Note 147 — Chapter I · Introduction

In the days of Plato Thebes contained one citizen of extraordinary wealth in Ismenias, “the man who had just recently received the wealth of Polycrates.” Ismenias is classed with Periander, Perdiccas, and Xerxes as a wealthy man who thought he possessed great power; but he is not called a tyrant. He had become rich not through his own wisdom and care, but suddenly as the result of a bequest, so that his wealth would apparently fall under a different category from that of the seventh and sixth century tyrants, and he is in fact placed by Plato in a very miscellaneous company. Plato, Meno, 90a; Rep. I. 336a.