History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0405/04050.txt

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$Title{Republic Of Plato
Part III.}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Plato}
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$Subject{yes
democracy
true
state
tyranny
tyrant
liberty
does
how
whom}
$Date{1901}
$Log{}
Title:       Republic Of Plato
Book:        Book VIII: Four Forms Of Government.
Author:      Plato
Date:        1901
Translation: Benjamin Jowett, M.A.

Part III.

     At length they seize upon the citadel of the young man's soul, which they
perceive to be void of all accomplishments and fair pursuits and true words,
which make their abode in the minds of men who are dear to the gods, and are
their best guardians and sentinels.

     None better.

     False and boastful conceits and phrases mount upward and take their
place.

     They are certain to do so.

     And so the young man returns into the country of the lotus-eaters, and
takes up his dwelling there, in the face of all men; and if any help be sent
by his friends to the oligarchical part of him, the aforesaid vain conceits
shut the gate of the King's fastness; and they will neither allow the embassy
itself to enter, nor if private advisers offer the fatherly counsel of the
aged will they listen to them or receive them.  There is a battle and they
gain the day, and then modesty, which they call silliness, is ignominiously
thrust into exile by them, and temperance, which they nick-name unmanliness,
is trampled in the mire and cast forth; they persuade men that moderation and
orderly expenditure are vulgarity and meanness, and so, by the help of a
rabble of evil appetites, they drive them beyond the border.

     Yes, with a will.

     And when they have emptied and swept clean the soul of him who is now in
their power and who is being initiated by them in great mysteries, the next
thing is to bring back to their house insolence and anarchy and waste and
impudence in bright array, having garlands on their heads, and a great company
with them, hymning their praises and calling them by sweet names; insolence
they term "breeding," and anarchy "liberty," and waste "magnificence," and
impudence "courage." And so the young man passes out of his original nature,
which was trained in the school of necessity, into the freedom and libertinism
of useless and unnecessary pleasures.

     Yes, he said, the change in him is visible enough.

     After this he lives on, spending his money and labor and time on
unnecessary pleasures quite as much as on necessary ones; but if he be
fortunate, and is not too much disordered in his wits, when years have
elapsed, and the heyday of passion is over - supposing that he then readmits
into the city some part of the exiled virtues, and does not wholly give
himself up to their successors - in that case he balances his pleasures and
lives in a sort of equilibrium, putting the government of himself into the
hands of the one which comes first and wins the turn; and when he has had
enough of that, then into the hands of another; he despises none of them, but
encourages them all equally.

     Very true, he said.

     Neither does he receive or let pass into the fortress any true word of
advice; if anyone says to him that some pleasures are the satisfactions of
good and noble desires, and others of evil desires, and that he ought to use
and honor some, and chastise and master the others - whenever this is repeated
to him he shakes his head and says that they are all alike, and that one is as
good as another.

     Yes, he said; that is the way with him.

     Yes, I said, he lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour;
and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes
a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn at gymnastics;
sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of
a philosopher; often he is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says
and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of anyone who is
a warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more in
that.  His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he
terms joy and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on.

     Yes, he replied, he is all liberty and equality.

     Yes, I said; his life is motley and manifold and an epitome of the lives
of many; he answers to the State which we described as fair and spangled. And
many a man and many a woman will take him for their pattern, and many a
constitution and many an example of manners are contained in him.

     Just so.

     Let him then be set over against democracy; he may truly be called the
democratic man.

     Let that be his place, he said.

     Last of all comes the most beautiful of all, man and State alike, tyranny
and the tyrant; these we have now to consider.

     Quite true, he said.

     Say then, my friend, in what manner does tyranny arise? - that it has a
democratic origin is evident.

     Clearly.

     And does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same manner as
democracy from oligarchy - I mean, after a sort?

     How?

     The good which oligarchy proposed to itself and the means by which it was
maintained was excess of wealth - am I not right?

     Yes.

     And the insatiable desire of wealth and the neglect of all other things
for the sake of money-getting were also the ruin of oligarchy?

     True.

     And democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable desire brings her
to dissolution?

     What good?

     Freedom, I replied; which, as they tell you in a democracy, is the glory
of the State - and that therefore in a democracy alone will the freeman of
nature deign to dwell.

     Yes; the saying is in everybody's mouth.

     I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the
neglect of other things introduce the change in democracy, which occasions a
demand for tyranny.

