Now, while in any other matter, such as leisure, ease, and relaxation, our good king does not wish to have unvarying advantage over private citizens and, indeed, would often be satisfied with less, in the one matter of friendship he does want to have the larger portion; and he doubtless thinks it in no wise peculiar or strange—nay, he actually exults because young people love him more than they do their parents, and older men more than they do their children, because his associates love him more than they do their peers, and those who know him only by hearsay love him more than they do their nearest neighbors.
Extremely fond of kith and kin though he may be, yet, in a way, he considers friendship a greater good than kinship. For a man's friends are useful even without the family tie, but without friendship not even the most nearly related are of service. So high a value does he set on friendship as to hold that at no time has anyone been wronged by a friend, and that such a thing belongs to the category of the impossible; for the moment one is detected doing wrong, he has shown that he was no friend at all.
Indeed, all who have suffered any outrage have suffered it at the hands of enemies—friends in name, whom they did not know to be enemies. Such sufferers must blame their own ignorance and not reproach the name of friendship. Furthermore, it is not impossible for a father to be unjust to a son and for a child to sin against its parents; brother, too, may wrong brother in some way; but friendship our king esteems as such an altogether sacred thing that he tries to make even the gods his friends.
Now, while it may be gathered from all that has been said that tyrants suffer all the ills that are the opposites of the blessings we have enumerated, this is especially true as regards the matter we are now discussing. For the tyrant is the most friendless man in the world, since he cannot even make friends. Those like himself he suspects, since they are evil, and by those unlike himself, and good, he is hated; and the hated man is an enemy to both the just and the unjust. For some men do justly hate him; while others, because they covet the same things, plot against him. And so the Persian king had one special man, called the "king's eye"—not a man of high rank, but just an ordinary one. He did not know that all the friends of a good king are his eyes.
And should not the ties of blood and kinship be especially dear to a good king? For he regards his kith and kin as a part of his own soul, and sees to it that they shall not only have a share of what is called the king's felicity, but much more that they shall be thought worthy to be partners in his authority; and he is especially anxious to be seen preferring them in honor, not because of their kinship, but because of their qualifications.
And those kinsmen who live honorable lives he loves beyond all others, but those who do not so live he considers, not friends, but relatives. For other friends he may cast off when he has discovered something objectionable in them, but in the case of his kinsmen, he cannot dissolve the tie; but whatever their character, he must allow the title to be used. His wife, moreover, he regards not merely as the partner of his bed and affections, but also as his helpmate in his counsel and action, and indeed in his whole life.
He alone holds that happiness consists, not in flowery ease, but much rather in excellence of character; virtue, not in necessity but in free will; while patient endurance, he holds, does not mean hardship but safety. His pleasures he increases by toil, and thereby gets more enjoyment out of them, while habit lightens his toil.
To him "useful" and "pleasurable" are interchangeable terms; for he sees that plain citizens, if they are to keep well and reach old age, never give nourishment to an identical and inactive body, but that a part of them work first at trades, some of which—such as smithing, shipbuilding, the construction of houses—are very laborious; while those who own land first toil hard at farming, and those who live in the city have some city employment; he sees the leisured class crowd the gymnasia and wrestling-floors—some running on the track, others again wrestling, and others, who are not athletes, taking some form of exercise other than the competitive—in a word, everyone with at least a grain of sense doing something or other and so finding his meat and drink wholesome.
But the ruler differs from all these in that his toil is not in vain, and that he is not simply developing his body, but has the accomplishment of things as his end and aim. He attends to some matter needing his supervision, he acts promptly where speed is needed, accomplishes something not easy of accomplishment, reviews an army, subdues a province, founds a city, bridges rivers, or builds roads through a country.
He does not count himself fortunate just because he can have the best horses, the best arms, the best clothing, and so forth, but because he can have the best friends; and he holds that it is far more disgraceful to have fewer friends among the private citizens than any one of them has. For when a man can select his most trustworthy friends from among all men—and there is scarcely a man who would not gladly accept his advances—surely it is ridiculous that he does not have the best.
Most potentates have an eye only for those who get near them no matter how, and for those who are willing to flatter, while they hold all others at a distance and the best men more especially. The true king, however, makes his choice from among all men, esteeming it perverse to import horses from the Nisaean plains because they surpass the Thessalian breed, or hounds from India,and only in the case of men to take those near at hand; since all the means for making friends are his.
For instance, the ambitious are won over to friendliness by praise, those who have the gift of leadership by participation in the government, the warlike by performing some sort of military service, those having executive ability by the management of affairs, and, assuredly, those with a capacity for love, by intimacy.
Now, who is more able to appoint governors? Who needs more executives? Who has it in his power to give a part in greater enterprises? Who is in a better position to put a man in charge of military operations? Who can confer more illustrious honors? Whose table lends greater distinction? And if friendship could be bought, who has greater means to forestall every possible rival?
Since nature made him a man, and man of exalted station in life, he too needs some distraction as it were to relieve his more serious duties; and it is this, alas! which for many has proved to be the source of many ignoble and soul-destroying vices—vices which also destroy the high esteem in which royalty is held.
One king, having become enamored of singing, spent his time warbling and wailing in the theaters and so far forgot his royal dignity that he was content to impersonate the early kings upon the stage; another fell in love with flute-playing; but the good king never makes a practice even of listening to such things. He considers hunting the best recreation and finds his greatest delight therein. It makes his body stronger, his heart braver, and affords a field for the practice of every military activity. For he must ride, run, in many cases meet the charge of the big game, endure heat and withstand cold, often be tortured by hunger and thirst, and he becomes habituated to enduring any hardship with pleasure through his passion for the chase.
But he does not hold this opinion of the Persian chase. Those people would enclose the game in parks and then, whenever they listed, slaughter it as if it were in a pen, showing that they neither sought hard work nor ran any risk since their quarry was weak and broken in spirit. But they robbed themselves alike of the joy of uncovering the game, of the excitement in running it down, and of the struggle on coming to close quarters. It is just as if they had claimed to be fond of war and then, letting slip the chance to engage their enemy, had seized the prisoners at home and put them to death.
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