543A–548D Socrates and Glaucon
548D–569C Socrates and Adeimantus
Note
After the long detour through the depths and heights of Books V through VII, Socrates finally returns to the topic he had tried to bring up when the best city had been described sufficiently to show that the arguments in favor of injustice were groundless. He now sets the polity of the best city in motion, to watch it display a succession of necessary stages of decay. He argues that each new stage is inevitable, but while the first metamorphosis comes because the patterns involved in human nature are too complex for any human rulers to anticipate and control, each subsequent transition comes about when the principle adopted as highest by any other form of political association reaches its own logical conclusion. The patterns of political corruption, unlike those of natural equilibrium, are all too easy to discern, when one simply asks what would happen if each of the less-than-best polities got exactly what it wished for. Once the first of the lower polities has come to sight, Adeimantus returns to the conversation in place of Glaucon, who had been Socrates’ partner in the dialectical ascent through the three great images at the center of the dialogue, and the plan for higher education that came out of them. Each of the defective polities has conspicuous illustrations in the world around the speakers, especially in the histories of Sparta and Athens. More importantly, each has its reflection in a type of character found in human souls. The book ends with a description of the last stage of political decomposition, which occurs when a democracy reaches for the ultimate freedom, as it understands freedom.
[543A] “Very well. The following things are agreed, Glaucon: that in a city that’s going to be managed to the ultimate degree, women are to be shared in common, children, and their whole education, are to be shared in common, and the tasks involved in both war and peace are likewise to be shared in common, and those among them who’ve turned out best in philosophy and in relation to war are to be kings.”
“Agreed,” he said.
[543B] “And in fact we also acknowledged this, that once the rulers are set in place, they’ll lead the soldiers and quarter them in houses of the sort we spoke of before, having no private property in them for anyone but shared in common by them all; and if you recall, we came to agreement at some point about what sort of possessions they’d have in addition to houses of that kind.”
“I do recall,” he said, “that we assumed that none of them ought to possess any of the things other people do now, but like fighters in
war and [543C] guardians, they’d receive recompense from the others for their guardianship as annual maintenance for these purposes, and be obliged to take care of themselves and the rest of the city.”
“You’re recounting it correctly,” I said. “But go on, since we finished that, and let’s remember where we made the digression to here from, so we can go back to the same point.”
“That’s not hard,” he said, “because almost exactly like now, you were acting as though you’d gone completely through the discussion about the city, saying that you’d rate a city of the sort you’d gone over at that point, and a man like it, [543D] as good, though for that matter it seems as though you were able to describe a still more beautiful [544A] city and man. So anyway, you were saying that the other cities were misguided if this one is right, and you claimed, as I recall, that there were four forms among the remaining polities about which it would be worth having an account, and worth seeing the ways they, and the people like them, go astray, so that, when we’d seen them all and come to agreement about the best and worst sort of man, we could consider whether the best is the happiest and the worst the most miserable, or whether it might be otherwise. And when I was asking what four polities [544B] you meant, at that point Polemarchus and Adeimantus broke in, and that’s how you took up the discussion and got here.”
“You’re remembering with complete correctness,” I said.
“Well then, like a wrestler, take the same hold again, and when I ask the same question, try to state what you were about to say then.”
“If I have the power to,” I said.
“And in fact,” he said, “I’m eager myself to hear what four polities you meant.”
[544C] “It won’t be difficult for you to hear them,” I said, “because the ones I mean are the very ones that have names: the one approved by most people, that type from Crete and Sparta, and second, the one with the second approval rating and called oligarchy, a polity fraught with loads of evils, and coming next, the antagonist of that one, democracy, and of course, breaking out from the pack, the illustrious tyranny, the fourth and last disease of a city. Or do you know of any other look of a polity that’s situated in any [544D] distinct form? Because hereditary monarchies and those that can be bought and certain polities like that are presumably between these in some way, and one can find them among the barbarians143 no less than among the Greeks.”
“Many strange varieties are talked about, anyway,” he said.
“So are you aware,” I said, “that it’s also necessary for there to be as many forms of human dispositions as there are of polities? Or do you imagine their polities come ‘from oak or rock’144 and [544E] not from the kinds of character that tip the balance, so to speak, among the people in the cities, and pull the rest with them?”
“By no means,” he said, “do I imagine they come from anywhere else but there.”
“So if the forms of cities are five, the arrangements of the soul in private persons would be five as well.”
“What else?”
“And we’ve already gone over the person who’s like aristocracy,145 whom we rightly claim is good and just.”
[545A] “We have.”
“And don’t we need to go on next to the less good kinds, the one that loves victory and honor, standing with the Spartan polity, and then the oligarchic, democratic, and tyrannical types, so that when we see the most unjust person we can place him opposite the most just? Won’t our examination then be complete, as to how unmixed justice is related to unmixed injustice for the happiness or misery of [545B] its possessor, in order to be persuaded either by Thrasymachus, that we should pursue injustice, or by the argument now being brought to light in favor of justice?”
“That’s absolutely the way it needs to be done,” he said.
“Well then, the same way we began with the kinds of character in polities before examining them in private persons, since that’s more illuminating, so too now don’t we need to examine the honor-loving polity? I don’t know a name that it goes by, but it ought to be called timocracy or timarchy; we’ll examine that sort of man in relation to it, and then oligarchy and an oligarchic man, [545C] and having looked in turn at democracy we’ll view a democratic man, and going on to the fourth and looking at a city that’s subject to tyranny, once we’ve taken a look this time into a tyrannical soul, we’ll try to become competent judges of the things we set out to decide.”
“That would certainly be a rational way,” he said, “for the viewing and the deciding to be done.”
“Come on then,” I said, “let’s try to say how a timocracy would arise out of an aristocracy. Is it this simple, [545D] that every polity changes from within that part of it which holds the ruling offices, when conflict becomes present in that, but as long as it’s of one mind, even if it’s very small, it’s impossible for the polity to be destabilized?”
“That’s how it is.”
“So, Glaucon,” I said, “how is our city going to be made unstable and in what manner will the auxiliaries and rulers come into conflict with one another and among themselves? Or would you rather have us invoke the Muses the way Homer does, to tell us ‘how division [545E] first befell them,’146 and claim that they reply in pompous language, like a tragedy, as though speaking in all seriousness, when they’re playing with us and teasing the way someone would with children?”
“How so?”