     How so?

     When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil cup-bearers
presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine of
freedom, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a plentiful
draught, she calls them to account and punishes them, and says that they are
cursed oligarchs.

     Yes, he replied, a very common occurrence.

     Yes, I said; and loyal citizens are insultingly termed by her "slaves"
who hug their chains, and men of naught; she would have subjects who are like
rulers, and rulers who are like subjects: these are men after her own heart,
whom she praises and honors both in private and public.  Now, in such a State,
can liberty have any limit?

     Certainly not.

     By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses, and ends by
getting among the animals and infecting them.

     How do you mean?

     I mean that the father grows accustomed to descend to the level of his
sons and to fear them, and the son is on a level with his father, he having no
respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is his freedom; and
the metic is equal with the citizen, and the citizen with the metic, and the
stranger is quite as good as either.

     Yes, he said, that is the way.

     And these are not the only evils, I said - there are several lesser ones:
In such a state of society the master fears and flatters his scholars, and the
scholars despise their masters and tutors; young and old are all alike; and
the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in
word or deed; and old men condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry
and gayety; they are loth to be thought morose and authoritative, and
therefore they adopt the manners of the young.

     Quite true, he said.

     The last extreme of popular liberty is when the slave bought with money,
whether male or female, is just as free as his or her purchaser; nor must I
forget to tell of the liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to
each other.

     Why not, as Aeschylus says, utter the word which rises to our lips?

     That is what I am doing, I replied; and I must add that no one who does
not know would believe how much greater is the liberty which the animals who
are under the dominion of man have in a democracy than in any other State:
for, truly, the she-dogs, as the proverb says, are as good as their
she-mistresses, and the horses and asses have a way of marching along with all
the rights and dignities of freemen; and they will run at anybody who comes in
their way if he does not leave the road clear for them: and all things are
just ready to burst with liberty.

    When I take a country walk, he said, I often experience what you describe.
You and I have dreamed the same thing.

     And above all, I said, and as the result of all, see how sensitive the
citizens become; they chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority, and
at length, as you know, they cease to care even for the laws, written or
unwritten; they will have no one over them.

     Yes, he said, I know it too well.

     Such, my friend, I said, is the fair and glorious beginning out of which
springs tyranny.

     Glorious indeed, he said.  But what is the next step?

     The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; the same disease
magnified and intensified by liberty overmasters democracy - the truth being
that the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the
opposite direction; and this is the case not only in the seasons and in
vegetable and animal life, but above all in forms of government.

     True.

     The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to
pass into excess of slavery.

     Yes, the natural order.

     And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated
form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty?

     As we might expect.

     That, however, was not, as I believe, your question - you rather desired
to know what is that disorder which is generated alike in oligarchy and
democracy, and is the ruin of both?

     Just so, he replied.

     Well, I said, I meant to refer to the class of idle spendthrifts, of whom
the more courageous are the leaders and the more timid the followers, the same
whom we were comparing to drones, some stingless, and others having stings.

     A very just comparison.

     These two classes are the plagues of every city in which they are
generated, being what phlegm and bile are to the body.  And the good physician
and lawgiver of the State ought, like the wise bee-master, to keep them at a
distance and prevent, if possible, their ever coming in; and if they have
anyhow found a way in, then he should have them and their cells cut out as
speedily as possible.

     Yes, by all means, he said.

     Then, in order that we may see clearly what we are doing, let us imagine
democracy to be divided, as indeed it is, into three classes; for in the first
place freedom creates rather more drones in the democratic than there were in
the oligarchical State.

     That is true.

     And in the democracy they are certainly more intensified.

     How so?

     Because in the oligarchical State they are disqualified and driven from
office, and therefore they cannot train or gather strength; whereas in a
democracy they are almost the entire ruling power, and while the keener sort
speak and act, the rest keep buzzing about the bema and do not suffer a word
to be said on the other side; hence in democracies almost everything is
managed by the drones.

     Very true, he said.

Then there is another class which is always being severed from the mass.

     What is that?

     They are the orderly class, which in a nation of traders is sure to be
the richest.

     Naturally so.

     They are the most squeezable persons and yield the largest amount of
honey to the drones.

     Why, he said, there is little to be squeezed out of people who have
little.

     And this is called the wealthy class, and the drones feed upon them.

