—Somewhat in this fashion. Hard in truth it is for a state thus constituted to be shaken and disturbed; but since for everything that has come into being destruction is appointed, not even such a fabric as this will abide for all time, but it shall surely be dissolved, and this is the manner of its dissolution. Not only for plants that grow from the earth but also for animals that live upon it there is a cycle of bearing and barrenness for soul and body as often as the revolutions of their orbs come full circle, in brief courses for the short-lived and oppositely for the opposite; but the laws of prosperous birth or infertility for your race, the men you have bred to be your rulers will not for all their wisdom ascertain by reasoning combined with sensation, but they will escape them, and there will be a time when they will beget children out of season. Now for divine begettings there is a period comprehended by a perfect number, and for mortal by the first in which augmentations dominating and dominated when they have attained to three distances and four limits of the assimilating and the dissimilating, the waxing and the waning, render all things conversable and commensurable with one another, whereof a basal four-thirds wedded to the pempad yields two harmonies at the third augmentation, the one the product of equal factors taken one hundred times, the other of equal length one way but oblong,—one dimension of a hundred numbers determined by the rational diameters of the pempad lacking one in each case, or of the irrational lacking two; the other dimension of a hundred cubes of the triad. And this entire geometrical number is determinative of this thing, of better and inferior births. And when your guardians, missing this, bring together brides and bridegrooms unseasonably, the offspring will not be well-born or fortunate. Of such offspring the previous generation will establish the best, to be sure, in office, but still these, being unworthy, and having entered in turn into the powers of their fathers, will first as guardians begin to neglect us, paying too little heed to music and then to gymnastics, so that our young men will deteriorate in their culture; and the rulers selected from them will not approve themselves very efficient guardians for testing Hesiod’s and our races of gold, silver, bronze and iron.
—And this intermixture of the iron with the silver and the bronze with the gold will engender unlikeness and an unharmonious unevenness, things that always beget war and enmity wherever they arise. Of this lineage, look you, Hom. Il. 6.211 we must aver the dissension to be, wherever it occurs and always. And rightly too, he said, we shall affirm that the Muses answer. They must needs, I said, since they are Muses. Well, then, said he, what do the Muses say next? When strife arose, said I, the two groups were pulling against each other, the iron and bronze towards money-making and the acquisition of land and houses and gold and silver, and the other two, the golden and silvern, not being poor, but by nature rich in their souls, were trying to draw them back to virtue and their original constitution, and thus, striving and contending against one another, they compromised on the plan of distributing and taking for themselves the land and the houses, enslaving and subjecting as perioeci and serfs their former friends and supporters, of whose freedom they had been the guardians, and occupying themselves with war and keeping watch over these subjects. I think, he said, that this is the starting-point of the transformation. Would not this polity, then, said I, be in some sort intermediate between aristocracy and oligarchy ? By all means.
—Yes. Such men, said I, will be avid of wealth, like those in an oligarchy, and will cherish a fierce secret lust for gold and silver, owning storehouses and private treasuries where they may hide them away, and also the enclosures of their homes, literal private love-nests in which they can lavish their wealth on their women and any others they please with great expenditure. Most true, he said. And will they not be stingy about money, since they prize it and are not allowed to possess it openly, prodigal of others’ wealth because of their appetites, enjoying their pleasures stealthily, and running away from the law as boys from a father, since they have not been educated by persuasion but by force because of their neglect of the true Muse, the companion of discussion and philosophy, and because of their preference of gymnastics to music? You perfectly describe, he said, a polity that is a mixture of good and evil. Why, yes, the elements have been mixed, I said, but the most conspicuous feature in it is one thing only, due to the predominance of the high-spirited element, namely contentiousness and covetousness of honor. Very much so, said he. Such, then, would be the origin and nature of this polity if we may merely outline the figure of a constitution in words and not elaborate it precisely, since even the sketch will suffice to show us the most just and the most unjust type of man, and it would be an impracticable task to set forth all forms of government without omitting any, and all customs and qualities of men. Quite right, he said.