[546A] “They’ll say something like this: A city organized in this way is hard to destabilize, but since everything that comes into being is destructible, even an organization like this one won’t endure for all time, but will come undone. Its coming undone will be like this: fertility and barrenness of both soul and bodies come not only to the plants in the earth but also among the animals on the earth, as the periodic returns of the cycles for each kind turn back upon their revolving courses, which are short for the short-lived kinds and opposite for the opposite kinds. For your [546B] kind, as wise as they are, those whom you educated as leaders of the city, with their calculation combined with observation, will nonetheless fail to achieve favorable births and preventions of birth, which will elude them, and they’ll produce children when they ought not. For the begetting of a divine being, there’s a period encompassed by a perfect number, but for the human kind,147 it’s the first one in which three intervals of expansion in the duplicate ratio, yielding four terms, of ratios that produce similarity and dissimilarity [546C] when they augment and diminish, bring everything into mutual conformity and commensurability. Four-to-three, as a starting point among these ratios, when mated with a multitude of five, produces two harmonies when it’s increased three times; one of them is equal-times-equal in multiples of a hundred, the other of equal opposite sides but oblong, one side a hundred times the square number from the rational approximation to the diagonal of the square on a five-unit side, minus one from each hundred, or minus two if the irrational diameter is used, and the other side a hundred times the cubic number from three. This whole geometrical number,148 sovereign among its kind, is what governs better and worse in procreation, and [546D] when your guardians, from ignorance of it, join bridegrooms with brides inopportunely in marriage, the children will not be favored by either nature or fortune. Those who precede them will set in place the best of these children, but because of their deficiency in merit, once they’ve come into power in place of their fathers, although they’re our149 guardians, they’ll begin to be careless, paying less regard than they should, first, to musical education, and second to gymnastic training, and from that point on your young people will become more uncivilized. And those [546E] from among them set up as rulers won’t be entirely perceptive about [547A] assessing those races of Hesiod’s150 and yours, the gold and silver and bronze and iron. And by the mingling together of iron with silver and bronze with gold, a dissimilarity and inharmonious irregularity will be introduced, which, when they come along, always breed war and antagonism wherever they arise. One must declare division ‘to be verily of this descent’151 always, wherever it arises.”
“And we’ll claim they answered quite rightly,” he said.
“Necessarily so,” I said, “since they’re Muses.”
[547B] “So what’s the next thing the Muses say?” he said.
“Once division had come on the scene,” I said, “the two strains of iron and bronze in their race each pulled them in the direction of moneymaking and of acquiring land and houses and gold and silver, while the other two strains of gold and silver, inasmuch as they weren’t needy but rich in their souls by nature, led them toward virtue and the ancient order of things. When they came into violence and strife against one another, they agreed to a compromise, for land and houses to be divided up [547C] and be appropriated, and they made slaves of the people who’d been guarded by them before152 as free friends and providers of sustenance, holding them now as serfs and domestic servants, paying attention to war themselves and to guarding against these very people.”
“That seems to me to be where this transformation comes from,” he said.
“And wouldn’t this polity be something intermediate,” I said, “between aristocracy and oligarchy?”
“Very much so.”
“That’s how it will be transformed, then, but how will it be managed once it’s been transformed? Or [547D] is it obvious that it will imitate the previous polity in some respects, and oligarchy in others, since it’s in between them, while it will also have something that belongs to it in particular?”
“That’s how it is,” he said.
“In honoring the rulers, in that the war-making part of it refrains from farming, from manual arts, and from other money-making activity, and in that common meals are provided and care is taken over gymnastic training and competition in war—in all things such as these won’t it imitate the previous polity?”
“Yes.”
[547E] “But in being fearful of bringing the wise into ruling offices, since the men of that sort it possesses are no longer without duplicity or intent on their tasks but of mixed character, so that they turn to spirited people of a simpler sort, who are by nature turned more toward war than toward [548A] peace, in holding the tricks and subterfuges involved in war in honor, and in devoting all their time to making war, in many things such as these won’t it have its own particular features?”
“Yes.”
“Such people will in fact be covetous of money,”153 I said, “just like those in oligarchies, fiercely doing reverence to gold and silver under cover of darkness, since they’re in possession of coffers and household treasuries where they can store away and hide them, and they’ll have walls surrounding their houses, in effect private nests, in which [548B] they’ll lavish money on women and whomever else they might desire to spend a lot on.”
“Quite true,” he said.
“And they’ll be miserly about money, because they revere it and don’t possess it openly, and they’ll love spending other people’s money, prompted by desire, enjoying the fruits of it in secret, sneaking away from the law like children from a father, since they’ve been educated not by persuasion but by force, on account of having neglected the true Muse with her discourses [548C] and philosophy, and having honored gymnastic training with greater reverence than music.”
“You’re describing a polity,” he said, “that’s a mixture through and through of bad and good.”
“It’s mixed,” I said, “but since it’s dominated by spiritedness, one thing alone is most conspicuous in it, a love of victories and honors.”
“Emphatically so,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “this is the way this polity would have come into being and what it would be like, as a sketch in words that outlines the polity [548D] without working it out precisely, since even from a sketch there’s enough to see the most just and most unjust person, and it’s a task inconceivable in length to go through all the polities and all the states of character without leaving anything out.”
“That’s right,” he said.
“So who’s the man in accord with this polity? How does he come to be and what sort of person is he?”
“I imagine,” said Adeimantus, “for his love of victory at least, he’d come pretty close to this fellow right here, Glaucon.”
[548E] “Maybe in that respect,” I said, “but it seems to me he’d have a nature unlike his in these ways.”
“What ways?”
“He’d have to be more inflexible,” I said, “fond of music but a little less open to its influence, and fond of hearing talk but by no means [549A] good at speaking. And toward slaves, someone such as he would be brutal, rather than disdainful of slaves the way someone adequately educated would be, but he’d be gentle with those who are free and extremely obedient to rulers. He’d be passionate about ruling and being honored, judging himself worthy to rule not for his speaking or for anything of the sort, but for deeds of a warlike or war-related kind. And he’s a person devoted to gymnastic exercise and hunting.”
“Yes,” he said, “that’s the type of character that belongs to this polity.”
“And wouldn’t such a person despise money when he was young,” [549B] I said, “but be ever more appreciative of it as he grows older, from having a bit of the money-lover in his nature and not being pure in his relation to virtue, because he’s been deprived of its best guardian?”
“What’s that?” said Adeimantus.
“Rational discussion blended with music,” I said, “the presence of which is the only preserver of virtue that abides throughout life in someone who has it.”
“You put it beautifully,” he said.
“And it is in fact this sort of timocratic youth,” I said, “who’s like that sort of city.”
“Entirely so.”
[549C] “And he comes into being in some such way as this,” I said: “sometimes he’s a young son of a good father who lives in a city that’s not well governed, and his father avoids honors, offices, and lawsuits, and all such fondness for civic involvement, and is willing to forego advantages in order not to have the aggravation.”
“So how does the son get the way he is?” he said.
“To start with,” I said, “when he hears his mother complaining that her husband isn’t one of the rulers, and that she gets the worst of it [549D] among the other women for that; then too, she sees that he’s not greatly concerned about money, that he doesn’t fight back and trade insults in private or in the law courts and the public arena, but puts up with all that sort of thing with a tranquil spirit, and her perception of things is that he always has his mind on himself and doesn’t pay her enough regard, positive or negative. She complains about all these things and tells her son his father is unmanly and too lackadaisical, and all the other songs in that style that women like to sing on that theme.”
[549E] “They do have quite a lot like that,” said Adeimantus.
