ABSTRACT
The Royal Science of Ruling, the Education of a Prince—expressions such as these at first sounded strange in connection with the Greeks, a people so proverbially attached to freedom and so horrified at the notion of a master. But the two previous chapters will have accustomed the reader to monarchical ideas in the Hellenic world of the fourth century B.c. and to education conceived as a preparation for the work of a statesman. Both Isocrates and Plato were in their different ways seeking at their two schools to provide a training which should fit a man to rule either singly or in conjunction with others. Among those whose social position and education were sufficient to warrant expectation of exercising authority there was a good deal of support for the idea of personal rule. It was the name and associations of tyranny rather than its absolutism that was disliked, though strict and old-fashioned people could take Plato to task for his readiness to associate with tyrants.
