Book VIII, 543–551

543a “Very well, Glaucon. We have agreed that in the city destined for the highest excellence of government, women and children must be held in common, and all education too; pursuits in war and peace must likewise be shared, and those who have proved best in philosophy and in war must be their rulers.”

“We have agreed,” he said. 543b

“And we agreed to this as well: once the rulers have been appointed, they will take the soldiers and settle them in the dwellings we described, which contain nothing private for anyone but are common to all. Besides these dwellings, if you remember, we came to an agreement about what possessions they would have.”

“I do remember,” he said, “that we thought none of them should possess anything of the sort others now possess. Like athletes trained for war 543c and guardians, they should receive from the rest of the people, as payment for their guardianship, enough provisions for the year, and should care for themselves and the rest of the city.”

“You are right,” I said. “But come, now that we have finished this, let us recall where we turned aside, so that we may follow the same road again.”

“That is not difficult,” he said. “You had nearly completed your account of the city, much as you have now, saying that you considered a city such as you had described then good, and likewise a man resembling it—even though, it seems, you could have described 543d a still finer city and man. 544a You said, at all events, that the other constitutions were defective, if this one was right. Of the remaining constitutions, as I recall, you said there were four kinds worth discussing, to see their defects and the men who resemble them. Then, when we had seen them all and agreed who is the best man and who the worst, we could examine whether the best is happiest and the worst most miserable, or whether things stand otherwise. I asked which 544b four constitutions you meant; Polemarchus and Adeimantus interrupted just then, and you took up the discussion again and brought us to this point.”

“You remember it exactly,” I said.

“Then offer me the same grip again, like a wrestler, and try to answer the question I asked with what you meant to say then.”

“If I can,” I said.

“I too,” he said, “am eager to hear which four constitutions you meant. 544c”

“You will hear readily enough,” I said. “The ones I mean are precisely those that have names: first, the much-praised Cretan and Spartan constitution; second, the one called oligarchy, praised second and burdened with a host of evils; then democracy, different from oligarchy and arising next; and finally noble tyranny, different from all the others, the fourth and last disease of a city. Or do you know another form of constitution set apart in 544d some distinct class? Hereditary lordships, purchased kingships, and constitutions of that sort lie somewhere between these types; you would find no fewer among non-Greeks than among Greeks.”

“Many strange examples are reported,” he said.

“Do you realize, then,” I said, “that there must be as many kinds of human character as of constitutions? Or do you think constitutions spring from an oak tree or a rock, and not from the characters of the people in their cities, whose inclinations tip the scale and draw everything else after them? 544e”

“From nowhere else, I am sure,” he said.

“Then if there are five forms of city, there would also be five arrangements of the individual soul.”

“Of course.”

“We have already discussed the man resembling aristocracy, whom we rightly call good and just.”

545a “We have.”

“Must we now go through the inferior men: the lover of victory and honor, corresponding to the Spartan constitution, then the oligarchic and democratic men, and finally the tyrannical man? In this way, when we have seen the most unjust man and set him against the most just, our inquiry into how pure justice compares with pure injustice in the happiness or misery of the one who possesses it will be complete. Then we may either follow Thrasymachus 545b in pursuing injustice or follow the argument now appearing before us in pursuing justice.”

“That is exactly what we must do,” he said.

“Shall we proceed,” I said, “as we began, by examining characters in constitutions before those in individuals, since they show more clearly there? Shall we first examine the constitution devoted to honor—I know no other common name for it; we must call it timocracy or timarchy—and then the corresponding 545c man? After that we shall examine oligarchy and the oligarchic man; next we shall look at democracy and study the democratic man; and fourth, having entered and seen a city under tyranny, we shall look in turn into a tyrannical soul, and try to become competent judges of the matters we have proposed.”

“That would be a reasonable way,” he said, “to conduct our observation and judgment.”

“Come, then,” I said, “let us try to say how timocracy could arise from aristocracy. Or is this much simple: every constitution changes through the very part that holds power, when faction arises within it; whereas, so long as that part is united, however small it may be, change is impossible?”

“That is so.”