“And you know,” I said, “that sometimes even the servants of such men, who are to all appearances favorably disposed, say things like that behind their backs to their sons, and if they see someone who owes the father money or does him some other injustice, but whom he doesn’t proceed against, they egg on the son so that he’ll take revenge on all such people when he becomes [550A] a man, and be more of a man than his father, and when he goes out, he hears and sees other things of that kind, those who tend to their own business being called stupid and held in low esteem, while those who don’t are honored and praised by the same people. So then a young person who hears and sees all that sort of thing, and from the other side hears the things his father says and sees his ways of doing things up close, as compared with those of the others, he’s pulled [550B] by both these influences, as his father waters the reasoning part of his soul and makes it grow, and the others the desiring and spirited parts. Since his nature isn’t that of a bad man, but he’s been accustomed to bad company with other people, pulled by both these influences, he ends up in the middle, and turns over the ruling place in himself to the middle part, the victory-loving and spirited one, and he becomes a haughty, honor-loving man.”
“You seem to me,” he said, “to have gone through this man’s genesis just right.”
[550C] “Then we’ve got the second polity,” I said, “and the second man.”
“We’ve got them.”
“Then shall we speak next, with Aeschylus, of ‘another man stationed by another city,’154 or keep to our design instead and speak of the city first?”
“Certainly that,” he said.
“And the next polity after that sort, I imagine, would be oligarchy.”
“And what sort of set-up do you mean by oligarchy?” he said.
“The polity that comes from a property qualification,” I said, “in which the rich rule and a poor person has no share in ruling.”
[550D] “I understand,” he said.
“Then isn’t what needs to be stated the way it first transforms from timarchy into oligarchy?”
“Yes.”
“And how it transforms is surely obvious even to a blind person,” I said.
“How?”
“That strong room full of gold each one has destroys that sort of polity,” I said. “First they come up with ways to spend it on themselves, and alter the laws to fit that when they and their wives disobey them.”
“Likely so,” he said.
[550E] “Then, I imagine, when one sees another and gets into rivalry they end up making the bulk of people like themselves.”
“Likely so.”
“Then as they move from there to an advanced stage of money-making,” I said, “to the extent they hold that in higher regard, to that same extent they hold virtue in lower regard. Or doesn’t virtue stand divided against riches that way, as though each of the two were lying in the scale of a balance, always inclining opposite ways?”
“Very much so,” he said.
[551A] “So when riches and the rich are honored in a city, virtue and the good are honored less.”
“Clearly.”
“And what comes into practice is always what’s honored, while what’s dishonored is neglected.”
“That’s the way of it.”
“So in place of being men who love victory and honor, they end up becoming lovers of money-making and money, and they give praise and admiration to the rich person and bring him into the ruling offices, but treat the poor person with dishonor.”
“Entirely so.”
“So then don’t they set down the definitive law of an oligarchic polity, [551B] fixing an amount of money such that, the more of an oligarchy it is, the greater the amount, and the less so the lesser, proclaiming that there’s to be no share in ruling for someone without wealth up to the prescribed assessment? Don’t they either put it into effect by force of arms, or else, even before that, settle such a polity in place by intimidating people? Isn’t that how it is?”
“That’s just how it is.”
“So, as they say, that settles it.”
“Yes,” he said. “But what exactly is characteristic of the polity? And what are the sorts of failings we were claiming it has in it?”
[551C] “First off,” I said, “this very thing that defines it is of that sort. Consider a case in which someone made people helmsmen of ships that way, from property qualifications, and wouldn’t entrust one to a poor person even if he was better at helmsmanship.”
“They’d have lousy sailing on their voyage,” he said.
“And wouldn’t it also be that way with any other sort of ruling whatever?”
“I imagine so.”
“Except in the case of a city,” I said, “or for a city too?”
“That most by far,” he said, “inasmuch as it’s the most difficult and most important sort of ruling.”
[551D] “So that’s one pretty big failing oligarchy would have.”
“So it appears.”
“And how about this? Would it be a lesser one than that?”
“What is it?”
“That such a city isn’t one but by necessity two,155 one consisting of the poor, the other of the rich, living in the same place and always plotting against each other.”
“By Zeus,” he said, “that’s not lesser at all.”
“And this is certainly not a beautiful thing either, that it’s incapable of fighting any war, because it’s forced either, by making use of an armed multitude, to be more afraid of them than of the enemies, or by not using [551E] them, to show up as truly rulers of few in the fighting itself, at the same time they’re also unwilling to put money into it since they’re money-lovers.”
“Beautiful it’s not.”
“And what about the thing we were finding fault with long ago, the squandering of effort in many directions [552A] in such a polity when the same people are farmers and moneymakers and warriors at the same times, or does that seem to be the right way to go?”
“Not in any way whatsoever.”
“Now see whether this is the first polity to make room for this greatest of all these evils.”
“What’s that?”
“The possibility of selling everything one owns, and of someone else’s acquiring what belongs to him, and his living in the city after selling it without belonging to any of the parts of the city, not acknowledged as a moneymaker [552B] or craftsman, a cavalryman or infantryman,156 just as a poor person without means.”
“It’s the first,” he said.
“There’s nothing in oligarchies at any rate to prevent that sort of thing. Otherwise there wouldn’t be some ultra-rich while others are utterly poor.”
“That’s right.”
“And consider this: when that sort of person was rich and spending money, was he of any more benefit to the city for the jobs we just mentioned? Or while he seemed to be one of the rulers was he in truth neither a ruler nor a servant of it, but a drain on the available resources?”
[552C] “Like that,” he said; “he seemed to be something else, but was nothing other than a drain.”
“Would you want us to declare, then,” I said, “that the same way a drone is tucked away in its compartment, a sickness within a hive, this sort of person is also tucked away in his house as a drone, a sickness within a city?”
“Very much so, Socrates,” he said.
“Well, Adeimantus, hasn’t the god made all the winged drones without stingers, but as for these with feet, while some of them lack stingers, some have ferocious stings? Don’t the ones from [552D] the stingless variety end up as beggars in their old age, while all the type that’re called criminals come from the ones equipped with stingers?”
“Very true,” he said.
“It’s clear, therefore,” I said, “that in a city in which you see beggars, somewhere out of sight in that vicinity there are thieves, pickpockets, temple robbers, and workers at all such criminal trades.”
“That’s clear,” he said.
“So what about it? Don’t you see beggars in cities with oligarchies?”
“Little short of everybody,” he said, “outside of the rulers.”
[552E] “May we not then assume,” I said, “that there are also a lot of criminals in them that have stingers, that the rulers vigilantly suppress by force?”
“We assume so,” he said.
“Won’t we claim that such people crop up there from lack of education, bad upbringing, and a bad arrangement of the polity?”
“We will claim that.”
“But then that’s exactly the way a city with an oligarchy would be, and it would have that many evils and probably more as well.”
“Pretty much,” he said.
[553A] “So let this polity that people call oligarchy, that has rulers that come from a property qualification, be done with as far as we’re concerned; let’s consider next the person who resembles it, how he comes into being and what he’s like when he does.”
“Yes indeed,” he said.
“Is it especially in this way that someone changes out of that timocratic mold into an oligarchic one?”
“How’s that?”
“It’s when a son born to one of them admires his father at first and follows in his footsteps, then sees him suddenly [553B] come into collision with the city as if he’d run aground on a reef with the loss of his possessions and himself, when he’d either been a general or held some high ruling office and then fell into an entanglement in a law court at the hands of false accusers, and was either put to death, exiled, or stripped of his honors with the loss of all his property.”
