Or consider the problem of the danger of politics from the point of view not of a weak city-state but of a powerful tyrant: Many and various are the people who might like to kill you and become tyrant themselves. In a wry dialogue composed by Plato’s contemporary Xenophon, Hiero or Tyrannicus, Hiero the tyrant paints an elaborate portrait of himself and his fellow tyrants as the most miserable of all human beings, each a de facto prisoner of his absolute power. True, he gets the most pleasing spectacles, the best food, the sweetest words of praise, sex with the loveliest boy. But these are only sources of misery to him, since a common man can travel freely to see a variety of spectacles in a way that no tyrant can; and since the best food, eaten every day, becomes a bore; and since the praise he receives all comes from flatterers; and since the boy will never really love him. Hiero laments that though tyrants “are acquainted with the decent, the wise, and the just,” they “fear rather than admire them. They fear the brave because they might dare something for the sake of their freedom; the wise, because they might contrive something; and the just, because the multitude might desire to be ruled by them. When, because of their fear, they do away secretly with such men, who is left for them to use save the unjust, the incontinent, and the slavish?” (5:1–2). It takes a certain sense of self to kill off all the best people around you and then complain that there is no one left worth your time.
Why, then, go into politics at all? Or why not try get out of it? Why not seek a quiet private life instead? Perhaps the questions are anachronistic—in the sense that we modern types have drunk deeply of the primal human desire Hobbes described, that for a quiet life. Hiero clearly believes he has no choice but to continue as tyrant, because he has made so many enemies who would be only too happy to do him in if ever he did give up the power he wields. This concern seems just as applicable to modern-day tyrants, even if tyranny is less prevalent these days.
But missing from Hiero’s account of himself, and deliberately so, is any kind of acknowledgment of the chief benefit, indeed joy, of being tyrant. It’s that nobody, but nobody, can tell you what to do. You are free in the most basic sense of the term, free of the compulsory authority of all others. Nature still constrains you, of course; you remain mortal. But your fellow human beings do not constrain you. There may be other nearby tyrants who would like to add to what they have everything you have, and you may have to fight them—to conquer or be conquered. You may have to take special measures to protect yourself. But within the sphere of your authority, it is absolute.
Hiero seems to understand the utterly arbitrary nature of the power he wields: He makes no claim to deserve to rule beyond the indisputable political fact that he does rule. He might well readily grant that if someone managed to successfully challenge his power, then that person would deserve to rule no less (and no more) than he himself does. The Athenian generals visiting Melos captured this sentiment rather ably: “Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can.” The operative word is “can.” Not, “wherever they want to,” implying discretionary latitude about whether to rule; but “wherever they can,” a pure test of strength. This is a vision of politics bereft of all considerations of justice or morality: absolute power creating absolute rule, which entails absolute discretion on all questions but one: whether to exercise the absolute power.
But not all rulers are tyrants. Some who possess power that may verge on the absolute also possess something else, namely legitimacy in one form or another. This is the point at which a ruler becomes not a tyrant but a king. In the next chapter, we will have a chance to look at heroic kings and heroes who go on to set themselves up as kings, by founding either a state or something equally noteworthy, or by taking one over. For now, however, we need to examine what happens when a king or other ruler whose legitimacy is widely accepted runs into someone of the heroic type who thinks differently.
Of Agamemnon’s greatness, there can be no doubt. The Homeric epithet most commonly associated with him is “lord of men”—the greatest ruler among the mortals. He is the leader of the expedition against Troy, the outcome of which, everyone understands, will decisively shape the world. At one particularly dark moment in the battle, Agamemnon broods on the consequences of defeat: “Our memory blotted out a world away from Argos!” (XIV 84–85). Oblivion: It’s a terrible prospect for a fellow as accustomed to glory as Agamemnon.
But though Agamemnon is the greatest ruler, he is not the greatest warrior. That distinction belongs to Achilles, “best of the Achaeans.” Both facts are known to both men, and to the Achaean and Trojan ranks alike. To understand how the inner greatness of a hero expresses itself, we have looked at the second phase of Achilles’s rage in the Iliad, that over the death of Patroclus. To see just how great a threat such a hero can be to even the greatest king, we can look at the first phase of the rage of Achilles, his row with Agamemnon.
Like the Trojan War itself, which began with the Trojan prince Paris stealing the fabulously beautiful Helen away from the Spartan King Menelaeus, the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon also starts out over a woman. As the Iliad opens, the Achaeans have been besieging Troy for nine years. They are frustrated and tired, and what’s more, a plague has now broken out in their ranks. The obvious conclusion is that the gods are angry. But why?
In addition to laying siege to Troy, Agamemnon’s forces, often led by Achilles, have been sacking Troy’s allies in the neighborhood. In the course of one such venture (before the action of the Iliad begins), Agamemnon has taken the beautiful Chryseis, daughter of a priest of the temple of Apollo, for his concubine as a battle prize.
So that explains to the satisfaction of pretty much everyone, except Agamemnon, who among the gods is punishing them—Apollo—and why. At a tense assembly of the leading Achaeans, Achilles warns that defeat at Troy is imminent unless Agamemnon does the right thing and gives Chryseis back.
The “lord of men” doesn’t like this a bit. But he soon assents, with the proviso that if he must give up Chryseis, he will take another prize in her stead, lest he “alone of the Argives go without my honor.” We note here that Agamemnon’s sense of self, his own greatness, is (so to say) other-directed. It requires validation: glory and prizes. A world in which all the “men” of the “lord of men” get prizes and the lord himself does not get a prize is a world turned upside-down. The legitimacy of the king requires constant acknowledgment by those who owe him their allegiance.
Achilles tries to appeal to a sense of honor in Agamemnon higher than the demand for a trophy fit for a king. Achilles points out that all the booty has already been distributed among the fighters: “collect it, call it back from the rank and file? That would be the disgrace” (I 147–148). It would be conduct unbefitting the “lord of men.” Achilles tries to direct Agamemnon’s sense of honor inward. He also suggests that after Apollo has been appeased with the return of Chryseis, and the Achaeans defeat the Trojans, Agamemnon will have prizes aplenty.
Achilles’s comments only escalate Agamemnon’s sense of indignity. The king says that in the absence of other compensation for giving Chryseis back, he will take a different captive for his concubine—perhaps, come to think of it, Achilles’s own Briseis.
Agamemnon’s response infuriates Achilles, whose appeal to an inner sense of honor instantly vanishes. Instead, he gives voice directly to an exceedingly delicate albeit largely unspoken subject: the tension between the greatest king and the greatest warrior. Achilles essentially claims that he has been doing Agamemnon a favor by fighting on his side. He points out that he and his Myrmidons never had a quarrel of their own with Priam. They came “to fight for you, to win your honor back from the Trojans” (I 187–188). Achilles feels that Agamemnon has now slighted him, disgraced him. He, Achilles, is the best warrior. His comment here indicates he may think Agamemnon on his own might not be up to the task of winning against the Trojans. Achilles is, moreover, a Myrmidon king, not an Argive subject of Agamemnon’s. He owes Agamemnon no allegiance—except, perhaps, in the sense that he has previously agreed to join with Agamemnon in the war with Troy.
Yet in the view of the greatest warrior, the rewards in prizes and glory have not been at all commensurate with his deeds:
“[ . . . ] My honors never equal yours,