“How, then, Glaucon,” I said, “will our city undergo change, and in what way will the auxiliaries and the rulers fall into faction, both with one another and among themselves? Or shall we, like Homer, pray to the Muses to tell us how 545e strife first broke out, and let them speak to us in the lofty language of tragedy, playing and teasing as if we were children, while pretending to speak in earnest?”

“How would they speak?”

546a “Something like this. ‘It is hard for a city so constituted to be shaken; but since everything that comes into being must perish, even such an order will not endure forever. It too will be dissolved. Its dissolution will come about as follows. Not only plants rooted in the earth but living creatures on its surface have fertile and barren seasons of soul and body, whenever cycles of revolution bring their circuits to a close—short circuits for short-lived kinds, and opposite ones for the opposite kinds. Though the men whom you have educated as leaders of the city are wise, 546b with calculation aided by perception they will no more be able to hit upon the seasons of good and bad breeding for your race: these seasons will escape them, and at some point they will beget children when they should not. For a divine creature there is a cycle embraced by a perfect number; for a human creature, a cycle in which augmentations with powers and roots, having taken three distances and four limits, among terms that make alike and unlike, increase and diminish, have brought all their relations 546c into harmony and expressible ratio. Of these, a base of four to three joined to the five yields two harmonies when raised three times: one is equal-sided and equal in each dimension, a hundred times as great; the other is equal in one respect but oblong—consisting of a hundred numbers from the rational diagonals of five, diminished by one each, or from the irrational diagonals diminished by two, and a hundred cubes of three. This entire geometrical number governs better and worse births. 546d When your guardians fail to recognize these births and join brides to bridegrooms out of season, their children will be neither well-born nor fortunate. Their predecessors will appoint the best of these children to office; yet they will still be unworthy, and when they in turn come into their fathers’ positions of power as guardians, they will first begin to neglect us, giving less than due weight to the arts of the Muses, and then to physical training. Thus your young people will become less cultivated. From among them rulers will be appointed who are not well suited to 546e guarding and testing the races of Hesiod and those among 547a you—the gold, silver, bronze, and iron. When iron is mixed with silver and bronze with gold, there will arise difference and discordant inequality; wherever these arise, they always breed war and enmity. You must say that faction is born from this stock, wherever it arises.’”

“And we shall say the Muses answer correctly,” he said.

“They must,” I said, “since they are Muses. 547b”

“What,” he asked, “do the Muses say next?”

“‘When faction arose,’” I said, “‘each of the two races pulled in a different direction. The iron and bronze were drawn to making money and acquiring land, houses, gold, and silver. The gold and silver, being rich by nature rather than in need, led their souls toward virtue and the old order. As they struggled and strained against each other, they agreed on a compromise: they divided the land and houses 547c into private holdings; and the people whom they had formerly guarded as free friends and providers they then enslaved and made into subjects and servants, while they themselves took charge of war and the policing of those people.’”

“That seems to me how this transition comes about,” he said.

“Would this constitution, then,” I said, “stand somewhere between aristocracy and oligarchy?”

“Certainly.”

“Thus the change will take place. But once it has changed, how will the city be governed? Clearly, since it stands between the two, it will imitate the earlier constitution in some respects and oligarchy in others, 547d while also having something distinctive of its own.”

“Yes,” he said.

“By honoring its rulers, keeping its warrior class from farming, handicrafts, and every other money-making occupation, establishing common meals, and attending to physical training and the trials of war, will it not in all these respects imitate the earlier constitution?”

“Yes. 547e”

“But in being afraid to put wise men in authority, since it no longer possesses men of that kind who are pure and unwavering but only those of mixed character; in inclining toward spirited and simpler men, more fitted for war than for peace; in esteeming the stratagems and devices of war, and spending all its time at war—in most of these respects will it not have traits peculiar to itself? 548a”

“Yes.”

“And people of this kind,” I said, “will desire wealth, as those in oligarchies do. In the darkness they will pay fierce homage to gold and silver: they have storehouses and private treasure vaults where they can hide their wealth, as well as walled houses—private nests, in truth—where they will spend lavishly on women and anyone else they please. 548b”

“Most true,” he said.

“They will be sparing with their own money, because they prize it and cannot acquire it openly, but eager to spend other people's money to satisfy their desires. They will enjoy their pleasures in secret, like children running away from their father the law. They have been educated by force, not by persuasion, because they have neglected the true Muse, who comes with reasoning 548c and philosophy, and valued physical training above music and the arts.”