“Likely so,” he said.
“But, dear fellow, when the son sees and suffers these things and loses his estate, I imagine he gets frightened, and immediately evicts that honor-loving and spirited [553C] part of himself headfirst out of its throne in his soul and, humiliated by his poverty, turns greedily to moneymaking, and little by little, by saving and working, he builds up wealth. Don’t you imagine that such a person would then give the seat on that throne to his desiring and money-loving part and make it the Great King157 in himself, festooning it with tiaras and neck bracelets and scimitars?”
“Indeed I do,” he said.
[553D] “As for the reasoning and spirited parts, I imagine that, making them sit on the ground on one side and the other in subjection to it and enslaved, he doesn’t allow the one to reason about or even consider anything else but where there’ll be more money to get out of less, or the other for its part to admire or honor anything other than riches and rich people, or strive for honor on any single ground other than the possession of money and anything else that might contribute to that.”
“There’s no other change,” he said, “so quick and forceful [553E] from a young honor-lover into a money-lover as that.”
“So is this the oligarchic person?” I said.
“The change in him, at any rate, is from a man resembling the polity that oligarchy came from.”
“So let’s examine whether he resembles oligarchy.”
[554A] “Let’s examine it.”
“In the first place, wouldn’t he be like it by putting money highest?”
“Certainly.”
“And surely also in being miserly and a drudge, satisfying only the necessary desires among those that belong to him, and not providing other expenses but holding down the rest of his desires in slavery, as frivolous things.”
“Very much so.”
“Since he’s a grubby sort of person,” I said, “getting an advantage out of everything, a man who builds up savings, just the type most people approve of, [554B] wouldn’t he be like this sort of polity?”
“It seems that way to me anyway,” he said. “At least money is the most honored thing for both the city and that sort of person.”
“I don’t imagine such a person has given a thought to education,” I said.
“I doubt it,” he said; “otherwise he wouldn’t have set up a blind leader for his dance troop and honored him most.”158
“Good point,” I said. “And consider this: won’t we claim that dronelike desires become lodged in him due to his lack of education, some of the [554C] beggar type and others of the criminal type, held down by force because he’s paying attention to something else?”
“And how,” he said.
“And do you know where to look,” I said, “so you’ll spot their crimes?”
“Where?” he said.
“To their actions as trustees for orphans, and to anything of that sort that might fall their way and let them get a lot of opportunity to do injustice.”
“True.”
“So isn’t it evident from this that in other transactions, in which he’s well regarded because he seems to be just, such a person is holding down other [554D] bad desires in him by exercising a quasi-decent constraint over himself, not by persuading them that what they want isn’t for the better, or by civilizing them by argument, but by compulsion and fear, because he’s fretting over the rest of his wealth?”
“Totally so,” he said.
“And by Zeus, my friend,” I said, “you’ll find out about the desires in them that belong to the drone family, with most of them at least, when they need to spend other people’s money.”
“Oh yes,” he said, “in a big way.”
“Then such a person wouldn’t be free of division within himself, or one person at all, [554E] but somehow double, though for the most part he’d have his better desires dominant over his worse desires.”
“That’s just how it is.”
“So for these reasons, I imagine such a person would present a more respectable outward appearance than many, but the true virtue in a like-minded and harmonized soul would elude him somewhere far away.”
“It seems so to me.”
[555A] “And certainly a miserly person is an ineffectual contender in a city for any sort of victory, or other ambition for beautiful things, that requires private means, since he’s not willing to spend money for the sake of a good reputation or on competitions for things of that sort; afraid to wake up his desires for spending and invite them into battle in alliance with a love of victory, he deploys some few of his resources, fighting his wars in oligarchic style, is outdone in most of them, and keeps on being rich.”
“Very much so,” he said.
“Then are we still in any doubt,” I said, “that the miserly money-maker [555B] is, by likeness, stationed alongside the city with an oligarchy?”
“None whatever,” he said.
“Then it seems democracy needs to be examined next, for the manner it comes into being and for what it’s like once it has, so that when in turn we’ve recognized the disposition of a man of the same sort, we can make him stand for judgment.”
“We’d at least be proceeding consistently with ourselves,” he said.
“Well, doesn’t it change into democracy from oligarchy as some sort of consequence of the insatiable desire for the good it sets for itself, to have to become as rich as possible?”
“How, exactly?”
[555C] “I imagine that, since the rulers in it rule thanks to having a lot of possessions, they’re not willing to curb all the young people who get out of control by a law preventing them from spending and wasting their goods, so that, by buying up the property of such people or lending money on it, they can become even richer and more esteemed.”
“They want that more than anything.”
“Then isn’t this already obvious, that it’s impossible to honor wealth in a city and have moderation in its citizens at the same time in any adequate way, [555D] and necessary to forget about one or the other?”
“Tolerably obvious,” he said.
“So by condoning and encouraging out-of-control behavior in oligarchies, their rulers have sometimes forced people who were not without noble qualities into poverty.”
“Quite so.”
“So I imagine these people sit around in the city, equipped with stingers and fully armed, some owing debts, some having been deprived of privileges, and some suffering both, hating those who possess their property [555E] and the others as well, and plotting against them, lusting for revolution.”
“That’s what happens.”
“But the moneymakers, who appear not to see them because they’re hunched over their own concerns, continue to poison any of the others who lets them by administering doses of silver, and as they carry off in interest a sum many times as large as [556A] the principal, they make the drone and beggar multiply in the city.”
“How could they fail to multiply?” he said.
“And not even at that point are they willing to snuff out this sort of evil when it’s bursting into flame,” I said, “by restricting anyone from turning his own property to whatever use he wants, or by this other means by which that sort of damage is undone as a result of a different law.”
“As a result of what law exactly?”
“The one that’s second best after that one, and forces the citizens to pay attention to virtue. Because if a law required that most [556B] voluntary contracts be entered into at one’s own risk, people in the city would be less shameless about how they made their money,159 and fewer evils of the sort we were just describing would grow in it.”
“A lot fewer,” he said.
“But the way it is now,” I said, “for all the reasons of that kind, those who rule in the city do treat those they rule that way. And where they and theirs are concerned, don’t their young live in luxury, not putting effort into anything involving the body or the soul, [556C] soft when it comes to standing up to pleasures and pains, and lazy?”
“What else?”
“Meanwhile, haven’t they neglected everything except moneymaking and paid no more attention to virtue than the poor have?”
“They haven’t paid any.”
“So with this sort of backdrop, when the rulers and those they rule run across one another, either traveling on the roads or in any other common undertakings, at public spectacles or on military campaigns, or when they become shipmates or fellow soldiers, or even in the very midst of [556D] dangers, when they observe one another, the poor are by no means despised by the rich in that situation. Often instead, when a lean, suntanned poor man, stationed in battle beside a rich man who’s been pampered in the shade and has a lot of surplus flesh, sees him wheezing and full of confusion, don’t you imagine he’d believe it was their own apathy that let such people be rich, and that one poor man would pass the word to another, [556E] when they’d meet privately, that ‘our guys are men; they’re nothing’?”160
“I know very well they’d do that,” he said.
