Plato wrote a book on the One Ideal Constitution, but because of its forbidding character he could not persuade anyone to adopt it; but Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Grecian magistracies, and thus overcame its uncivilized and brutish manner of living. Although few of us read Plato’s Laws, yet hundreds of thousands have made use of Alexander’s laws, and continue to […]
Read moreTag: philosopher-king
“Cyropaedia” by Xenophon
He who rules himself well can rule the world. Plato writes in Republic that the principle of justice is the same for an individual as it is for a state. Therefore, the person who is eligible to govern a state must be a philosopher, i.e. lover of wisdom. Xenophon has found concrete expression of this ideal in the person of Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, who embodied the […]
Read more