If I can.
I’d at least like to hear what four constitutions you meant.
[c] That won’t be difficult since they’re the ones for which we have names. First, there’s the constitution praised by most people, namely, the Cretan or Laconian.4 The second, which is also second in the praise it receives, is called oligarchy and is filled with a host of evils. The next in order, and antagonistic to it, is democracy. And finally there is genuine tyranny, surpassing all of them, the fourth and last of the diseased cities. Or can you think of another type of constitution—I mean another whose form is distinct from these? Dynasties and purchased kingships and other constitutions of that sort, which one finds no less among the barbarians than [d] among the Greeks, are somewhere intermediate between these four.
At any event, many strange ones are indeed talked about.
And do you realize that of necessity there are as many forms of human character as there are of constitutions? Or do you think that constitutions are born “from oak or rock”5 and not from the characters of the people who live in the cities governed by them, which tip the scales, so to speak, and drag the rest along with them? [e]
No, I don’t believe they come from anywhere else.
Then, if there are five forms of city, there must also be five forms of the individual soul.
Of course.
Now, we’ve already described the one that’s like aristocracy, which is rightly said to be good and just.
We have. [545]
Then mustn’t we next go through the inferior ones, namely, the victory-loving and honor-loving (which corresponds to the Laconian form of constitution), followed by the oligarchic, the democratic, and the tyrannical, so that, having discovered the most unjust of all, we can oppose him to the most just? In this way, we can complete our investigation into how pure justice and pure injustice stand, with regard to the happiness or wretchedness of those who possess them, and either be persuaded by Thrasymachus to practice injustice or by the argument that is now coming to light to practice justice. [b]
That’s absolutely what we have to do.
Then, just as we began by looking for the virtues of character in a constitution, before looking for them in the individual, thinking that they’d be clearer in the former, shouldn’t we first examine the honor-loving constitution? I don’t know what other name there is for it, but it should be called either timocracy or timarchy. Then shouldn’t we examine an individual who is related to that constitution, and, after that, oligarchy and an oligarchic person, and democracy and a democratic person? And finally, having come to a city under a tyrant and having examined it, [c] shouldn’t we look into a tyrannical soul, trying in this way to become adequate judges of the topic we proposed to ourselves?
That would be a reasonable way for us to go about observing and judging, at any rate.
Well, then, let’s try to explain how timocracy emerges from aristocracy. Or is it a simple principle that the cause of change in any constitution is civil war breaking out within the ruling group itself, but that if this group—however small it is—remains of one mind, the constitution cannot be [d] changed?
Yes, that’s right.
How, then, Glaucon, will our city be changed? How will civil war arise, either between the auxiliaries and the rulers or within either group? Or do you want us to be like Homer and pray to the Muses to tell us “how [e] civil war first broke out?”6 And shall we say that they speak to us in tragic tones, as if they were in earnest, playing and jesting with us as if we were children?
What will they say?
[546] Something like this. “It is hard for a city composed in this way to change, but everything that comes into being must decay. Not even a constitution such as this will last forever. It, too, must face dissolution. And this is how it will be dissolved. All plants that grow in the earth, and also all animals that grow upon it, have periods of fruitfulness and barrenness of both soul and body as often as the revolutions complete the circumferences of their circles. These circumferences are short for the short-lived, and the opposite for their opposites.7 Now, the people you have educated to be leaders in your city, even though they are wise, still won’t, through calculation [b] together with sense perception, hit upon the fertility and barrenness of the human species, but it will escape them, and so they will at some time beget children when they ought not to do so. For the birth of a divine creature, there is a cycle comprehended by a perfect number. For a human being, it is the first number in which are found root and square increases, comprehending three lengths and four terms, of elements that make things like and unlike, that cause them to increase and decrease, and that render [c] all things mutually agreeable and rational in their relations to one another. Of these elements, four and three, married with five, give two harmonies when thrice increased. One of them is a square, so many times a hundred. The other is of equal length one way but oblong. One of its sides is one hundred squares of the rational diameter of five diminished by one each or one hundred squares of the irrational diameter diminished by two each. The other side is a hundred cubes of three. This whole geometrical number controls better and worse births.8 And when your rulers, through ignorance of these births, join brides and grooms at the wrong time, the children will be neither good natured nor fortunate. The older generation will [d] choose the best of these children but they are unworthy nevertheless, and when they acquire their fathers’ powers, they will begin, as guardians, to neglect us Muses. First, they will have less consideration for music and poetry than they ought, then they will neglect physical training, so that your young people will become less well educated in music and poetry. Hence, rulers chosen from among them won’t be able to guard well the [e] testing of the golden, silver, bronze, and iron races, which are Hesiod’s and your own.9 The intermixing of iron with silver and bronze with gold that results will engender lack of likeness and unharmonious inequality, [547] and these always breed war and hostility wherever they arise. Civil war, we declare, is always and everywhere ‘of this lineage’.”10
And we’ll declare that what the Muses say is right.