“Then just as a sickly body only needs a little nudge from outside to make it take sick, and sometimes gets to be at odds with itself even without the external pressures, doesn’t a city that’s in the same condition as that also fall into division in that way on a slight pretext, when people are brought in from outside either from an oligarchic city that’s allied with one group or from a democratic one that’s allied with the other, and get sick and do battle with itself, and sometimes do that even without the outside pressures?”
[557A] “And violently so.”
“So democracy comes into being, I imagine, when the poor have won, and they kill some of the others, exile some, and give those who are left an equal share in the polity and ruling offices, and for the most part, the ruling positions in it are determined by lot.”161
“It is in that way that democracy is instituted,” he said, “whether it happens by force of arms or because the others give up out of fear.”
“So what’s their manner of living?” I said. “And what’s [557B] this next sort of polity like? Because it’s clear that a man like that will show up as the democratic sort.”
“That’s clear,” he said.
“Well, first of all aren’t they free, and doesn’t the city get filled with freedom and free speech, and isn’t it permissible in it to do whatever anyone wants?”
“So it’s said,” he said.
“And in a place where it’s permissible, it’s obvious that each person would manage the arrangement of his own life in private however it pleased him.”
“It’s obvious.”
[557C] “So I imagine that every variety of human being would turn up in this polity most of all.”
“How could it be otherwise?”
“This is liable to be the most beautiful of the polities,” I said; “like an ornate cloak with every color worked into it, it too, since it’s ornamented that way with every type of character, might appear the most beautiful. And probably a lot of people,” I said, “like children and women looking at gaudy things, would also judge it to be the most beautiful.”
“Very much so,” he said.
“It’s also, you blessedly lucky fellow, a made-to-order place in which to look for a polity,” I said.
[557D] “Why, exactly?”
“Because it has every kind of polity in it, thanks to its permissiveness, and it’s liable to be necessary for someone who wants to make arrangements for a city, which we’ve just been doing, to go into a democratic city to pick out one of whatever style pleased him, as if he’d found his way into a polity-bazaar, and when he’d made his selection he could set one up that way.”
“He probably wouldn’t be at a loss for examples at any rate,” he said.
[557E] “And as for the fact that there’s no requirement to be a ruler in this city,” I said, “even if you’re competent to rule, or to be ruled either, if you don’t want to be, or to go to war when the rest of the city’s at war, or to stay at peace when everyone else is, if peace doesn’t appeal to you, or the fact that, even if some law precludes you from being a ruler or a judge, you can be both a ruler and a judge [558A] nonetheless, if the impulse for it takes you, isn’t that way of living in the moment godlike bliss?”
“Maybe so, at least in that moment,” he said.
“And how about the calm demeanor of some who’ve been convicted of crimes? Isn’t that pretty? Or haven’t you ever seen people who’ve been condemned to death or exile in this sort of polity, who stay around nonetheless and go right back into the midst of things and stalk around as though no one cares or sees, like the spirits of dead heroes?”
“A lot of them, in fact,” he said.
“And there’s also its broadmindedness and total lack of pettiness, [558B] and its contempt for the things we were saying so solemnly when we founded the city, that unless someone had an extraordinary nature, he’d never become a good man if he didn’t play amid beautiful things right from childhood and come in contact with all that sort of thing; in what a magnificent style it tramples all these things underfoot, not a bit concerned about the sort of pursuits anyone has been involved in when he goes into politics. Instead, doesn’t it pay him honor if he just claims to be in favor of the people?”
“It’s very noble that way,” he said.
[558C] “So democracy would have these features,” I said, “and others closely akin to these, and it seems it would be an agreeable polity, nonauthoritarian and diverse, spreading some sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.”
“You’re talking about things that are very well known,” he said.
“So consider who’d be that way as a private person,” I said. “Or is the first thing to be examined the manner in which he comes into being, the way we examined the polity?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Isn’t it this way? Wouldn’t a son of that miserly, oligarchic fellow [558D] come along, brought up by his father, I imagine, with his father’s qualities of character?”
“How could he help it?”
“So he too would be someone who ruled over the pleasures in himself by force, all those that are wasteful and not conducive to moneymaking, the ones in fact that are called non-necessary.”
“That’s clear,” he said.
“Well, so that we won’t be having our discussion in the dark,” I said, “do you want us first to define the necessary desires and those that aren’t?”
“I do want that,” he said.
“Wouldn’t the ones we’re not able to turn away from be called [558E] necessary justly, as well as all those that benefit us when they’re fulfilled? Because it’s necessary for us to have a craving for both these sorts, isn’t it?”
“Very much so.”
[559A] “So we’ll justly apply this word ‘necessary’ to them.”
“Justly.”
“And what about the ones someone could get rid of if he trained himself from youth, which also do no good by being present, and some of which even do the opposite? If we claimed all these are non-necessary, wouldn’t we be putting it beautifully?”
“Beautifully indeed.”
“So shall we choose an example for each sort of what they are, so we can get hold of them in general outline?”
“Why shouldn’t we?”
“Then wouldn’t the desire to eat, up to the point of health and fitness, and [559B] for bread and side dishes in and of themselves, be necessary?”162
“I imagine so.”
“Presumably the desire for bread, at least, is necessary on both counts, in that it’s beneficial and also in that it’s capable of causing living to cease.”
“Yes.”
“And so is that for the side items, if in any way they provide any benefit for fitness.”
“Very much so.”
“But what about the desire that exceeds these and is for foods of kinds other than these, but is capable of being eliminated from most people when it’s curtailed and educated from youth, and is harmful for the body and harmful for the soul as well, for its judgment and exercise of moderation? Wouldn’t [559C] it rightly be called non-necessary?”
“With utmost rightness.”
“And won’t we also claim the latter desires are wasteful, while the former ones are profitable,163 because they’re useful for work?”
“Certainly.”
“And will we claim it’s the same way with sexual desires and other ones?”
“The same way.”
“Now didn’t we also say, about the person we just now named a drone, that he’s loaded with pleasures and desires of that sort, and ruled by the non-necessary ones, while the person who’s ruled by the necessary ones is miserly and oligarchic?”
“We sure did.”
[559D] “Backing up, then,” I said, “let’s say how a democratic person comes about from an oligarchic one. It appears to me that most of the time it happens like this.”
“How?”
“When a young person, brought up the way we were just talking about, without education and in miserly fashion, gets a taste of honey by being a drone, and comes in contact with fiery and cunning beasts who can set him up with pleasures of every kind in every variation enjoyed in every manner, [559E] you might imagine that would be the start for him of a change of the polity in himself from oligarchic to democratic.”
“That’s a big necessity,” he said.
“Then just as the city changed when an external alliance of like with like supported one of its two parts, doesn’t the young person too change in that way when external desires of a form that’s related to and like one of the two parts within himself support that as well?”
“Absolutely so.”
“And I imagine that if some alliance with the oligarchic part of himself supports it in return, coming either from his father or from somewhere in the [560A] rest of his family, giving him advice and also giving him a hard time, then there’s a faction and an opposite faction, and a battle breaks out within him against himself.”
“What else?”