     That is pretty much the case, he said.

     The people are a third class, consisting of those who work with their own
hands; they are not politicians, and have not much to live upon.  This, when
assembled, is the largest and most powerful class in a democracy.

     True, he said; but then the multitude is seldom willing to congregate
unless they get a little honey.

     And do they not share?  I said.  Do not their leaders deprive the rich of
their estates and distribute them among the people; at the same time taking
care to reserve the larger part for themselves?

     Why, yes, he said, to that extent the people do share.

     And the persons whose property is taken from them are compelled to defend
themselves before the people as they best can?

     What else can they do?

     And then, although they may have no desire of change, the others charge
them with plotting against the people and being friends of oligarchy?

     True.

     And the end is that when they see the people, not of their own accord,
but through ignorance, and because they are deceived by informers, seeking to
do them wrong, then at last they are forced to become oligarchs in reality;
they do not wish to be, but the sting of the drones torments them and breeds
revolution in them.

     That is exactly the truth.

     Then come impeachments and judgments and trials of one another.

     True.

     The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse
into greatness.

     Yes, that is their way.

     This, and no other, is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he
first appears above ground he is a protector.

     Yes, that is quite clear.

     How, then, does a protector begin to change into a tyrant?  Clearly when
he does what the man is said to do in the tale of the Arcadian temple of
Lycaean Zeus.

     What tale?

     The tale is that he who has tasted the entrails of a single human victim
minced up with the entrails of other victims is destined to become a wolf. Did
you never hear it?

     Oh, yes.

     And the protector of the people is like him; having a mob entirely at his
disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen; by the
favorite method of false accusation he brings them into court and murders
them, making the life of man to disappear, and with unholy tongue and lips
tasting the blood of his fellow-citizens; some he kills and others he
banishes, at the same time hinting at the abolition of debts and partition of
lands: and after this, what will be his destiny?  Must he not either perish at
the hands of his enemies, or from being a man become a wolf - that is, a
tyrant?

     Inevitably.

     This, I said, is he who begins to make a party against the rich?

     The same.

     After a while he is driven out, but comes back, in spite of his enemies,
a tyrant full grown.

     That is clear.

     And if they are unable to expel him, or to get him condemned to death by
a public accusation, they conspire to assasinate him.

     Yes, he said, that is their usual way.

     Then comes the famous request for a body-guard, which is the device of
all those who have got thus far in their tyrannical career - "Let not the
people's friend," as they say, "be lost to them."

     Exactly.

     The people readily assent; all their fears are for him - they have none
for themselves.

     Very true.

     And when a man who is wealthy and is also accused of being an enemy of
the people sees this, then, my friend, as the oracle said to Croesus,

     "By pebbly Hermus's shore he flees and rests not, and is not ashamed to
     be a coward."^1

[Footnote 1: Herodotus, i. 55.]

     And quite right too, said he, for if he were, he would never be ashamed
again.

     But if he is caught he dies.

     Of course.

     And he, the protector of whom we spoke, is to be seen, not "larding the
plain" with his bulk, but himself the overthrower of many, standing up in the
chariot of State with the reins in his hand, no longer protector, but tyrant
absolute.

     No doubt, he said.

     And now let us consider the happiness of the man, and also of the State
in which a creature like him is generated.

     Yes, he said, let us consider that.

     At first, in the early days of his power, he is full of smiles, and he
salutes everyone whom he meets; he to be called a tyrant, who is making
promises in public and also in private! liberating debtors, and distributing
land to the people and his followers, and wanting to be so kind and good to
everyone!

     Of course, he said.

     But when he has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and
there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or
other, in order that the people may require a leader.

     To be sure.

     Has he not also another object, which is that they may be impoverished by
payment of taxes, and thus compelled to devote themselves to their daily wants
and therefore less likely to conspire against him?

     Clearly.

     And if any of them are suspected by him of having notions of freedom, and
of resistance to his authority, he will have a good pretext for destroying
them by placing them at the mercy of the enemy; and for all these reasons the
tyrant must be always getting up a war.

     He must.

     Now he begins to grow unpopular.

     A necessary result.

     Then some of those who joined in setting him up, and who are in power,
speak their minds to him and to one another, and the more courageous of them
cast in his teeth what is being done.

     Yes, that may be expected.

     And the tyrant, if he means to rule, must get rid of them; he cannot stop
while he has a friend or an enemy who is good for anything.

