.
Because if they don't love you, that means there's something wrong with you, right? You should love good things, right? And that really a good person if you have friends like that. So can I go back to, there's one thing we really, it's almost shameful.
We haven't talked about it, but the dialogue starts off by talking about pleasures and pains. And then it goes ultimately towards virtue. Strauss points out that eventually the tyrant, the word tyrant, takes a backseat and rule becomes prominent. And so it's pointing to a way out of tyranny.
But yeah, more and more, and I'm just thinking I allowed here, but I'm more and more moved by this first question. Would you be willing here to tell me something about something it is likely, but not necessary? You know better than I. So the question is asking is are you a tyrannical?
So in a way, are you a person with a knowledge of how to be? Or are you just driven by these emaciated moral concerns, right? And the initial discussion is almost very, very technical in discussing the different pleasures. I count eight types of, by the way, the standard is pleasure, which life is, which life is more pleasant.
Like a long draft neck, Greg, the long from the Yeah, from the air. So he talks about bodily pleasure. Is there any talk about the pleasure? Yeah, he talks about bodily pleasures and embody in soul and then just so.
But what are the questions I had is, where's the just soul? I count the first stage he says, but I think it's gonna be bad. We're sometimes pleasing paint through the soul by itself. I believe it's sometimes we both are soul by.
But the question one of the questions I had is, is there is there such a thing as a pleasure that's only through the body? And in a way, I think the answer is obviously no, right? If you take pleasure in a sight, right, it's not just in your eye, but you're somehow aware of the pleasure, right? And you're enjoying that you're enjoying it.
And when he talks about sex, and he talks about being pleased or bothered as a result of sex, and he says, we all know through what that is, right? But he doesn't, he doesn't clarify what it is. The pains about sex that come up later are about not being loved by the beloved. Right?
Was that not going to be? Not going to be. And that's, and that's, well, there's other pains from lack of gratification. Sure.
I'm sure you were in high school. But there's a word for sex there is going to find out, right? It's the things of Aphrodite. It's kind of beautiful, but yeah, sex is such a gross word.
Yeah. And so it seems like they are the pains with sex. They are largely psychological, right? This person doesn't love me back, right?
And this thing comes up with sleep. He talks about being pleased by sleep. But that was the thing, well, what's the pain through sleep? Is it just sleeplessness that comes up?
And maybe it's nightmares versus. He also can't say, so he can like, things seem that's clearly the eyes that are pleased, which by the way, I don't think that's right. My eyes don't feel better when I see something. But when he goes through these various pleasures, he mentions the thing through which you feel the pleasure.
But with sleepy can't name it, he says, I'm not lost. That's sort of curious to me. Yeah. But if it's the case that they're not strictly speaking, like you said, right?
It's not like you see something like attractive or nice to look at and all of a sudden your eyes feel good. No, you feel. Yeah. If that's the case, then it's not merely a matter of calculating how to get the most bodily pleasure from food and that's always a psychic element in it of perceiving yourself enjoying the thing and all the trappings that psychological trappings, arguments, moral suppositions that might be there.
And in a way, the robbing of temples is a great example of this, right? Because he robs from the temples, which is financially necessary, yet he still feels guilt, right? That implies, I think, that he's concerned about the gods and the condition of his soul, your death. And so it seems like he's asking with that earliest question, are you a knowing tyrant?
And I think he must know the answer. I don't think there's such a thing. Is it possible that Simonides is the one who actually read this first and natural thing to ask is the one that actually knows the harder skill of tyranny is the actual tyrant hero. Might it be Simonides who possesses the skill of tyranny?
I thought that the I haven't worked this out to use great x-rays, but I thought the natural pairing with this dialogue would be the education of Cyrus. I think that's right. So the people who just keep the truly skilled tyrant in action, you read the cyberpidata. I agree.
We ended the cyber. But here's one thing I'll say is that was a tyrant on the highest level. We know what happens to him. I agree.
Here's the thing though. I mean, now this was at a conference I was at where someone pressed me on this. And I think that's right. But I think one of the things that Zenefan has shown you with respect to the tyrannical soul is that there are two different types of tyrannical souls.
So we know about hero that he likes food and sex. Cyrus very explicitly Zenefan says Cyrus could give or take food. He doesn't really care about food. And he seems not to care about sex at all.