“You describe a constitution thoroughly mixed of good and evil,” he said.

“Mixed indeed,” I said. “Yet one thing stands out most plainly in it, because its spirited element rules: the love of victory and the love of honor.”

“Very much so,” he said.

“Such would be its origin and its nature,” I said. “We have sketched the outline of a constitution in words without painting in every detail: the outline is enough to show us the most just and most unjust men, whereas to pass through all constitutions and characters without leaving anything out would be an impossibly long task. 548d”

“Right,” he said.

“What sort of man corresponds to this constitution? How does he come to be, and what is he like?”

“I think,” Adeimantus said, “that in his love of victory he approaches this Glaucon here. 548e”

“Perhaps in that respect,” I said, “but I do not think he has the following qualities of Glaucon's.”

“Which qualities?”

“He must be more self-willed,” I said, “and somewhat less cultivated, though fond of the arts; he likes to listen, but is 549a in no way a skilled speaker. Such a man would be harsh to slaves, though he does not despise them as a sufficiently educated man does, but gentle to free people and thoroughly obedient to rulers. He loves authority and honor and thinks himself entitled to rule not because he is eloquent or for anything of that sort, but because of his military deeds and all that pertains to war; he loves exercise and hunting.”

“That is indeed the character of that constitution,” he said.

“And as a young man,” I said, “he might despise money, but the older he grows the more he will welcome it, since he has a share of the money-loving nature and is not pure in virtue, having been deprived of the best guardian. 549b”

“What guardian?” Adeimantus asked.

“Reason blended with cultivation,” I said. “When it is planted in a person, it alone remains there to preserve his virtue throughout life.”

“Well said,” he replied.

“And such,” I said, “is the timocratic young man, resembling the corresponding city. 549c”

“Certainly.”

“His origin is something like this,” I said. “Sometimes he is the young son of a good father living in a badly governed city, a father who shuns honors, offices, lawsuits, and all such meddlesomeness, and is willing to accept a lesser place in order to avoid trouble—”

“How,” he asked, “does the son come to be like that?”

“First,” I said, “he hears his mother complaining that her husband is not among the rulers and that this lowers her standing 549d among the other women. Then she sees that he takes no great interest in money and will not fight or quarrel for himself, either privately in the courts or in public, but bears it all without concern. She sees him always attending to his own mind, while neither paying her much honor nor treating her with disrespect. Vexed by all this, she says that his father is unmanly and far too easygoing, and repeats all the other things women are apt to sing out on such matters. 549e”

“And they are many,” Adeimantus said, “and quite characteristic of them.”

“You know,” I said, “that sometimes the household servants of such men, especially those thought loyal, secretly say such things to the sons. If they see a man who owes money whom the father does not pursue, or anyone else doing him an injury, they urge the son, when he grows up, to take revenge on all such people 550a and be more of a man than his father. Outside the house he hears and sees more of the same. Men in the city who mind their own affairs are called fools and held of little account; those who do not are honored and praised. The young man hears and sees all this, yet he also hears his father's words and observes his habits close at hand alongside those of others. He is pulled both ways: 550b his father waters and fosters the reasoning part of his soul, while the others foster its appetitive and spirited parts. Since he is not by nature a bad man, though he has kept bad company, he comes under these opposing influences and is drawn to a middle ground. He hands the rule within himself over to the middle part, the part that loves victory and is spirited, and becomes a proud man and a lover of honor.”

“I think,” he said, “you have described his development perfectly. 550c”

“We have, then,” I said, “the second constitution and the second man.”

“We have,” he said.

“Shall we next speak, in Aeschylus' phrase, of ‘another man stationed before another city’—or, rather, according to our plan, of the city first?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“The constitution following this one,” I said, “would be oligarchy, I believe.”

“What sort of arrangement,” he asked, “do you mean by oligarchy?”

“A constitution based on property assessments,” I said, “in which the rich rule and a poor man has no share in government. 550d”

“I understand,” he said.

“Must we not first say how timarchy changes into oligarchy?”

“Yes.”

“Why, even a blind man,” I said, “could see how it changes.”

“How?”

