This is John Batchelor, conversation with Professor James Rom, Plato and the Tyrant.

In turning on Dion, the brother-in-law of the tyrants, that would be Dionysius I and Dionysius 2,

double brother-in-law in one instance, they married several women in all directions, including sisters.

However, Dion Dionne returns to the island after having been exiled with an invasion fleet

to drive out the tyrants, or at least to neutralize them, and win back the hearts and minds of

the Syracusans. This is a very powerful state pulling itself apart with family feuding.

However, once Dion is established again,

he leans towards being a dictator himself, a tyrant is what they called them,

2,500 years ago.

And he leads to making decisions about political assassination,

qualifying considerably my reading of Dion,

2,500 years later, someone who was celebrated by Plato in the 4th century BC, contemporary,

and then four and a half centuries, five centuries later, by Plutarch in the first century A.D.

in the second century A.D. celebrating the lives.

Admiring a man who vouchsafed political assassination and worse, wanted to do worse.

Here's James explaining, as best we can.

I understand.

I'm using Shakespearean logic to something that didn't have anything to do with

happy or unhappy or tragedy or comedy, but still, is James?

Well, I don't know how badly he acts.

He certainly tries to act well and to form a pluralistic government, in which he is not the sole authority and to give the

people some but not all of what they want for their new regime.

...