And I do not know why, but we expect kings to cover up their faults more and to hide them better. What is a misdemeanor in us is, in them, considered an act of tyranny by the people, as disdain and contempt for the law; any tendency to vice apart, they look as if they are taking additional pleasure in scornfully trampling public decency underfoot. [C] Indeed Plato in his dialogue Gorgias defines a tyrant as a man who, in his city, is free to do anything he wants.22 [B] So, often, the flaunting of their vice in public hurts more than the vice itself. Every man loathes being spied on and having
...more