—He will have to be somewhat self-willed and lacking in culture, yet a lover of music and fond of listening to talk and speeches, though by no means himself a rhetorician; and to slaves such a one would be harsh, not scorning them as the really educated do, but he would be gentle with the freeborn and very submissive to officials, a lover of office and of honor, not basing his claim to office on ability to speak or anything of that sort but on his exploits in war or preparation for war, and he would be a devotee of gymnastics and hunting. Why, yes, he said, that is the spirit of that polity. And would not such a man be disdainful of wealth too in his youth, but the older he grew the more he would love it because of his participation in the covetous nature and because his virtue is not sincere and pure since it lacks the best guardian? What guardian? said Adeimantus. Reason, said I, blended with culture, which is the only indwelling preserver of virtue throughout life in the soul that possesses it. Well said, he replied. This is the character, I said, of the timocratic youth, resembling the city that bears his name. By all means. His origin is somewhat on this wise: Sometimes he is the young son of a good father who lives in a badly governed state and avoids honors and office and law-suits and all such meddlesomeness and is willing to forbear something of his rights in order to escape trouble. How does he originate? he said. Why, when, to begin with, I said, he hears his mother complaining that her husband is not one of the rulers and for that reason she is slighted among the other women, and when she sees that her husband is not much concerned about money and does not fight and brawl in private lawsuits and in the public assembly, but takes all such matters lightly, and when she observes that he is self-absorbed in his thoughts and neither regards nor disregards her overmuch, and in consequence of all this laments and tells the boy that his father is too slack and no kind of a man, with all the other complaints with which women nag in such cases. Many indeed, said Adeimantus, and after their kind.
—You are aware, then, said I, that the very house-slaves of such men, if they are loyal and friendly, privately say the same sort of things to the sons, and if they observe a debtor or any other wrongdoer whom the father does not prosecute, they urge the boy to punish all such when he grows to manhood and prove himself more of a man than his father, and when the lad goes out he hears and sees the same sort of thing. Men who mind their own affairs in the city are spoken of as simpletons and are held in slight esteem, while meddlers who mind other people’s affairs are honored and praised. Then it is that the youth, hearing and seeing such things, and on the other hand listening to the words of his father, and with a near view of his pursuits contrasted with those of other men, is solicited by both, his father watering and fostering the growth of the rational principle in his soul and the others the appetitive and the passionate; and as he is not by nature of a bad disposition but has fallen into evil communications, under these two solicitations he comes to a compromise and turns over the government in his soul to the intermediate principle of ambition and high spirit and becomes a man haughty of soul and covetous of honor. You have, I think, most exactly described his origin. Then, said I, we have our second polity and second type of man. We have, he said.
—So, when wealth is honored in a state, and the wealthy, virtue and the good are less honored. Obviously. And that which men at any time honor they practise, and what is not honored is neglected. It is so. Thus, finally, from being lovers of victory and lovers of honor they become lovers of gain-getting and of money, and they commend and admire the rich man and put him in office but despise the man who is poor. Quite so. And is it not then that they pass a law defining the limits of an oligarchical polity, prescribing a sum of money, a larger sum where it is more of an oligarchy, where it is less a smaller, and proclaiming that no man shall hold office whose property does not come up to the required valuation? And this law they either put through by force of arms, or without resorting to that they establish their government by terrorization. Is not that the way of it? It is. The establishment then, one may say, is in this wise. Yes, he said, but what is the character of this constitution, and what are the defects that we said it had?
