Timaeus — Plato

Republic VIII. SOCRA lES, Adeimantus.

The extreme division of classes in such a State.

They dare not go to war.

The ruined man, who has no occupation, once a spendthrift, now a pauper, still exists in the State.

p. 258

The Jlymg and walking drones, stmgers or stingless.

Republic VIII. Socrates, Adeimantus.

Where there are paupers, there are thieves and other criminals.

did he only seem to be a member of the ruhng body, although in truth he was neither ruler nor subject, but just a spendthrift? As you say, he seemed to be a ruler, but was only a spendthrift. May we not say that this is the drone in the house who is like the drone in the honeycomb, and that the one is the plague of the city as the other is of the hive? Just so, Socrates.

And God has made the flying drones, Adeimantus, all without stings, whereas of the walking drones he has made some without stings but others have dreadful stings ; of the stingless class are those who in their old age end as paupers ; of the stingers come all the criminal class, as they are termed. Most true, he said.

Clearly then, whenever you see paupers in a State, somewhere in that neighbourhood there are hidden away thieves and cut-purses and robbers of temples, and all sorts of malefactors. Clearly. Well, I said, and in oligarchical States do you not find paupers ? Yes, he said ; nearly everybody is a pauper who is not a ruler.

And may we be so bold as to affirm that there are also many criminals to be found in them, rogues who have stings, and whom the authorities are careful to restrain by force? Certainly, we may be so bold. The existence of such persons is to be attributed to want of education, ill-training, and an evil constitution of the State? True. Such, then, is the form and such are the evils of oligarchy ; and there may be many other evils. Very likely.

Then oligarchy, or the form of government in which the 553 rulers are elected for their wealth, may now be dismissed. Let us next proceed to consider the nature and origin of the individual who answers to this State.

Fro7n the timocratical to the oligarchical man. 259 By all means. Republic Does not the timocratical man change into the oligarchical ^^^'' on thiswise? Socrates. Adeimantus.

How? ^, . ^ 1 he ruin of A time arrives when the representative of timocracy has the timoa son : at first he begins bv emulating his father and walking craticai man *^ - ^ , " gives birth to in his footsteps, but presently he sees him of a sudden the oUgarchu foundering against the State as upon a sunken reef, and he '^^^ and all that he has is lost ; he may have been a general or some other high officer who is brought to trial under a prejudice raised by informers, and either put to death, or exiled, or deprived of the privileges of a citizen, and all his property taken from him.

Nothing more likely. And the son has seen and known all this — he is a ruined His son begins man, and his fear has taught him to knock ambition and ''f<= ^ '■"'"«<J ' *-" man and takes passion headforemost from his bosom's throne ; humbled by to moneypoverty he takes to money-making and by mean and miserly ""^ '"^' savings and hard work gets a fortune together.

Is not such an one likely to seat the concupiscent and covetous element on the vacant throne and to suffer it to play the great king within him, girt with tiara and chain and scimitar? Most true, he replied.

And when he has made reason and spirit sit down on the ground obediently on either side of their sovereign, and taught them to know their place, he compels the one to think only of how lesser sums may be turned into larger ones, and will not allow the other to worship and admire anything but riches and rich men, or to be ambitious of anything so much as the acquisition of wealth and the means of acquiring it.

Of all changes, he said, there is none so speedy or so sure as the conversion of the ambitious youth into the avaricious one. And the avaricious, I said, is the oligarchical youth?

Yes, he said ; at any rate the individual out of whom he The oiigarchi. came is like the State out of which oligarchy came. cai man o J and State Let us then consider whether there is any likeness between resemble one «t,-^.^ another in them. , . their esti- Very good. mation of First, then, they resemble one another in the value which ^^^ they set upon wealth?