It must be, since they’re Muses.
What do the Muses say after that? [b]
Once civil war breaks out, both the iron and bronze types pull the constitution towards money-making and the acquisition of land, houses, gold, and silver, while both the gold and silver types—not being poor, but by nature rich or rich in their souls—lead the constitution towards virtue and the old order. And thus striving and struggling with one another, they compromise on a middle way: They distribute the land and houses as private property, enslave and hold as serfs and servants those whom they previously guarded as free friends and providers of upkeep, and occupy themselves with war and with guarding against those whom [c] they’ve enslaved.
I think that is the way this transformation begins.
Then, isn’t this constitution a sort of midpoint between aristocracy and oligarchy?
Absolutely.
Then, if that’s its place in the transformation, how will it be managed after the change? Isn’t it obvious that it will imitate the aristocratic constitution in some respects and oligarchy in others, since it’s between them, and that [d] it will also have some features of its own?
That’s right.
The rulers will be respected; the fighting class will be prevented from taking part in farming, manual labor, or other ways of making money; it will eat communally and devote itself to physical training and training for war; and in all such ways, won’t the constitution be like the aristocratic one?
Yes.
On the other hand, it will be afraid to appoint wise people as rulers, on the grounds that they are no longer simple and earnest but mixed, and [e] will incline towards spirited and simpler people, who are more naturally suited for war than peace; it will value the tricks and stratagems of war [548] and spend all its time making war. Aren’t most of these qualities peculiar to it?
Yes.
Such people will desire money just as those in oligarchies do, passionately adoring gold and silver in secret. They will possess private treasuries and storehouses, where they can keep it hidden, and have houses to enclose them, like private nests, where they can spend lavishly either on women [b] or on anyone else they wish.
That’s absolutely true.
They’ll be mean with their own money, since they value it and are not allowed to acquire it openly, but they’ll love to spend other people’s because of their appetites. They’ll enjoy their pleasures in secret, running away from the law like boys from their father, for since they’ve neglected the true Muse—that of discussion and philosophy—and have valued physical training more than music and poetry, they haven’t been educated by [c] persuasion but by force.
The constitution you’re discussing is certainly a mixture of good and bad.
Yes, it is mixed, but because of the predominance of the spirited element, one thing alone is most manifest in it, namely, the love of victory and the love of honor.
Very much so.
This, then, is the way this constitution would come into being and what it would be like, for, after all, we’re only sketching the shape of the constitution in theory, not giving an exact account of it, since even from [d] a sketch we’ll be able to discern the most just and the most unjust person. And, besides, it would be an intolerably long task to describe every constitution and every character without omitting any detail.
That’s right.
Then who is the man that corresponds to this constitution? How does he come to be, and what sort of man is he?
I think, said Adeimantus, that he’d be very like Glaucon here, as far as the love of victory is concerned.
In that respect, I said, he might be, but, in the following ones, I don’t think his nature would be similar.
[e] Which ones?
He’d be more obstinate and less well trained in music and poetry, though he’s a lover of it, and he’d love to listen to speeches and arguments, though he’s by no means a rhetorician. He’d be harsh to his slaves rather than merely looking down on them as an adequately educated person does. [549] He’d be gentle to free people and very obedient to rulers, being himself a lover of ruling and a lover of honor. However, he doesn’t base his claim to rule on his ability as a speaker or anything like that, but, as he’s a lover of physical training and a lover of hunting, on his abilities and exploits in warfare and warlike activities.
Yes, that’s the character that corresponds to this constitution.
Wouldn’t such a person despise money when he’s young but love it more and more as he grows older, because he shares in the money-loving nature and isn’t pure in his attitude to virtue? And isn’t that because he [b] lacks the best of guardians?
What guardian is that? Adeimantus said.
Reason, I said, mixed with music and poetry, for it alone dwells within the person who possesses it as the lifelong preserver of his virtue.
Well put.
That, then, is a timocratic youth; he resembles the corresponding city.
Absolutely. [c]
And he comes into being in some such way as this. He’s the son of a good father who lives in a city that isn’t well governed, who avoids honors, office, lawsuits, and all such meddling in other people’s affairs, and who is even willing to be put at a disadvantage in order to avoid trouble.
Then how does he come to be timocratic?
When he listens, first, to his mother complaining that her husband isn’t one of the rulers and that she’s at a disadvantage among the other women as a result. Then she sees that he’s not very concerned about money and that he doesn’t fight back when he’s insulted, whether in private or in [d] public in the courts, but is indifferent to everything of that sort. She also sees him concentrating his mind on his own thoughts, neither honoring nor dishonoring her overmuch. Angered by all this, she tells her son that his father is unmanly, too easy-going, and all the other things that women repeat over and over again in such cases. [e]
Yes, Adeimantus said, it’s like them to have many such complaints.