—And what of the trait we found fault with long ago—the fact that in such a state the citizens are busy-bodies and jacks-of-all-trades, farmers, financiers and soldiers all in one? Do you think that is right? By no manner of means. Consider now whether this polity is not the first that admits that which is the greatest of all such evils. What? The allowing a man to sell all his possessions, which another is permitted to acquire, and after selling them to go on living in the city, but as no part of it, neither a money-maker, nor a craftsman, nor a knight, nor a foot-soldier, but classified only as a pauper and a dependent. This is the first, he said. There certainly is no prohibition of that sort of thing in oligarchical states. Otherwise some of their citizens would not be excessively rich, and others out and out paupers. Right. But observe this. When such a fellow was spending his wealth, was he then of any more use to the state in the matters of which we were speaking, or did he merely seem to belong to the ruling class, while in reality he was neither ruler nor helper in the state, but only a consumer of goods? It is so, he said; he only seemed, but was just a spendthrift. Shall we, then, say of him that as the drone springs up in the cell, a pest of the hive, so such a man grows up in his home, a pest of the state? By all means, Socrates, he said. And has not God, Adeimantus, left the drones which have wings and fly stingless one and all, while of the drones here who travel afoot he has made some stingless but has armed others with terrible stings? And from the stingless finally issue beggars in old age, but from those furnished with stings all that are denominated malefactors? Most true, he said. It is plain, then, said I, that wherever you see beggars in a city, there are somewhere in the neighborhood concealed thieves and cutpurses and temple-robbers and similar artists in crime. Clearly, he said. Well, then, in oligarchical cities do you not see beggars? Nearly all are such, he said, except the ruling class. Are we not to suppose, then, that there are also many criminals in them furnished with stings, whom the rulers by their surveillance forcibly restrain? We must think so, he said. And shall we not say that the presence of such citizens is the result of a defective culture and bad breeding and a wrong constitution of the state? We shall. Well, at any rate such would be the character of the oligarchical state, and these, or perhaps even more than these, would be the evils that afflict it. Pretty nearly these, he said.
Is not the transition from that timocratic youth to the oligarchical type mostly on this wise? How? When a son born to the timocratic man at first emulates his father, and follows in his footsteps and then sees him suddenly dashed, as a ship on a reef, against the state, and making complete wreckage of both his possessions and himself perhaps he has been a general, or has held some other important office, and has then been dragged into court by mischievous sycophants and put to death or banished or outlawed and has lost all his property— It is likely, he said. And the son, my friend, after seeing and suffering these things, and losing his property, grows timid, I fancy, and forthwith thrusts headlong from his bosom’s throne that principle of love of honor and that high spirit, and being humbled by poverty turns to the getting of money, and greedily and stingily and little by little by thrift and hard work collects property. Do you not suppose that such a one will then establish on that throne the principle of appetite and avarice, and set it up as the great king in his soul, adorned with tiaras and collars of gold, and girt with the Persian sword? I do, he said. And under this domination he will force the rational and high-spirited principles to crouch lowly to right and left as slaves, and will allow the one to calculate and consider nothing but the ways of making more money from a little, and the other to admire and honor nothing but riches and rich men, and to take pride in nothing but the possession of wealth and whatever contributes to that? There is no other transformation so swift and sure of the ambitious youth into the avaricious type. Is this, then, our oligarchical man? said I. He is developed, at any rate, out of a man resembling the constitution from which the oligarchy sprang. Let us see, then, whether he will have a like character.
—Let us see.
Would he not, in the first place, resemble it in prizing wealth above everything? Inevitably. And also by being thrifty and laborious, satisfying only his own necessary appetites and desires and not providing for expenditure on other things, but subduing his other appetites as vain and unprofitable? By all means. He would be a squalid fellow, said I, looking for a surplus of profit in everything, and a hoarder, the type the multitude approves. Would not this be the character of the man who corresponds to such a polity? I certainly think so, he said. Property, at any rate, is the thing most esteemed by that state and that kind of man. That, I take it, said I, is because he has never turned his thoughts to true culture. I think not, he said, else he would not have made the blind one leader of his choir and first in honor. Well said, I replied. But consider this. Shall we not say that owing to this lack of culture the appetites of the drone spring up in him, some the beggarly, others the rascally, but that they are forcibly restrained by his general self-surveillance and self- control? We shall indeed, he said. Do you know, then, said I, to what you must look to discern the rascalities of such men? To what? he said. To guardianships of orphans, and any such opportunities of doing injustice with impunity. True. And is it not apparent by this that in other dealings, where he enjoys the repute of a seeming just man, he by some better element in himself forcibly keeps down other evil desires dwelling within, not persuading them that it is better not nor taming them by reason, but by compulsion and fear, trembling for his possessions generally. Quite so, he said. Yes, by Zeus, said I, my friend. In most of them, when there is occasion to spend the money of others, you will discover the existence of drone-like appetites. Most emphatically. Such a man, then, would not be free from internal dissension. He would not be really one, but in some sort a double man. Yet for the most part, his better desires would have the upper hand over the worse. It is so. And for this reason, I presume, such a man would be more seemly, more respectable, than many others; but the true virtue of a soul in unison and harmony with itself would escape him and dwell afar. I think so.