“That treasury of gold,” I said, “which each person fills for himself, ruins such a constitution. First the people devise ways of spending their money and bend the laws to serve that end; both they and their wives disobey them.”

“Likely enough,” he said. 550e

“Then, I imagine, as each sees and envies another, they make the whole population like themselves.”

“Likely enough.”

“And as they go further in the pursuit of wealth,” I said, “the more they honor it, the less they honor virtue. Or is the gulf between wealth and virtue not such that, when each is put on a scale, they always tilt in opposite directions?”

“It certainly is,” he said.

551a “So when wealth and the wealthy are honored in a city, virtue and good people are held in less esteem.”

“Clearly.”

“What is honored is cultivated, and what is dishonored neglected.”

“So it is.”

“In the end, instead of men who love victory and honor, they become lovers of money and wealth. They praise and admire the rich man and bring him to office, while they dishonor the poor man.”

“Indeed.”

“Then they enact a law fixing a property qualification 551b as the boundary of oligarchic rule: higher where the oligarchy is more extreme, lower where it is less so. They declare that anyone whose property falls short of the set assessment may hold no office. They enforce this either by armed force or by establishing the constitution beforehand through intimidation. Is that not how it happens?”

“It is.”

“Such, broadly speaking, is its establishment.”

“Yes,” he said, “but what is the character of the constitution, and what defects did we say it has? 551c”

“First,” I said, “consider its very principle of qualification. Imagine appointing ships' pilots this way, on the basis of property assessments, refusing to entrust a ship to a poor man even if he were the better navigator—”

“They would have a wretched voyage,” he said.

“Would it not be so for the command of anything else?”

“I think so.”

“Except a city?” I asked. “Or for a city too?”

“For a city most of all,” he said, “inasmuch as its government is the most difficult and the most important. 551d”

“That, then, would be one grave defect of oligarchy.”

“So it appears.”

“What next? Is this one any less grave?”

“What is it?”

“Such a city must be not one city but two—the city of the poor and the city of the rich, living in the same place and forever plotting against one another.”

“By Zeus, no less grave at all,” he said.

“And this is no fine thing either: they may be unable to wage a war, since they must either arm the multitude and fear them more than the enemy, 551e or fight without them and show themselves oligarchs in battle itself; besides, being lovers of money, they are unwilling to contribute funds.”

“No fine thing.”

“And what of the fault we censured long ago: meddling in many affairs, with the same people farming

543a “All right, Glaucon. We have agreed that in a city governed as well as possible, wives and children will be shared, and all education will be shared too. The same is true of work in war and peace. Its kings will be the people who have proved best at philosophy and war.”

“We have agreed to that,” he said. 543b

“And we agreed on this too: once the rulers take office, they will lead the soldiers to live in the housing we described, where no one has anything private and everything is shared. Besides their housing, we also agreed, if you remember, on what kind of property they will have.”

“I do remember,” he said. “We thought none of them should own the things other people own now. As competitors in war 543c and guardians, they should receive from everyone else each year the food they need as pay for guarding them. They should take care of themselves and the rest of the city.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Now that we’ve finished that, let’s remember where we turned away from our earlier path, so we can get back to it.”

“That’s not hard,” he said. “You had almost finished talking about the city, as you have now. You were saying that you considered a city like the one you had described a good city, 543d and a person like it a good person, though you apparently

544a had an even finer account of both the city and the person to give. You said the other cities were flawed if this one was right. As I recall, you said there were four kinds of constitution left that were worth discussing. We should see their faults and the people who resemble them. Then, when we have seen them all and agreed who is the best person and who the worst, we can examine whether the best is the happiest and the worst the most miserable, or whether it is otherwise. When I asked you what the four constitutions 544b were, Polemarchus and Adeimantus broke in. You took up their question, and that’s how we got here.”

“You remember it exactly,” I said.

“Then, like a wrestler, offer me the same hold again. When I ask the same question, try to say what you were going to say then.”

“If I can,” I said.

