The first-fruits of... renewed interest in learning was an English translation of Thucydides, published in 1628-9, for the purpose, as Hobbes said at the time, of educating his readers in the true principles of statesmanship. Afterwards, when his absolutist political theories had been fully developed, he wished it to be believed that his real object had been to warn Englishmen against the dangers of democracy, by showing them how much wiser a single great statesman is than a multitude. Alfred Edward Taylor, Thomas Hobbes