—And again, the thrifty stingy man would be a feeble competitor personally in the city for any prize of victory or in any other honorable emulation. He is unwilling to spend money for fame and rivalries of that sort, and, fearing to awaken his prodigal desires and call them into alliance for the winning of the victory, he fights in true oligarchical fashion with a small part of his resources and is defeated for the most part and—finds himself rich! Yes indeed, he said. Have we any further doubt, then, I said, as to the correspondence and resemblance between the thrifty and money-making man and the oligarchical state? None, he said.
—But these money-makers with down-bent heads, pretending not even to see them, but inserting the sting of their money into any of the remainder who do not resist, and harvesting from them in interest as it were a manifold progeny of the parent sum, foster the drone and pauper element in the state. They do indeed multiply it, he said. And they are not willing to quench the evil as it bursts into flame either by way of a law prohibiting a man from doing as he likes with his own, or in this way, by a second law that does away with such abuses. What law? The law that is next best, and compels the citizens to pay heed to virtue. For if a law commanded that most voluntary contracts should be at the contractor’s risk, the pursuit of wealth would be less shameless in the state and fewer of the evils of which we spoke just now would grow up there. Much fewer, he said. But as it is, and for all these reasons, this is the plight to which the rulers in the state reduce their subjects, and as for themselves and their off-spring, do they not make the young spoiled wantons averse to toil of body and mind, and too soft to stand up against pleasure and pain, and mere idlers? Surely. And do they not fasten upon themselves the habit of neglect of everything except the making of money, and as complete an indifference to virtue as the paupers exhibit? Little they care. And when, thus conditioned, the rulers and the ruled are brought together on the march, in wayfaring, or in some other common undertaking, either a religious festival, or a campaign, or as shipmates or fellow-soldiers or, for that matter, in actual battle, and observe one another, then the poor are not in the least scorned by the rich, but on the contrary, do you not suppose it often happens that when a lean, sinewy, sunburnt pauper is stationed in battle beside a rich man bred in the shade, and burdened with superfluous flesh, and sees him panting and helpless—do you not suppose he will think that such fellows keep their wealth by the cowardice of the poor, and that when the latter are together in private, one will pass the word to another our men are good for nothing? Nay, I know very well that they do, said he. And just as an unhealthy body requires but a slight impulse from outside to fall into sickness, and sometimes, even without that, all the man is one internal war, in like manner does not the corresponding type of state need only a slight occasion, the one party bringing in allies from an oligarchical state, or the other from a democratic, to become diseased and wage war with itself, and sometimes even apart from any external impulse faction arises?
—Most emphatically. And a democracy, I suppose, comes into being when the poor, winning the victory, put to death some of the other party, drive out others, and grant the rest of the citizens an equal share in both citizenship and offices—and for the most part these offices are assigned by lot. Why, yes, he said, that is the constitution of democracy alike whether it is established by force of arms or by terrorism resulting in the withdrawal of one of the parties.
What, then, said I, is the manner of their life and what is the quality of such a constitution? For it is plain that the man of this quality will turn out to be a democratic sort of man. It is plain, he said. To begin with, are they not free? and is not the city chock-full of liberty and freedom of speech? and has not every man licence to do as he likes? So it is said, he replied. And where there is such licence, it is obvious that everyone would arrange a plan for leading his own life in the way that pleases him. Obvious. All sorts and conditions of men, then, would arise in this polity more than in any other? Of course. Possibly, said I, this is the most beautiful of polities as a garment of many colors, embroidered with all kinds of hues, so this, decked and diversified with every type of character, would appear the most beautiful. And perhaps, I said, many would judge it to be the most beautiful, like boys and women when they see bright-colored things. Yes indeed, he said. Yes, said I, and it is the fit place, my good friend, in which to look for a constitution. Why so? Because, owing to this licence, it includes all kinds, and it seems likely that anyone who wishes to organize a state, as we were just now doing, must find his way to a democratic city and select the model that pleases him, as if in a bazaar of constitutions, and after making his choice, establish his own. Perhaps at any rate, he said, he would not be at a loss for patterns.