“And I really do want to hear,” he said, “what you meant by the four constitutions. 544c”

“You can hear it easily,” I said. “The kinds I mean have names. First is the one many people praise, the Cretan and Spartan constitution. Second, and second in people’s praise, is what is called oligarchy, a constitution full of serious evils. After it comes its opposite, democracy. And fourth comes that noble tyranny, different from all the others and the final disease of a city. Can you name any other type of constitution that is a clearly 544d distinct kind? Rulers with unchecked power, kingdoms that can be bought, and similar governments fall somewhere between these kinds. You can find no fewer of them among non-Greeks than among Greeks.”

“People certainly report many strange ones,” he said.

“Do you realize,” I said, “that there must be as many types of human character as there are types of constitution? Or do you think constitutions grow out of an oak tree or a rock, instead of from the characters of people in cities? Those characters tip the balance and draw everything else along with them. 544e”

“I certainly don’t think they come from anywhere else,” he said.

“Then if there are five kinds of cities, there will also be five arrangements of the soul in individuals.”

“Of course.”

“We have already described the person who resembles aristocracy. We rightly call that person good and just.”

545a “We have.”

“Should we now describe the worse ones? First the competitive person who loves honor and is shaped by the Spartan constitution, then the oligarchic and democratic people, and finally the tyrannical person? Once we’ve seen the most unjust person, we can set that person against the most just. Then our investigation of pure justice and pure injustice will be complete: how each affects the happiness or misery of the person who has it. We can then choose to pursue either injustice, as Thrasymachus advises, 545b or justice, as the argument now emerging advises.”

“Yes,” he said. “That is exactly what we should do.”

“Then, just as we began by examining character in constitutions before examining it in individuals, because it was easier to see there, should we do that now too? Let’s look first at the constitution that loves honor. I know no other common name for it; we must call it a timocracy or a rule of honor. We’ll look at the corresponding 545c person next. Then we’ll look at oligarchy and the oligarchic person, followed by democracy and the democratic person. Fourth, we’ll visit the city under a tyrant and inspect it, and then turn to the tyrannical soul. This should give us enough to judge the question we set out to answer.”

“That would be a reasonable way to observe and judge them,” he said.

“Come then,” I said, “let’s try to explain how timocracy might develop out of aristocracy. Isn’t one point simple? 545d Every constitution changes because of divisions within the group that holds power. While that group agrees, however small it is, change is impossible.”

“That’s so.”

“How, then, Glaucon,” I asked, “will our city change? How will its helpers and rulers fall into conflict with one another and among themselves? Shall we, like Homer, pray to the Muses to tell us how 545e conflict first arose? We can pretend they answer in lofty, tragic language, teasing and playing with us as with children while seeming to speak in earnest.”

“How would they answer?”

546a “Something like this. A city formed in this way is hard to disturb. But everything that comes into being eventually decays. So even this arrangement will not last forever; it will break down. Here is how. Not just plants in the ground, but animals on the earth have seasons when their souls and bodies reproduce well or poorly. These come when the cycles of their revolutions complete their circuits, short circuits for short-lived things and the opposite for the opposite kind. The rulers you have educated are wise, but they will no more be able 546b to calculate the fertile and infertile periods of your race through reason and observation. They will miss them, and sometimes produce children at the wrong time. For a divine creature, a perfect number marks the cycle of birth. For a human creature, there is a number in which the first multiplications, of powers and of roots, take three intervals and four terms. By making like and unlike, increasing and decreasing quantities, they bring all into proportion and into ratios that can be expressed. 546c Its base, four-thirds, when joined to five and increased three times, produces two harmonies. One has equal sides, a hundred times the base. The other has equal length in one respect but is oblong: a hundred numbers formed from the rational diagonals of five, each reduced by one, or from irrational diagonals reduced by two, and a hundred cubes of three. This entire geometric number controls better and worse births. 546d When your guardians do not know this and arrange marriages between brides and grooms at the wrong times, the children will lack natural ability and good fortune. The older guardians will appoint the best of these children, but they will still be unworthy. When they take over their fathers’ responsibilities as guardians, they will first begin to neglect our instructions. They will value education in music and the arts less than they should, and then they will neglect physical training. So your young people will grow less educated. The rulers chosen from them will not be very good at guarding 546e or at testing the kinds described by Hesiod and by you:

547a gold, silver, bronze, and iron. When iron mixes with silver and bronze with gold, difference and an uneven, discordant condition arise. Wherever they arise, they always breed war and hostility. We must say that conflict always comes from a generation of this kind.”

