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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Hiero by Xenophon: needs in any way he chooses; but the tyrant cannot do so, seeing that
the largest expenses of a monarch are also the most necessary, being
devoted to various methods of safeguarding his life, and to cut down
any of them would be little less than suicidal.[18]
[18] Or, "and to curtail these would seem to be self-slaughter."
Or, to put it differently, why should any one expend compassion on a
man, as if he were a beggar, who has it in his power to satisfy by
just and honest means his every need?[19] Surely it would be more
appropriate to call that man a wretched starveling beggar rather, who
through lack of means is driven to live by ugly shifts and base
contrivances.
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