Section 544

but at any rate you were saying that the others are aberrations, 1 if this city is right. But regarding the other constitutions, my recollection is that you said there were four species 2 worth speaking of 3 and observing their defects 4 and the corresponding types of men, in order that when we had seen them all and come to an agreement about the best and the worst man, we might determine whether the best is the happiest and the worst most wretched or whether it is otherwise. 5 And when I was asking what were the four constitutions you had in mind, Polemarchus and Adeimantus thereupon broke in, and that was how you took up the discussion again and brought to this point. 6 Your memory is most exact, I said. A second time then, as in a wrestling-match, offer me the same hold, 7 and when I repeat my question try to tell me what you were then about to say. I will if I can, said I. And indeed, said he, I am eager myself to hear what four forms of government you meant. There will be no difficulty about that, said I. For those I mean are precisely those that have names 8 in common usage: that which the many praised, 9 your 10 Cretan and Spartan constitution; and the second in place and in honor, that which is called oligarchy, a constitution teeming with many ills, and its sequent counterpart and opponent, democracy ; and then the noble 11 tyranny surpassing them all, the fourth and final malady 12 of a state. Can you mention any other type 13 of government, I mean any other that constitutes a distinct species 14 ? For, no doubt, there are hereditary principalities 15 and purchased 16 kingships, and similar intermediate constitutions which one could find in even greater numbers among the barbarians than among the Greeks. 17 Certainly many strange ones are reported, he said. Are you aware, then, said I, that there must be as many types of character among men as there are forms of government 18 ? Or do you suppose that constitutions spring from the proverbial oak or rock 19 and not from the characters 20 of the citizens, which, as it were, by their momentum and weight in the scales 21 draw other things after them? They could not possibly come from any other source, he said. Then if the forms of government are five, the patterns of individual souls must be five also. Surely. Now we have already described the man corresponding to aristocracy 22 or the government of the best, whom we aver to be the truly good and just man.