However much he is heroised by left-wingers, the Venezuelan ‘tyrant’ Nicolás Maduro must wonder what is in it for him. The soldier-historian Xenophon composed a dialogue in which Hiero, the Greek tyrant of Syracuse (478-476 bc), freely admitted what a nightmare a tyrant’s life was.
Hiero came clean when his court poet Simonides asked him how much more pleasurable his life must be than that of the ordinary citizen.
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