“And we’ll say the Muses gave the right answer,” he said.

“They must have,” I said, “since they are Muses. 547b”

“What do the Muses say next?” he asked.

“When conflict arose,” I said, “the two groups pulled in opposite directions. The iron and bronze group pulled toward making money and owning land, houses, gold, and silver. The gold and silver group, whose souls were rich by nature and who were not in need, led them toward virtue and the old order. As they struggled and resisted one another, they agreed on a compromise: they divided the land and houses into private property. The people whom they had previously protected 547c as free friends who provided for them they enslaved, making them laborers living on their land and servants in their houses. They themselves took charge of war and of guarding against them.”

“That seems to me how the change would come about,” he said.

“Wouldn’t that constitution lie somewhere between aristocracy and oligarchy?” I asked.

“Certainly.”

“That is how the transition takes place. Once it has taken place, what will the city be like? Since it lies between the other two, 547d won’t it clearly imitate the earlier constitution in some respects and oligarchy in others, while having some features of its own?”

“Yes,” he said.

“It will resemble the earlier constitution in honoring its rulers, keeping its fighting force away from farming, manual trades, and other ways of making money, establishing common meals, and taking care over physical training and military contests. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes. 547e”

“But it will be afraid to put wise people in charge. It no longer has people of that kind who are straightforward and firm; they are of mixed character. So it will favor spirited, simpler people who are naturally better suited to war than to peace. It will honor tricks and stratagems in war and will spend all its time fighting. Won’t most of these features be its own? 548a”

“Yes.”

“And these people will desire money,” I said, “like those in oligarchies. They will secretly honor gold and silver with a fierce passion. They will have storerooms and private treasuries where they can hide it, and walled-off homes that are practically private nests. There they can spend a great deal on their wives and anyone else they please. 548b”

“That’s very true,” he said.

“They will also be stingy with their own money, because they value it and cannot acquire it openly, but eager to spend other people’s money to satisfy their desires. They will enjoy their pleasures in secret, like children running away from their father, the law. Their education was based on force rather than persuasion. They neglected the true Muse of reasoned discussion and philosophy, and valued physical training above music and the arts. 548c”

“You are describing a constitution that is truly mixed, with both bad and good in it,” he said.

“It is mixed,” I said. “But one feature stands out above all others because its spirited part is in control: its love of competition and honor.”

“Very much so,” he said.

“So that is how this constitution arises and what it is like,” I said. “This is just an outline, not a detailed account. An outline is enough to let us see the most just and the most unjust person. To describe every constitution and every character without leaving anything out would be an impossibly long job. 548d”

“Quite right,” he said.

“What is the person who corresponds to this constitution like? How does he develop, and what kind of person does he become?”

“I think,” Adeimantus said, “that in his love of competition he would be rather like Glaucon here. 548e”

“Perhaps in that respect,” I said. “But I don’t think Glaucon has the following traits.”

“What traits?”

“He would have to be more stubborn and somewhat less cultivated,” I said, “though fond of music and the arts. He would like to listen, but would be no good at speaking. 549a Such a person would be harsh with slaves. Unlike a thoroughly educated person, he would not look down on slaves. But he would be gentle with free people and very obedient to rulers. He would love power and honor. He would claim the right to rule not because of his speeches or anything like that, but because of his deeds in war and matters connected with war. He would love exercise and hunting.”

“That is the character produced by that constitution,” he said.

“And wouldn’t such a person 549b look down on money when young,” I said, “but welcome it more and more as he got older? He shares the money-loving nature, and his virtue is not pure because he lacks the best guardian.”

“What guardian?” Adeimantus asked.

“Reason blended with education in music and the arts,” I said. “When it takes root in a person, it is the only guardian that lives with him throughout his life and preserves his virtue.”

“Well said,” he replied.

“That, then,” I said, “is the young man who loves honor, a match for the city we described.”

“Exactly,” he said. 549c

“And this is roughly how he develops,” I said. “Sometimes he is the young son of a good father who lives in a badly governed city. The father avoids honors, offices, lawsuits, and all such meddling. He is willing to accept a lower position to stay out of trouble.”

“How does the son become like that?” he asked.