“And at times, I imagine, the democratic part gives up ground to the oligarchic part, and among certain of his desires, some are destroyed and others driven out, and when a certain feeling of shame has arisen in the young person’s soul, order is imposed again.”
“That does sometimes happen,” he said.
“But then again, I imagine, other desires akin to the ones that were driven out, cultivated in secret, make a comeback in numbers and strength due to the father’s [560B] lack of skill in raising children.”
“It’s usual for it to happen that way anyhow,” he said.
“And don’t they drag him back to the same company, and by a covert intercourse among desires, breed a multitude?”
“What else?”
“So finally, I imagine, they capture the stronghold of the young person’s soul, when they observe that it’s devoid of beautiful studies and pursuits and true speeches, which are the best watchmen and guardians in the thinking of men loved by the gods.”
[560C] “Very much so,” he said.
“Then, I imagine, lying and swaggering speeches and opinions rush up and take occupation of the same location in such a person.”
“Forcefully,” he said.
“Then doesn’t he go back again to those Lotus eaters164 and openly take up residence among them, and if any help arrives from his family for the miserly part of his soul, don’t those swaggering speeches block the gates in the walls around the royal chamber in him, and [560D] refuse to let in the allied contingent itself or even grant entry to private delegations of speeches from elders? Once they’ve come out on top in battle, don’t they give shame the name simplemindedness, and push it out, a refugee without honor; don’t they call moderation unmanliness, fling mud at it, and throw it out; and don’t they persuade the young person that a sense of proportion and orderliness in spending money is unsophisticated and slavish and, with an assist from a lot of unprofitable desires, drive it out?”
“Forcibly.”
“And once, one way and another, they’ve emptied and cleansed these elements from the soul [560E] of the person they’ve occupied and made a devotee of their exalted ceremonies, the thing they do right after that is escort insolence, anarchy, wastefulness, and shamelessness back in, crowned with wreaths, in a torch-lit procession, accompanied by a vast chorus singing their praises and giving them pretty names, calling insolence high education, anarchy freedom, [561A] wastefulness flamboyant style, and shamelessness courage. Isn’t that the way,” I said, “that someone changes while young from someone brought up amid necessary desires into someone who turns loose his non-necessary and unprofitable pleasures and gives them free rein?”
“And you’ve put it very vividly,” he said.
“So after that, I imagine, such a person goes through life spending no more money, effort, or time on necessary pleasures than on non-necessary ones. If he’s lucky, and doesn’t go overboard [561B] in his bacchanalian revels, and if, as he gets a bit older, most of the turbulence has subsided, and he lets some parts of the exiled group back in, and doesn’t give himself wholly over to the group that replaced them, then he lives on having settled his pleasures into a certain equality. He always surrenders rule over himself, until he’s had his fill, to the one that falls his way, as if he’d drawn straws, and then to another in turn, not discriminating against any of them but supporting them equally.”
“Entirely so.”
“And he isn’t open to true reasoning,” I said, “and doesn’t allow it inside the guarded perimeter, if anyone says that some pleasures [561C] come from beautiful and good desires and others from worthless ones, and that one should engage in and honor the former but curb and enslave the latter; he shakes his head at all these things and insists all pleasures are alike and deserve to be honored equally.”
“When someone’s in that condition, he does that emphatically,” he said.
“So he passes his life that way from day to day, gratifying the desire that turns up; at one time he gets drunk [561D] and has flute music played, but at another he drinks water and fasts; at one time he takes up gymnastic exercise, but there comes a time when he’s lazy and lets it all slide, and then he spends his time as though he’s engaged in philosophy. Often he gets interested in politics, and jumps up and says and does random things; then if he feels envious of any military men, he gets carried away with that, or if he feels that way about moneymakers, he’s carried in that direction instead. There’s no order or necessity present in his life, but he calls this way of living sweet, free, and blessed, and lives it throughout.”
[561E] “You’ve given a perfect exposition of a life of any man committed to equality of rights,” he said.
“At any rate,” I said, “I imagine he’s multifaceted and filled with the most states of character, and that this man is beautiful and diverse in the same way that city is. Many men and many women would be envious of his life, that has in it the most models of polities and temperaments.”
“That’s how he is,” he said.
[562A] “What about it then? Will this sort of man be lined up by us next to democracy, as someone to whom the name democratic is rightly applied?”
“Let him be lined up,” he said.
“So the most beautiful regime and the most beautiful man would be left for us to go over,” I said, “tyranny and a tyrant.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“Come on then, dear comrade; what’s the turn by which tyranny comes into being? Because it’s pretty evident it changes out of democracy.”
“It’s evident.”
“Well, doesn’t tyranny come from democracy in something of the same manner that democracy comes from oligarchy?”
“How so?”
[562B] “The good set before it,” I said, “on account of which oligarchy was established, was riches, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Then the insatiable desire for riches, and the neglect of everything else for the sake of moneymaking destroyed it.”
“True,” he said.
“And isn’t the insatiable desire for that which democracy defines as good also it’s undoing?”
“What are you saying it defines it as?”
“Freedom,” I said. “Because doubtless in a democratic city [562C] you’d hear that this is the most beautiful thing it has, and is the reason it’s the only place worth living for anyone who’s free by nature.”
“That’s exactly the wording that’s used,” he said, “and it’s said a lot.”
“Then isn’t it exactly as I was headed for saying just now?” I said. “Doesn’t the insatiable desire for that sort of thing and the neglect of everything else alter this polity too, and prepare the way for it to need a tyranny?”
“How?” he said.
“I imagine that when a democratic city that has a thirst for freedom [562D] happens to get bad wine stewards as the people in charge of it, and it gets more deeply drunk than it ought by drinking it unmixed, then if the rulers aren’t completely lenient and don’t provide loads of freedom, it punishes them, charging that they’re tainted with oligarchic leanings.”
“That they do,” he said.
“But the people who obey the rulers get smeared with mud as willing slaves and nobodies, while the rulers who act like they’re ruled and the ruled who act like rulers get praised and honored in private and in public. Isn’t it a necessity in such a city for freedom to extend to everything?”
[562E] “How could it not?”
“And for it to insinuate itself, my friend,” I said, “into private households, with anarchy finally taking root all the way down to the animals.”
“What sort of thing are we talking about?” he said.
“The sort that happens,” I said, “when a father gets used to being like a child and is afraid of his sons, and a son gets used to being like a father, and has no respect for [563A] or fear of his parents, so he can be free; and resident aliens are treated like townspeople and townspeople like resident aliens, and there’s the same equality for foreigners.”
“It does get to be that way,” he said.
“It gets to be that way with these things,” I said, “and also with other little things of just that kind. A teacher in such a situation is afraid of his students and fawns on them, and students have contempt for their teachers and tutors alike, and in general the young ape their elders and try to rival them in words and deeds, while the old [563B] stoop to the level of the young, filled with sprightliness and jokes as they imitate the young so they won’t seem to be disagreeable or bossy.”
“Very much so,” he said.
“But the extreme limit of the freedom of the masses, my friend,” I said, “is the extent it reaches in such a city when men and women bought as slaves are no less free than those who’ve paid for them. And how far equal rights and freedom go in the behavior of women toward men and men toward women, we’ve almost forgotten to mention.”
