BOOK VIII.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Plato and Benjamin Jowett
Anything but well.
There is another evil which is, perhaps, the greatest of all, and to which this State first begins to be liable.
What evil?
The ruined man, who has no occupation, once a spendthrift, now a pauper, still exists in the State. A man may sell all that he has, and another may acquire his property; yet after the sale he may dwell in the city of which he is no longer a part, being neither trader, nor artisan, nor horseman, nor hoplite, but only a poor, helpless creature.
B Yes, that is an evil which also first begins in this State.
The evil is certainly not prevented there; for oligarchies have both the extremes of great wealth and utter poverty.
True.
But think again: In his wealthy days, while he was spending his money, was a man of this sort a whit more good to the State for the purposes of citizenship? Or 258 did he only seem to be a member of the ruling body, although in truth he was neither ruler nor subject, but just a spendthrift?
C 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; Dof the stingers come all the criminal class, as they are termed.
Most true, he said.
Where there are paupers, there are thieves 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.
Eand other criminals. 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.
553 Then oligarchy, or the form of government in which the 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. 259
By all means.
Does not the timocratical man change into the oligarchical on this wise?
How?
The ruin of the timocratical man gives birth to the oligarchical. A time arrives when the representative of timocracy has a son: at first he begins by emulating his father and walking in his footsteps, but presently he sees him of a sudden Bfoundering 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.
His son begins life a ruined man and takes to money-making. And the son has seen and known all this—he is a ruined man, and his fear has taught him to knock ambition and Cpassion headforemost from his bosom’s throne; humbled by poverty 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.
D 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.
E And the avaricious, I said, is the oligarchical youth?
The oligarchical man and State resemble one another in their estimation of wealth: In their toiling and saving ways, in their want of cultivation. Yes, he said; at any rate the individual out of whom he came is like the State out of which oligarchy came.
Let us then consider whether there is any likeness between them.
554 Very good.
First, then, they resemble one another in the value which they set upon wealth? 260
Certainly.
Also in their penurious, laborious character; the individual only satisfies his necessary appetites, and confines his expenditure to them; his other desires he subdues, under the idea that they are unprofitable.