—And the freedom from all compulsion to hold office in such a city, even if you are qualified, or again, to submit to rule, unless you please, or to make war when the rest are at war, or to keep the peace when the others do so, unless you desire peace; and again, the liberty, in defiance of any law that forbids you, to hold office and sit on juries none the less, if it occurs to you to do so, is not all that a heavenly and delicious entertainment for the time being? Perhaps, he said, for so long. And is not the placability of some convicted criminals exquisite? Or have you never seen in such a state men condemned to death or exile who none the less stay on, and go to and fro among the people, and as if no one saw or heeded him, the man slips in and out like a revenant? Yes, many, he said. And the tolerance of democracy, its superiority to all our meticulous requirements, its disdain or our solemn pronouncements made when we were founding our city, that except in the case of transcendent natural gifts no one could ever become a good man unless from childhood his play and all his pursuits were concerned with things fair and good,—how superbly it tramples under foot all such ideals, caring nothing from what practices and way of life a man turns to politics, but honoring him if only he says that he loves the people! It is a noble polity, indeed! he said. These and qualities akin to these democracy would exhibit, and it would, it seems, be a delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike! Yes, he said, everybody knows that.
—Then we shall rightly use the word necessary of them? Rightly. And what of the desires from which a man could free himself by discipline from youth up, and whose presence in the soul does no good and in some cases harm? Should we not fairly call all such unnecessary? Fairly indeed. Let us select an example of either kind, so that we may apprehend the type. Let us do so. Would not the desire of eating to keep in health and condition and the appetite for mere bread and relishes be necessary? I think so. The appetite for bread is necessary in both respects, in that it is beneficial and in that if it fails we die. Yes. And the desire for relishes, so far as it conduces to fitness? By all means. And should we not rightly pronounce unnecessary the appetite that exceeds these and seeks other varieties of food, and that by correction and training from youth up can be got rid of in most cases and is harmful to the body and a hindrance to the soul’s attainment of intelligence and sobriety? Nay, most rightly. And may we not call the one group the spendthrift desires and the other the profitable, because they help production? Surely. And we shall say the same of sexual and other appetites? The same. And were we not saying that the man whom we nicknamed the drone is the man who teems with such pleasures and appetites, and who is governed by his unnecessary desires, while the one who is ruled by his necessary appetites is the thrifty oligarchical man? Why, surely.
—And if, I take it, a counter-alliance comes to the rescue of the oligarchical part of his soul, either it may be from his father or from his other kin, who admonish and reproach him, then there arises faction and counter-faction and internal strife in the man with himself. Surely. And sometimes, I suppose, the democratic element retires before the oligarchical, some of its appetites having been destroyed and others expelled, and a sense of awe and reverence grows up in the young man’s soul and order is restored. That sometimes happens, he said. And sometimes, again, another brood of desires akin to those expelled are stealthily nurtured to take their place, owing to the father’s ignorance of true education, and wax numerous and strong. Yes, that is wont to be the way of it. And they tug and pull back to the same associations and in secret intercourse engender a multitude. Yes indeed. And in the end, I suppose, they seize the citadel of the young man’s soul, finding it empty and unoccupied by studies and honorable pursuits and true discourses, which are the best watchmen and guardians in the minds of men who are dear to the gods. Much the best, he said. And then false and braggart words and opinions charge up the height and take their place and occupy that part of such a youth. They do indeed. And then he returns, does he not, to those Lotus-eaters and without disguise lives openly with them. And if any support comes from his kin to the thrifty element in his soul, those braggart discourses close the gates of the royal fortress within him and refuse admission to the auxiliary force itself, and will not grant audience as to envoys to the words of older friends in private life. And they themselves prevail in the conflict, and naming reverence and awe folly thrust it forth, a dishonored fugitive. And temperance they call want of manhood and banish it with contumely, and they teach that moderation and orderly expenditure are rusticity and illiberality, and they combine with a gang of unprofitable and harmful appetites to drive them over the border. They do indeed. And when they have emptied and purged of all these the soul of the youth that they have thus possessed and occupied, and whom they are initiating with these magnificent and costly rites, they proceed to lead home from exile insolence and anarchy and prodigality and shamelessness, resplendent in a great attendant choir and crowned with garlands, and in celebration of their praises they euphemistically denominate insolence good breeding, licence liberty, prodigality magnificence, and shamelessness manly spirit.