“First,” I said, “he hears his mother complain that her husband is not one of the rulers, and that this lowers her standing 549d among the other women. She sees that he cares little about money and does not fight and quarrel in court over private matters or in public life, but takes it all calmly. She notices that he always attends to his own mind, while neither making much of her nor treating her badly. Upset by all this, she tells their son that his father is unmanly and far too easygoing. She says all the other sorts of things that women tend to go on about in such cases. 549e”

“Yes,” Adeimantus said, “plenty of things very typical of them.”

“And you know,” I said, “that servants in households like these, the ones who seem loyal, sometimes secretly say similar things to the sons. If they see someone who owes money and whom the father does not pursue, or someone doing him some other wrong, they urge the son to punish everyone like that when he grows up, 550a and to be more of a man than his father. When he goes outside, he hears and sees similar things. People who mind their own business in the city are called fools and held in little regard, while those who meddle in other people’s affairs are honored and praised. So the young man hears and sees all of this. He also hears what his father says and watches his father’s habits close up, beside those of other people. Both sides pull at him. 550b His father feeds and strengthens the reasoning part of his soul, while the others feed its desiring and spirited parts. Because he does not have a bad nature, but does keep bad company, these competing influences pull him toward the middle. He hands control within himself over to the middle, competitive, spirited part, and becomes a proud man who loves honor.”

“I think you’ve given a very complete account of how he develops,” he said. 550c

“So now,” I said, “we have the second constitution and the second kind of person.”

“We do,” he said.

“Shall we next, as Aeschylus puts it, speak of ‘another man stationed against another city’? Or, to follow our plan, should we discuss the city first?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“I think oligarchy is the constitution that comes after this one.”

“What arrangement do you mean by oligarchy?” he asked.

“The constitution based on property qualifications,” I said, “where the rich rule and the poor have no part in ruling. 550d”

“I understand,” he said.

“Shouldn’t we first explain how the change from rule by honor to oligarchy happens?”

“Yes.”

“And even a blind person could see how it happens,” I said.

“How?”

“The storehouse that each person fills with gold destroys that constitution,” I said. “First they find things to spend money on, and they change the laws to suit them. Neither they nor their wives obey the laws.”

“That seems likely,” he said. 550e

“Next, I imagine, each person watches and copies the others, until most of them become like that.”

“That seems likely.”

“Then,” I said, “as they go further in making money, the more they value it, the less they value virtue. Isn’t wealth as opposed to virtue as two things on a balance, with each always pulling the other way?”

“It certainly is,” he said.

551a “So when a city honors wealth and rich people, it honors virtue and good people less.”

“Clearly.”

“People pursue what is honored and neglect what is not.”

“Yes.”

“In the end, instead of people who love competition and honor, they become people who love profit and money. They praise and admire the rich person and give him public office, but they look down on the poor person.”

“Exactly.”

“Then they make a law setting a property threshold for participation in oligarchic government. 551b Where the oligarchy is stronger, they set it higher; where it is weaker, they set it lower. They announce that anyone whose property falls short of the set value cannot hold office. They enforce these measures by armed force, or establish this kind of constitution earlier by using threats. Isn’t that how it happens?”

“Yes.”

“That, in brief, is how it is established.”

“Yes,” he said. “But what is the character 551c of the constitution, and what are the faults we said it has?”

“First,” I said, “there is the nature of the qualification itself. Imagine choosing ship captains by property value, and refusing a poor man the job even if he is a better captain.”

“They would have a bad voyage,” he said.

“Doesn’t the same apply to the leadership of anything else?”

“I think so.”

“Except a city?” I asked. “Or does it apply to a city too?”

“More than anything,” he said, “because governing a city is the hardest and greatest task. 551d”

“So that is one serious fault oligarchy would have.”

“So it seems.”

“What about this one? Is it any less serious?”

“Which one?”

“Such a city must be not one city but two: a city of poor people and a city of rich people. They live in the same place and constantly plot against one another.”

“By Zeus, no less serious,” he said.

“And this is no good either. They may be unable to fight a war because, if they use the armed common people, they will fear them 551e more than the enemy. If they don’t use them, they will show in battle how few they really are. And they will not want to contribute money, since they love it.”

“That’s no good.”

“And what about the thing we criticized earlier: people meddling in many jobs, farming