Under the tyranny of erotic love he has permanently become while awake what he used to become occasionally while asleep.

In Book 9, Socrates presents a long and psychologically astute portrait of the tyrannical man. The tyrannical man is governed by lawless desires, the sort of desires that in normal people only emerge occasionally in dreams (desires for illicit sexual unions or heinous murders). Leading him down this nightmarish path, and egging him constantly on to greater excess, is the tyrannical man’s erotic lusts. Socrates deems erotic love the greatest tyrant of all, and regards it as a dangerous emotion, best avoided by good men.