—And is it not in some such way as this, said I, that in his youth the transformation takes place from the restriction to necessary desires in his education to the liberation and release of his unnecessary and harmful desires? Yes, your description is most vivid, said he. Then, in his subsequent life, I take it, such a one expends money and toil and time no more on his necessary than on his unnecessary pleasures. But if it is his good fortune that the period of storm and stress does not last too long, and as he grows older the fiercest tumult within him passes, and he receives back a part of the banished elements and does not abandon himself altogether to the invasion of the others, then he establishes and maintains all his pleasures on a footing of equality, forsooth, and so lives turning over the guard-house of his soul to each as it happens along until it is sated, as if it had drawn the lot for that office, and then in turn to another, disdaining none but fostering them all equally. Quite so. And he does not accept or admit into the guard-house the words of truth when anyone tells him that some pleasures arise from honorable and good desires, and others from those that are base, and that we ought to practise and esteem the one and control and subdue the others; but he shakes his head at all such admonitions and avers that they are all alike and to be equally esteemed. Such is indeed his state of mind and his conduct. And does he not, said I, also live out his life in this fashion, day by day indulging the appetite of the day, now wine-bibbing and abandoning himself to the lascivious pleasing of the flute and again drinking only water and dieting; and at one time exercising his body, and sometimes idling and neglecting all things, and at another time seeming to occupy himself with philosophy. And frequently he goes in for politics and bounces up and says and does whatever enters his head. And if military men excite his emulation, thither he rushes, and if moneyed men, to that he turns, and there is no order or compulsion in his existence, but he calls this life of his the life of pleasure and freedom and happiness and cleaves to it to the end. That is a perfect description, he said, of a devotee of equality. I certainly think, said I, that he is a manifold man stuffed with most excellent differences, and that like that city he is the fair and many-colored one whom many a man and woman would count fortunate in his life, as containing within himself the greatest number of patterns of constitutions and qualities. Yes, that is so, he said.
And now, said I, the fairest polity and the fairest man remain for us to describe, the tyranny and the tyrant. Certainly, he said. Come then, tell me, dear friend, how tyranny arises. That it is an outgrowth of democracy is fairly plain. Yes, plain. Is it, then, in a sense, in the same way in which democracy arises out of oligarchy that tyranny arises from democracy? How is that? The good that they proposed to themselves and that was the cause of the establishment of oligarchy—it was wealth, was it not? Yes. Well, then, the insatiate lust for wealth and the neglect of everything else for the sake of money-making was the cause of its undoing. True, he said. And is not the avidity of democracy for that which is its definition and criterion of good the thing which dissolves it too? What do you say its criterion to be? Liberty, I replied; for you may hear it said that this is best managed in a democratic city, and for this reason that is the only city in which a man of free spirit will care to live. Why, yes, he replied, you hear that saying everywhere. Then, as I was about to observe, is it not the excess and greed of this and the neglect of all other things that revolutionizes this constitution too and prepares the way for the necessity of a dictatorship? How? he said. Why, when a democratic city athirst for liberty gets bad cupbearers for its leaders and is intoxicated by drinking too deep of that unmixed wine, and then, if its so-called governors are not extremely mild and gentle with it and do not dispense the liberty unstintedly,it chastises them and accuses them of being accursed oligarchs. Yes, that is what they do, he replied. But those who obey the rulers, I said, it reviles as willing slaves and men of naught, but it commends and honors in public and private rulers who resemble subjects and subjects who are like rulers. Is it not inevitable that in such a state the spirit of liberty should go to all lengths? Of course. And this anarchical temper, said I, my friend, must penetrate into private homes and finally enter into the very animals. Just what do we mean by that? he said.
