Aristotle, Politics, 1313-1314:
[T]o preserve a tyranny . . .
keep down those who are of an aspiring disposition
take off those who will not submit
allow no public meals, no clubs, no education, nothing at all
guard against everything that gives rise to high spirits or mutual confidence
[do not permit] the learned meetings of those who are at leisure to hold conversation with each other
keep all the people strangers to each other; for knowledge increases mutual confidence;
oblige all strangers to appear in public, and to live near the city-gate, that all their actions may be sufficiently seen; for those who are kept like slaves seldom entertain any noble thoughts
endeavour to know what every one who is under their power does and says ... employ spies ... send out listeners wherever there [is] any meeting or conversation; for the people dare not speak with freedom for fear of such persons; and if any one does, there is the less chance of its being concealed;
endeavour that the whole community should mutually accuse and come to blows with each other, friend with friend, the commons with the nobles, and the rich with each other
It is also advantageous for a tyranny that all those who are under it should be oppressed with poverty, that they may not be able to compose a guard; and that, being employed in procuring their daily bread, they may have no leisure to conspire against their tyrants.
The Pyramids . . . are a proof of this . . . the edifices . . . the temple . . . all these [public works] produced one end, the keeping the people poor.
It is necessary also to multiply taxes
A tyrant also should endeavour to engage his subjects in a war, that they may have employment and continually depend upon their general.
A king is preserved by his friends, but a tyrant is of all persons the man who can place no confidence in friends, as every one has it in his desire and these chiefly in their power to destroy him.
All these things also which are done in an extreme democracy should be done in a tyranny, as permitting great licentiousness to the women in the house, that they may reveal their husbands' secrets;
and showing great indulgence to slaves also for the same reason; for slaves and women conspire not against tyrants: but when they are treated with kindness, both of them are abettors of tyrants, and extreme democracies also; and the people too in such a state desire to be despotic.
For which reason flatterers are in repute in both these: the demagogue in the democracy, for he is the proper flatterer of the people; among tyrants, he who will servilely adapt himself to their humours; for this is the business of [1314a] flatterers.
And for this reason tyrants always love the worst of wretches, for they rejoice in being flattered, which no man of a liberal spirit will submit to; for [the best] love the virtuous, but flatter none. ...
A tyrant also should show no favour to a man of worth or a freeman; for he should think, that no one deserved to be thought these but himself; for he who supports his dignity, and is a friend to freedom, encroaches upon the superiority and the despotism of the tyrant: such men, therefore, [tyrants] naturally hate, as destructive to their government.
A tyrant also should rather admit strangers to his table and familiarity than citizens, as these are his enemies, but [strangers] have no design against him. ...
the citizens should be of poor abject dispositions; for such men never propose to conspire against any one.
[the citizens] should have no confidence in each other; for while they have not this, the tyrant is safe enough from destruction. For which reason [tyrants] are always at enmity with those of merit, as hurtful to their government; not only as [those of merit] scorn to be governed despotically, but also because [the meritorious] can rely upon each other's fidelity, and others can rely upon theirs, and because they will not inform against their associates, nor any one else.
[the citizens] shall be totally without the means of doing anything; for no one undertakes what is impossible for him to perform: so that without power a tyranny can never be destroyed.
These, then, are the three objects which the inclinations of tyrants desire to see accomplished; for all their tyrannical plans tend to promote one of these three ends, that their people may neither have mutual confidence, power, nor spirit.
