REFLECTIONS ON ANCIENT AND MODERN FREEDOM is not a free man but a slave to his cravings. True freedom would mean mastery of his desire. The great expositor of this concept of freedom is of course Socrates. In Xenophon's Memorabilia, Socrates asks the rhetorical question: Then do you think that the man is free who is ruled by bodily desires and is unable to do what is best because of them?8 (Memorabilia 4.5.3) Plato's Socrates is the lived embodiment of this idea of freedom as rational self-government as shown by the dignity and sobriety with which he faces death. In the Republic, Socrates argues that a tyrant who might be thought of as the most free of men for being able to actualize all his desires is actually the least free of all men. This is because the highest part of himself-his reason-is tyrannized by his shifting passions and appetites: Then the tyrannized soul-to speak of the soul as a whole-also will least of all do what it wishes, but being always perforce driven and drawn by the gadfly of desire it will be full of confusion and repentance.9 (Republic 577d-e) This proposition in book 9 of the work is really the definitive Socratic response to Glaucon's famous challenge in book 2-why is it better to be just and suffer the consequences of injustice than to be unjust and receive the rewards of justice? The answer is that the evil and the unjust are slaves of the lowest parts of human nature, and thus the most miserable of men. Injustice is its own punishment-for it is in itself slavery. 67