[563C] “Aren’t we going to mention, like Aeschylus,” he said, “the thing that did ‘just pop into your mouth’?”165
“By all means,” I said; “I’ll speak of that, because anyone who had no experience of it wouldn’t believe how much more freedom there is in the animals belonging to people there than anyplace else. Bitches literally take after the women who own them, as the proverb has it, and horses and asses get used to making their way quite freely and majestically down the roads, bumping into anyone who gets in their way if he doesn’t step aside, and all the other things they do get filled with that sort of freedom.”
[563D] “It’s my own nightmare you’re telling me about,” he said, “because I experience it often myself on my way out to the country.”
“So do you get the point about all these things put together,” I said, “how touchy they make the souls of the citizens, so that when anyone brings in anything with the slightest hint of slavery about it, they get upset and can’t stand it? Because, as you no doubt know, they end up paying no attention to the laws, written or unwritten, so that no one can be [563E] their boss in any way.”
“I know it very well,” he said.
“So that, my friend,” I said, “so beautiful and brash, is the origin out of which tyranny grows, as it seems to me.”
“It’s certainly brash,” he said; “but what’s the next step?”
“Exactly the same disease that destroyed the oligarchy when it cropped up in it,” I said, “comes along in this polity as well, only more so and with more strength owing to its permissiveness, and enslaves democracy. And in the very nature of things, doing anything to excess has a tendency to cause a great change to the opposite in return, in seasons as well as in [564A] plants and living bodies, and not least in polities in particular.”
“Likely so,” he said.
“Because it looks like an excess of freedom changes into nothing other than an excess of slavery, both in private and in a city.”
“That’s likely.”
“So in all likelihood,” I said, “tyranny doesn’t get established out of any other polity than democracy, the supreme and most savage type of slavery from what I imagine is the pinnacle of freedom.”
“That does make sense,” he said.
“But I imagine that’s not what you were asking,” I said, “but what sort of disease [564B] it is that’s the same as one that grows in oligarchy, and enslaves democracy when it grows in it.”
“True, as you say,” he said.
“Well, I was talking about that tribe of lazy, big-spending men,” I said, “with the boldest element leading them and the less manly group following; they’re the ones we compared to drones, some having stingers, the others lacking them.”
“Rightly so,” he said.
“Well, these two kinds are trouble in every polity they turn up in,” [564C] I said, “like phlegm and bile in a body, and it’s against these in particular that a good doctor and lawmaker for a city needs to take precautions far ahead of time, no less so than a wise beekeeper, at best so they don’t get to be there, but if they do, for them to be surgically removed, and their compartments in the hive along with them, as quickly as possible.”
“Yes, by Zeus,” he said, “completely and totally.”
“Well then,” I said, “let’s take it up in this way, so we can see what we want set out more distinctly.”
“How?”
“Let’s divide the democratic city into three parts in the discussion, [564D] the way it is in fact divided. Because, no doubt, one class of people of the sort we’re talking about grows up in it, due to its permissiveness, no less than in oligarchy.”
“It’s just that way.”
“But it has a much sharper sting in this polity than in that one.”
“How so?”
“There, because it’s not in good repute and is excluded from the ruling offices, it gets out of training and isn’t robust, but in a democracy, this is presumably the preeminent class, outside of a few exceptions, and the part of it with the sharpest sting does the talking as well as the acting, while the rest sit by around the speakers’ platforms buzzing and not putting up with anyone’s saying [564E] anything else; so apart from some few matters, everything in such a polity is run by this sort of people.”
“Very much so,” he said.
“Well, another group that always distinguishes itself from the masses is of this sort.”
“What sort?”
“When everybody’s trying to make money, presumably, for the most part, those who are most orderly by nature get the richest.”
“That’s likely.”
“Then I imagine the most honey for the drones, and the easiest to get, is lifted from there.”
“How could anybody lift it out of people who have little of it?” he said.
“So I imagine the rich are the sort of people referred to as the feeding ground of the drones.”
“Pretty much,” he said.
[565A] “And the third group would be the people, all those who work with their own hands, stay out of politics, and don’t own very much; whenever they unite, they’re the most numerous and authoritative part of a democracy.”
“They are,” he said, “but they’re not willing to do that often unless they get a share of the honey.”
“And don’t they always get their share,” I said, “as much as the leaders are able to spread out among the populace when they take away the wealth from those who have it, and still keep the most themselves?”
[565B] “That’s the way they get their share,” he said.
“So I imagine those from whom it’s taken are forced to fight back, by speaking among the people and doing whatever they can.”
“Of course.”
“So even when they don’t want to cause a change in government, they get accused by the others of plotting against the people and being oligarchs.”
“What else?”
“Then when they see that the people, not willingly but from ignorance and from being misled by the slanderers, [565C] are getting ready to treat them unjustly, don’t they end up at that point, whether they want to or not, by truly becoming oligarchs, not of their own will but because that drone who’s stinging them is giving birth to this evil too?”
“That’s it exactly.”
“So impeachments come along, and convictions, and trials back and forth.”
“And how.”
“And aren’t the people always in the habit of choosing some one person exclusively as their leader, supporting him and building him up as someone great?”
“That’s their habit.”
“This is evident, then,” I said, “that whenever someone grows into [565D] a tyrant, the root he sprouts from is the people’s choice, and he comes from no other source.”166
“That’s very evident.”
“And what’s the beginning of the change from chosen leader to tyrant? Or is it apparent that it comes when the leader starts to do the same thing as the person in the story that’s told about the temple of Lycaean Zeus in Arcadia?”
“What?” he said.
“That when someone gets a single taste of human entrails cut up in among those of the other sacrificial animals, he necessarily [565E] turns into a wolf. Haven’t you heard the story?”
“I have.”
“Doesn’t it happen the same way too with anyone who’s a chosen leader of a people, when he gets an exceedingly tractable mob, and doesn’t shy away from the blood of his own tribe, but makes unjust accusations, exactly the sort they tend to make, brings someone into court, and stains it with blood, blotting out a man’s life, tasting with unholy tongue and mouth blood shed from his own kind? Doesn’t he drive people out of house and home, [566A] kill people outright, and hint at cancellations of debts and a redistribution of land? After that, isn’t such a person necessarily doomed either to be killed by his enemies or be a tyrant and turn from a human being into a wolf?”
“That’s necessary in a big way,” he said.
“So he,” I said, “turns out to be the one who starts the rebellion against those who have wealth.”
“He does.”
“And if he’s banished and comes back in defiance of his enemies, doesn’t he come back as a consummate tyrant?”
“Clearly.”
“But if they’re unable to banish him or put him to death [566B] by slandering him to the city, they plot to kill him by a violent death in secret.”
“It does tend to happen that way, at any rate,” he said.
“So at this point, all those who’ve gotten this far come up with the oft-repeated tyrannical demand, to ask the people for some bodyguards, so the champion of the people’s cause can be kept safe for them.”
“Very true,” he said.
“And I imagine they give it to him, fearful on his behalf, but overconfident on their own.”
“Very true.”
[566C] “And when a man who has money sees this, and who along with his money has the accusation of being an enemy of the people, at that point, comrade, in accord with the oracle that came to Croesus,167 he
Flees along the pebbled banks of the Hermus,
Doesn’t waste any time, and isn’t ashamed to be craven.”