     He cannot.

     And therefore he must look about him and see who is valiant, who is
high-minded, who is wise, who is wealthy; happy man, he is the enemy of them
all, and must seek occasion against them whether he will or no, until he has
made a purgation of the State.

     Yes, he said, and a rare purgation.

     Yes, I said, not the sort of purgation which the physicians make of the
body; for they take away the worse and leave the better part, but he does the
reverse.

     If he is to rule, I suppose that he cannot help himself.

     What a blessed alternative, I said: to be compelled to dwell only with
the many bad, and to be by them hated, or not to live at all!

     Yes, that is the alternative.

     And the more detestable his actions are to the citizens the more
satellites and the greater devotion in them will he require?

     Certainly.

     And who are the devoted band, and where will he procure them?

     They will flock to him, he said, of their own accord, if he pays them.

     By the dog!  I said, here are more drones, of every sort and from every
land.

     Yes, he said, there are.

     But will he not desire to get them on the spot?

     How do you mean?

     He will rob the citizens of their slaves; he will then set them free and
enrol them in his body-guard.

     To be sure, he said; and he will be able to trust them best of all.

     What a blessed creature, I said, must this tyrant be; he has put to death
the others and has these for his trusted friends.

     Yes, he said; they are quite of his sort.

     Yes, I said, and these are the new citizens whom he has called into
existence, who admire him and are his companions, while the good hate and
avoid him.

     Of course.

     Verily, then, tragedy is wise a thing and Euripides a great tragedian.

     Why so?

     Why, because he is the author of the pregnant saying,

     "Tyrants are wise by living with the wise;"

and he clearly meant to say that they are the wise whom the tyrant makes his
companions.

     Yes, he said, and he also praises tyranny as godlike; and many other
things of the same kind are said by him and by the other poets.

     And therefore, I said, the tragic poets being wise men will forgive us
and any others who live after our manner, if we do not receive them into our
State, because they are the eulogists of tyranny.

     Yes, he said, those who have the wit will doubtless forgive us.

     But they will continue to got to other cities and attract mobs, and hire
voices fair and loud and persuasive, and draw the cities over to tyrannies and
democracies.

     Very true.

     Moreover, they are paid for this and receive honor - the greatest honor,
as might be expected, from tyrants, and the next greatest from democracies;
but the higher they ascend our constitution hill, the more their reputation
fails, and seems unable from shortness of breath to proceed farther.

     True.

     But we are wandering from the subject: Let us therefore return and
inquire how the tyrant will maintain that fair, and numerous, and various, and
ever-changing army of his.

     If, he said, there are sacred treasures in the city, he will confiscate
and spend them; and in so far as the fortunes of attainted persons may
suffice, he will be able to diminish the taxes which he would otherwise have
to impose upon the people.

     And when these fail?

     Why, clearly, he said, then he and his boon companions, whether male or
female, will be maintained out of his father's estate.

     You mean to say that the people, from whom he has derived his being, will
maintain him and his companions?

     Yes, he said; they cannot help themselves.

     But what if the people fly into a passion, and aver that a grown-up son
ought not to be supported by his father, but that the father should be
supported by the son?  The father did not bring him into being, or settle him
in life, in order that when his son became a man he should himself be the
servant of his own servants and should support him and his rabble of slaves
and companions; but that his son should protect him, and that by his help he
might be emancipated from the government of the rich and aristocratic, as they
are termed.  And so he bids him and his companions depart, just as any other
father might drive out of the house a riotous son and his undesirable
associates.

     By heaven, he said, then the parent will discover what a monster he has
been fostering in his bosom; and, when he wants to drive him out, he will find
that he is weak and his son strong.

     Why, you do not mean to say that the tyrant will use violence?  What! eat
his father if he opposes him?

     Yes, he will, having first disarmed him.

     Then he is a parricide, and a cruel guardian of an aged parent; and this
h is real tyranny, about which there can be no longer a mistake: as the saying
is, the people who would escape the smoke which is the slavery of freemen, has
fallen into the fire which is the tyranny of slaves.  Thus liberty, getting
out of all order and reason, passes into the harshest and bitterest form of
slavery.

     True, he said.

     Very well; and may we not rightly say that we have sufficiently discussed
the nature of tyranny, and the manner of the transition from democracy to
tyranny?

     Yes, quite enough, he said.