You know, too, I said, that the servants of men like that—the ones who are thought to be well disposed to the family—also say similar things to the son in private. When they see the father failing to prosecute someone who owes him money or has wronged him in some other way, they urge the son to take revenge on all such people when he grows up and to be more of a man than his father. The boy hears and sees the same kind of [550] things when he goes out: Those in the city who do their own work are called fools and held to be of little account, while those who meddle in other people’s affairs are honored and praised. The young man hears and sees all this, but he also listens to what his father says, observes what he does from close at hand, and compares his ways of living with those of the others. So he’s pulled by both. His father nourishes the rational part [b] of his soul and makes it grow; the others nourish the spirited and appetitive parts. Because he isn’t a bad man by nature but keeps bad company, when he’s pulled in these two ways, he settles in the middle and surrenders the rule over himself to the middle part—the victory-loving and spirited part—and becomes a proud and honor-loving man.
I certainly think that you’ve given a full account of how this sort of man comes to be.
Then we now have the second constitution and the second man. [c]
We have.
Then shall we next talk, as Aeschylus says, of “another man ordered like another city,”11 or shall we follow our plan and talk about the city first?
We must follow our plan.
And I suppose that the one that comes after the present constitution is oligarchy.
And what kind of constitution would you call oligarchy?
The constitution based on a property assessment, in which the rich rule, [d] and the poor man has no share in ruling.
I understand.
So mustn’t we first explain how timarchy is transformed into oligarchy?
Yes.
And surely the manner of this transformation is clear even to the blind.
What is it like?
The treasure house filled with gold, which each possesses, destroys the constitution. First, they find ways of spending money for themselves, then they stretch the laws relating to this, then they and their wives disobey the laws altogether.
They would do that.
And as one person sees another doing this and emulates him, they make [e] the majority of the others like themselves.
They do.
From there they proceed further into money-making, and the more they value it, the less they value virtue. Or aren’t virtue and wealth so opposed that if they were set on a scales, they’d always incline in opposite directions?
That’s right.
So, when wealth and the wealthy are valued or honored in a city, virtue [551] and good people are valued less.
Clearly.
And what is valued is always practiced, and what isn’t valued is neglected.
That’s right.
Then, in the end, victory-loving and honor-loving men become lovers of making money, or money-lovers. And they praise and admire wealthy people and appoint them as rulers, while they dishonor poor ones.
Certainly.
Then, don’t they pass a law that is characteristic of an oligarchic constitution, one that establishes a wealth qualification—higher where the constitution is more oligarchic, less where it’s less so—and proclaims that those [b] whose property doesn’t reach the stated amount aren’t qualified to rule? And they either put this through by force of arms, or else, before it comes to that, they terrorize the people and establish their constitution that way. Isn’t that so?
Of course it is.
Generally speaking, then, that’s the way this kind of constitution is established.
Yes, but what is its character? And what are the faults that we said it contained? [c]
First of all, the very thing that def
ines it is one, for what would happen if someone were to choose the captains of ships by their wealth, refusing to entrust the ship to a poor person even if he was a better captain?
They would make a poor voyage of it.
And isn’t the same true of the rule of anything else whatsoever?
I suppose so.
Except a city? Or does it also apply to a city?
To it most of all, since it’s the most difficult and most important kind of rule.
That, then, is one major fault in oligarchy. [d]
Apparently.
And what about this second fault? Is it any smaller than the other?
What fault?
That of necessity it isn’t one city but two—one of the poor and one of the rich—living in the same place and always plotting against one another.
By god, that’s just as big a fault as the first.
And the following is hardly a fine quality either, namely, that oligarchs probably aren’t able to fight a war, for they’d be compelled either to arm and use the majority, and so have more to fear from them than the enemy, or not to use them and show up as true oligarchs—few in number—on [e] the battlefield. At the same time, they’d be unwilling to pay mercenaries, because of their love of money.
That certainly isn’t a fine quality either.
And what about the meddling in other people’s affairs that we condemned before? Under this constitution, won’t the same people be farmers, money-makers, and soldiers simultaneously? And do you think it’s right for things to be that way? [552]
Not at all.
Now, let’s see whether this constitution is the first to admit the greatest of all evils.
Which one is that?
Allowing someone to sell all his possessions and someone else to buy them and then allowing the one who has sold them to go on living in the city, while belonging to none of its parts, for he’s neither a money-maker, a craftsman, a member of the cavalry, or a hoplite, but a poor person without means.
It is the first to allow that. [b]
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