—Why, I said, the father habitually tries to resemble the child and is afraid of his sons, and the son likens himself to the father and feels no awe or fear of his parents, so that he may be forsooth a free man. And the resident alien feels himself equal to the citizen and the citizen to him, and the foreigner likewise. Yes, these things do happen, he said. They do, said I, and such other trifles as these. The teacher in such case fears and fawns upon the pupils, and the pupils pay no heed to the teacher or to their overseers either. And in general the young ape their elders and vie with them in speech and action, while the old, accommodating themselves to the young, are full of pleasantry and graciousness, imitating the young for fear they may be thought disagreeable and authoritative. By all means, he said. And the climax of popular liberty, my friend, I said, is attained in such a city when the purchased slaves, male and female, are no less free than the owners who paid for them. And I almost forgot to mention the spirit of freedom and equal rights in the relation of men to women and women to men. Shall we not, then, said he, in Aeschylean phrase, say whatever rises to our lips? Certainly, I said, so I will. Without experience of it no one would believe how much freer the very beasts subject to men are in such a city than elsewhere. The dogs literally verify the adage and like their mistresses become. And likewise the horses and asses are wont to hold on their way with the utmost freedom and dignity, bumping into everyone who meets them and who does not step aside. And so all things everywhere are just bursting with the spirit of liberty. It is my own dream you are telling me, he said; for it often happens to me when I go to the country. And do you note that the sum total of all these items when footed up is that they render the souls of the citizens so sensitive that they chafe at the slightest suggestion of servitude and will not endure it? For you are aware that they finally pay no heed even to the laws written or unwritten, so that forsooth they may have no master anywhere over them. I know it very well, said he.
This, then, my friend, said I, is the fine and vigorous root from which tyranny grows, in my opinion. Vigorous indeed, he said; but what next?
—The same malady, I said, that, arising in oligarchy, destroyed it, this more widely diffused and more violent as a result of this licence, enslaves democracy. And in truth, any excess is wont to bring about a corresponding reaction to the opposite in the seasons, in plants, in animal bodies, and most especially in political societies. Probably, he said. And so the probable outcome of too much freedom is only too much slavery in the individual and the state. Yes, that is probable. Probably, then, tyranny develops out of no other constitution than democracy—from the height of liberty, I take it, the fiercest extreme of servitude. That is reasonable, he said. That, however, I believe, was not your question, but what identical malady arising in democracy as well as in oligarchy enslaves it? You say truly, he replied. That then, I said, was what I had in mind, the class of idle and spendthrift men, the most enterprising and vigorous portion being leaders and the less manly spirits followers. We were likening them to drones, some equipped with stings and others stingless. And rightly too, he said. These two kinds, then, I said, when they arise in any state, create a disturbance like that produced in the body by phlegm and gall. And so a good physician and lawgiver must be on his guard from afar against the two kinds, like a prudent apiarist, first and chiefly to prevent their springing up, but if they do arise to have them as quickly as may be cut out, cells and all. Yes, by Zeus, he said, by all means. Then let us take it in this way, I said, so that we may contemplate our purpose more distinctly. How? Let us in our theory make a tripartite division of the democratic state, which is in fact its structure. One such class, as we have described, grows up in it because of the licence, no less than in the oligarchic state. That is so. But it is far fiercer in this state than in that. How so? There, because it is not held in honor, but is kept out of office, it is not exercised and does not grow vigorous. But in a democracy this is the dominating class, with rare exceptions, and the fiercest part of it makes speeches and transacts business, and the remainder swarms and settles about the speaker’s stand and keeps up a buzzing and tolerates no dissent, so that everything with slight exceptions is administered by that class in such a state. Quite so, he said. And so from time to time there emerges or is secreted from the multitude another group of this sort. What sort? he said. When all are pursuing wealth the most orderly and thrifty natures for the most part become the richest. It is likely. Then they are the most abundant supply of honey for the drones, and it is the easiest to extract. Why, yes, he said, how could one squeeze it out of those who have little? The capitalistic class is, I take it, the name by which they are designated—the pasture of the drones. Pretty much so, he said.
