Pagina 457 di 1391

The Greek tyrants were not insensible to the importance of

awakening in their cause a Pseudo-Hellenic feeling; they were

proud of successes at the Olympic games; they were not devoid of

the love of literature and art. Plato is thinking in the first

instance of Greek poets who had graced the courts of Dionysius or

Archelaus: and the old spirit of freedom is roused within him at

their prostitution of the Tragic Muse in the praises of tyranny.

But his prophetic eye extends beyond them to the false teachers

of other ages who are the creatures of the government under which

they live. He compares the corruption of his contemporaries with

the idea of a perfect society, and gathers up into one mass of

evil the evils and errors of mankind; to him they are personified

in the rhetoricians, sophists, poets, rulers who deceive and

govern the world.