Socrates 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

Socrates 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

Socrates it had?”

“To begin with,” said I, “consider the nature of its constitutive and defining principle. Suppose men should appoint the pilots of ships in this way, by property qualification, and not allow a poor man to navigate, even if he were a better pilot.” “A sorry voyage they would make of it,” he said. “And is not the same true of any other form of rule?” “I think so.” “Except of a city,” said I, “or does it hold for a city too?” “Most of all,” he said, “by as much as that is the greatest and most difficult rule of all.”

“Here, then, is one very great defect in oligarchy.” “So it appears.” “Well, and is this a smaller one?” “What?” “That such a city should of necessity be not one, but two, a city of the rich and a city of the poor, dwelling together, and always plotting against one another.” “No, by Zeus,” said he, “it is not a bit smaller.” “Nor, further, can we approve of this—the likelihood that they will not be able to wage war, because of the necessity of either arming and employing the multitude,

and fearing them more than the enemy, or else, if they do not make use of them, of finding themselves on the field of battle, oligarchs indeed, and rulers over a few. And to this must be added their reluctance to contribute money, because they are lovers of money.” “No, indeed, that is not admirable.”

Socrates “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,

Socrates 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.”

Socrates “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

Socrates 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,

Socrates 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,

Socrates 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.

Socrates “Then,” I said, “let us regard as disposed of the constitution called oligarchy, whose rulers are determined by a property qualification. And next we are to consider the man who resembles it—how he arises and what after that his character is.” “Quite so,” 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.”

Socrates “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.”