Xenophon: Hiero, or On Tyranny

[David]

Thomas wrote: ". . .I think it's only Socratic irony that applies here."

Socratic irony seems firmly established by the second and third sentences. The wise man seeking wisdom from another.

Xen. Hiero 1.1
. . .Simonides said: “Hiero, will you please explain something to me that you probably know better than I?”

“And pray what is it,” said Hiero, “that I can know better than one so wise as yourself?”

[Christopher]

While looking through my highlights from The Dawn of Day, I found this oblique commentary on Hiero:

For this is the ignoble secret of the good Greek aristocrat: out of sheer jealousy he treats every one of the members of his caste as being on an equal footing with himself, but he is ready at every moment to spring like a tiger on his prey—despotism. What matter lies, murders, treason, or the betrayal of his native city to him! Justice was an extremely difficult matter for people of this kind to understand—nay, justice was almost something incredible. “The just man” was to the Greeks what “the saint” was to the Christians. When Socrates, however, laid down the axiom, “The most virtuous man is the happiest,” they could not trust their ears; they thought they had heard a madman speaking. For, as a picture of the happiest man, every nobleman had in his mind the cheeky audacity and devilry of the tyrant who sacrifices everything and every one to his own exuberance and pleasure. Among people whose imagination secretly raved about such happiness, the worship of the State could not, of course, have been too deeply implanted—but I think that men whose desire for power does not rage so blindly as that of the Greek noblemen no longer stand in need of such idolatry of the State, by means of which, in past ages, such a passion was kept within due bounds.