—And is it not true that in like manner a leader of the people who, getting control of a docile mob, does not withhold his hand from the shedding of tribal blood, but by the customary unjust accusations brings a citizen into court and assassinates him, blotting out a human life, and with unhallowed tongue and lips that have tasted kindred blood, banishes and slays and hints at the abolition of debts and the partition of lands—is it not the inevitable consequence and a decree of fate that such a one be either slain by his enemies or become a tyrant and be transformed from a man into a wolf? It is quite inevitable, he said. He it is, I said, who becomes the leader of faction against the possessors of property. Yes, he. May it not happen that he is driven into exile and, being restored in defiance of his enemies, returns a finished tyrant? Obviously. And if they are unable to expel him or bring about his death by calumniating him to the people, they plot to assassinate him by stealth. That is certainly wont to happen, said he. And thereupon those who have reached this stage devise that famous petition of the tyrant—to ask from the people a bodyguard to make their city safe for the friend of democracy. They do indeed, he said. And the people grant it, I suppose, fearing for him but unconcerned for themselves. Yes, indeed. And when he sees this, the man who has wealth and with his wealth the repute of hostility to democracy, then in the words of the oracle delivered to Croesus, By the pebble-strewn strand of the Hermos Swift is his flight, he stays not nor blushes to show the white feather. Hdt. 1.55 No, for he would never get a second chance to blush. And he who is caught, methinks, is delivered to his death. Inevitably. And then obviously that protector does not lie prostrate, mighty with far-flung limbs, Hom. Il. 16.776 in Homeric overthrow, but overthrowing many others towers in the car of state transformed from a protector into a perfect and finished tyrant. What else is likely? he said.
—Truly, said I, this tyrant business is a blessed thing on your showing, if such are the friends and trusties he must employ after destroying his former associates. But such are indeed those he does make use of, he said. And these companions admire him, I said, and these new citizens are his associates, while the better sort hate and avoid him. Why should they not? Not for nothing, said I, is tragedy in general esteemed wise, and Euripides beyond other tragedians. Why, pray? Because among other utterances of pregnant thought he said, Tyrants are wise by converse with the wise. He meant evidently that these associates of the tyrant are the wise. Yes, he and the other poets, he said, call the tyrant’s power likest God’s and praise it in many other ways. Wherefore, said I, being wise as they are, the poets of tragedy will pardon us and those whose politics resemble ours for not admitting them into our polity, since they hymn the praises of tyranny. I think, he said, that the subtle minds among them will pardon us. But going about to other cities, I fancy, collecting crowds and hiring fine, loud, persuasive voices, they draw the polities towards tyrannies or democracies. Yes, indeed. And, further, they are paid and honored for this, chiefly, as is to be expected, by tyrants, and secondly by democracy. But the higher they go, breasting constitution hill, the more their honor fails, as it were from lack of breath unable to proceed. Quite so.
—And what have you to say, I said, in case the people protests and says that it is not right that a grown-up son should be supported by his father, but the reverse, and that it did not beget and establish him in order that, when he had grown great, it, in servitude to its own slaves, should feed him and the slaves together with a nondescript rabble of aliens, but in order that, with him for protector, it might be liberated from the rule of the rich and the so-called better classes, and that it now bids him and his crew depart from the city as a father expels from his house a son together with troublesome revellers? The demos, by Zeus, he said, will then learn to its cost what it is and what a creature it begot and cherished and bred to greatness, and that in its weakness it tries to expel the stronger. What do you mean? said I; will the tyrant dare to use force against his father, and, if he does not yield, to strike him? Yes, he said, after he has once taken from him his arms. A very parricide, said I, you make the tyrant out to be, and a cruel nurse of old age, and, as it seems, this is at last tyranny open and avowed, and, as the saying goes, the demos trying to escape the smoke of submission to the free would have plunged into the fire of enslavement to slaves, and in exchange for that excessive and unseasonable liberty has clothed itself in the garb of the most cruel and bitter servile servitude. Yes indeed, he said, that is just what happens. Well, then, said I, shall we not be fairly justified in saying that we have sufficiently described the transformation of a democracy into a tyranny and the nature of the tyranny itself? Quite sufficiently, he said.