“He wouldn’t get a second chance to be ashamed,” he said.
“And I imagine someone who’s caught is given death,” I said.
“Necessarily.”
“But as for that chosen leader himself, it’s clear he isn’t [566D] stretched out on the ground ‘great in his greatness’168 but standing tall in the chariot of the city after knocking down many others, a tyrant instead of a leader, and a consummate one.”
“He’s not going to be anything else,” he said.
“Shall we go into the happiness that belongs to the man,” I said, “and to the city in which such a personage turns up?”
“Let’s go into it thoroughly,” he said.
“Well during the time of his first days,” I said, “doesn’t he have a smile and a greeting for everyone he comes across, and [566E] claim he’s not a tyrant, and make a lot of promises both privately and in public, and free people from debts, and distribute land to the people and to those close to him, and make a pretense of being benign and mild with everybody?”
“Necessarily,” he said.
“But I imagine that when he comes to terms with some of the enemies he ousted, and has killed off the rest, and his problems with them quiet down, the first thing he does is always to stir up some wars so the people will be in need of a leader.”
“Very likely.”
[567A] “And isn’t that also to make them become poor by paying their money in taxes so they’ll be forced to turn toward day-by-day concerns and be less likely to plot against him?”
“Clearly.”
“And, I imagine, if he suspects that some people with thoughts of freedom won’t leave it up to him to rule, it’s also to let him have a pretext for destroying them by giving them up to the enemies. Isn’t it necessary for the sake of all these things for a tyrant always to be agitating for war?”
“It’s necessary.”
“And by doing that, he’s bound to become more an object of hate to the citizens?”
“How could he not?”
[567B] “And don’t some of those who are in power, who helped set him up, speak frankly to him and among themselves, protesting at what’s happening—those who happen to be the bravest, that is?”
“Likely so.”
“So the tyrant has to eliminate all of them quietly, if he’s going to rule, until no friends or enemies are left of any use whatever.”
“Clearly.”
“So he has to be sharp-eyed about who’s brave, who’s highminded, [567C] who’s intelligent, and who’s rich, and he has the great happiness to be obliged to be an enemy to all these people and plot against them whether he wants to or not, until he cleans out the city.”
“A beautiful way to clean it up,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “it’s the opposite of what doctors do with bodies, because they take away what’s worst and leave what’s best, but he does the reverse.”
“And it seems like that’s what he has to do,” he said, “if he’s going to rule.”
[567D] “As a result,” I said, “he’s bound up in a blessed necessity that requires him either to live among a mass of mediocrities and be hated by them, or not live.”
“That’s the situation he’s in,” he said.
“Well, to the degree that he’s more an object of hate to the citizens by doing these things, won’t that make him need more spear-carrying guards, and more trustworthy ones?”
“How could it not?”
“Who are the people he can trust? And where’s he going to send for them from?”
“A lot will show up on their own, with wings,” he said, “as long as he’s giving cash.”
“More drones, by the dog” I said. “You seem to me to be [567E] talking about an assortment of foreign ones.”
“And your impression of my meaning is a true one,” he said.
“And who’s in that very spot? Won’t he be willing to take their slaves away from the citizens somehow, free them, and make them part of the spear-carrying guard around himself?”
“Emphatically so,” he said, “since they’re certainly the people he can trust most.”
“What a blessed thing it is for a tyrant if, as you say, [568A] he has that sort of men as his trusted friends after he’s destroyed the ones he had before.”
“Well, they’re certainly the sort he’s got,” he said.
“And these companions and new citizens admire him,” I said, “and consort with him, while decent people hate him and stay away.”
“How are they going to do anything else?”
“It’s not for nothing,” I said, “that tragedy in general is thought to be a wise thing, and Euripides surpassingly so within it.”
“Why, in particular?”
“Because he also uttered this piece of dense thinking, that [568B] ‘tyrants are wise by consorting with the wise.’169 And it’s obvious he meant that the people he does consort with are the wise ones.”
“He also extols tyranny as being ‘on the level of a god,’” he said, “and for many other things, and the other poets do too.”
“Well surely, then,” I said, “since they’re wise, the tragic poets will be understanding toward us, and toward anyone else who looks at political life in a way close to ours, for the fact that we won’t admit them into our polity, since they’re singers of tyranny’s praises.”
[568C] “I imagine they’ll be understanding,” he said, “at least all the sophisticated ones among them.”
“And as they travel around to the other cities, I imagine they’ll collect big crowds, hire beautiful, strong voices that carry conviction, and pull those polities in the direction of tyrannies and democracies.”
“Very much so.”
“And to top it off, don’t they get paid for these things, in money and in honor as well, especially, as one would expect, by tyrants, but secondly by democracies? But the higher uphill they go among the polities, the more their honor [568D] fails, as if it couldn’t go on from shortness of breath.”
“Very much so.”
“But we’ve gotten off the track here,” I said. “Let’s get back to talking about the tyrant’s encampment, that beautiful, big, variegated, ever-changing thing, and say where its support will come from.”
“It’s obvious,” he said, “that if there’s a temple treasure in the city, he’ll spend that for whatever period of time the yield from selling it lasts, [568E] so there’ll be less taxes for him to force the people to pay.”
“And what about when that runs out?”
“It’s obvious,” he said, “that he, his drinking partners, and his intimate male and female companions will be supported out of what he inherits from his father.”
“I understand,” I said, “because the people who gave birth to the tyrant will support him and his cohorts.”
“A great necessity will be upon it,” he said.
“But what do you say to this?” I said. “Suppose the people get annoyed and say it’s unjust for a son in the prime of life to be supported by his father, that on the contrary a father should be supported by his son, and that it wasn’t for this that they [569A] gave birth to him and set him up, so that when he became great they themselves, as slaves to their own slaves, would be supporting him and the slaves and the rest of the dregs, but so that, with him as their chosen leader, they’d be freed from the rich and the self-described gentlemen in the city, and now they’re ordering him and his cohorts to get out of the city, the way a father would throw a son out of the house along with his rambunctious drinking buddies.”
[569B] “Then a populace like that will soon find out, by Zeus,” he said, “exactly what sort of creature they’ve given birth to, welcomed, and allowed to grow, and that they’d be the weaker ones, tossing out the stronger.”
“How do you mean that?” I said. “Will the tyrant dare to use force against his father, and even beat him, if he doesn’t obey?”
“Yes,” he said, “as soon as he’s taken away his father’s weapons.”
“You’re saying a tyrant is a parricide, a dangerous person to look after an old man,” I said, “and it looks like this by now would be acknowledged tyranny; as the saying goes, the people, by fleeing the smoke [569C] of enslavement to free men, would have fallen into the fire of being mastered by slaves, in place of that great and mismanaged freedom, wrapping themselves in the cruelest and bitterest slavery to slaves.”
“That’s exactly what becomes of them,” he said.
“What about it, then?” I said. “Won’t we be hitting the right note if we claim we’ve gone over enough the way democracy changes into tyranny, and what sort of thing it is that comes of it?”
“Quite enough,” he said.