The Decline of Cities (Book VIII)

Now, I said, let us go back to where we turned aside, to the four bad constitutions and the four kinds of men that correspond to them. For only when we have seen the most unjust man, and compared him with the most just, can we decide whether the just man is happiest and the unjust most wretched.

There are four of them, besides ours, which we call aristocracy, the rule of the best. First, the much-praised constitution of Crete and Sparta, which I call timocracy, the rule of honor. Second, oligarchy, full of evils. Third, democracy, which follows from it. And fourth and last, noble tyranny, which surpasses all the others, the fourth and final disease of a city.

How does our city decline? Every constitution changes because of dissension within its ruling class. Even a city so well founded will not last forever, for everything that comes into being must perish. There are times for fertility and infertility, governed by a certain number, a very complicated one, which our rulers, however wise, will one day miscalculate, so that children will be born at the wrong time, and of inferior nature. When they become guardians, they will neglect music and then gymnastics, and they will no longer test the gold, silver, bronze and iron in the souls of the citizens, and iron will be mixed with silver and bronze with gold, and from this mixture will come inequality and discord.

Then the guardians will divide the land and houses among themselves and enslave their fellow citizens, whom they used to protect. This is timocracy. Its rulers will be spirited and warlike, lovers of honor and victory, and also secretly lovers of money, which they will hoard in their houses, spending other people's money and sparing their own. The timocratic man is the son of a good father who lives in a badly governed city and keeps out of politics. His mother complains that her husband is not among the rulers, that he is lazy and unambitious; the servants say the same; and the son, pulled between his father, who waters the rational part of his soul, and the others, who nourish its appetitive and spirited parts, settles in the middle, and becomes proud and ambitious.

Then oligarchy. The treasure chest full of gold destroys timocracy. They begin to compete in making money, and the more they value wealth, the less they value virtue. At last they make a law that only those who own a certain amount of property may take part in government. And so the city becomes two cities, one of the rich and one of the poor, living in the same place and always plotting against each other. Imagine choosing a ship's captain by his property, and refusing a poor man, even if he were the better navigator! The oligarchic city fills with drones: some without stings, who become beggars, and some with stings, who become criminals. The oligarchic man is the son of a timocrat who sees his father ruined in politics; frightened, he enthrones the money-making part of his soul, and makes reason and spirit its slaves, like a king with a golden crown. He is thrifty and hardworking, satisfying only his necessary desires, and keeping the others down by force, not by reason.

Then democracy. The rulers of the oligarchy, who owe their power to their wealth, do not restrain the young from spending, since they want to buy up their property and lend them money at interest. So they fill the city with ruined men, armed with stings, who hate those who have their property. And one day the poor, lean and sunburned, stand next to a rich man in battle, who has spent his life in the shade and carries a load of flesh, and they see him panting and helpless, and say to each other: "These people are ours for the taking; they are nothing." Then the poor win, kill some of their opponents, exile others, and give the rest an equal share in government, mostly by lot.

Democracy, I said, is the most beautiful of constitutions, like a cloak embroidered with every kind of flower. Everyone is free; the city is full of freedom and free speech, and everyone may do as he likes. There is no compulsion to rule, even if you are fit to rule, or to be ruled, unless you want to; no need to go to war when the others are at war, or to keep the peace when the others do. Men sentenced to death or exile walk about in the middle of the crowd as if no one noticed. It does not care what a man did before he entered politics, so long as he says he is a friend of the people. It is a delightful, anarchic, colorful constitution, which distributes a kind of equality to equals and unequals alike.

The democratic man is the son of an oligarch, raised in thrift, who tastes the honey of the drones and is drawn among fierce and clever creatures who offer every kind of pleasure. His unnecessary desires take over the citadel of his soul. Then insolence he calls good breeding, anarchy freedom, extravagance magnificence, shamelessness courage. He lives from day to day, indulging the desire that happens to come along: now drinking and listening to the pipe, now drinking only water and dieting; now exercising, now idle; sometimes he dabbles in philosophy, often in politics, leaping up and saying whatever comes into his head. There is no order or necessity in his life, and he calls it pleasant, free and blessed.

And finally tyranny. The insatiable desire for what democracy defines as the good, freedom, destroys it. Freedom spreads into everything: fathers fear their sons, teachers fear their pupils, the old imitate the young, slaves are as free as their owners, and even the horses and donkeys walk the streets with all the rights and dignity of free men, bumping into anyone who does not get out of their way. Excessive freedom turns into excessive slavery.

The people always set up some champion of their own, and nurture him and make him great. And this is the root of tyranny. The champion of the people, having the mob entirely at his command, does not refrain from shedding the blood of his own kin. He brings false accusations, sends men to court and kills them, tastes with his unholy tongue the blood of his fellow citizens, banishes and kills, and hints at the cancellation of debts and the redistribution of land. Like the man in the story about the shrine of Lycaean Zeus in Arcadia, who tasted a piece of human entrails mixed with the sacrifice and was turned into a wolf, so he too becomes a wolf, a tyrant. He asks for a bodyguard, to protect the people's friend. At first he smiles and greets everyone, promises much, frees the people from their debts. Then he stirs up wars, so that the people will need a leader. He gets rid of everyone brave, high-minded, wise or rich, purging the city, like a doctor in reverse, removing the best and leaving the worst. And the people, trying to escape the smoke of slavery to free men, fall into the fire of slavery to slaves.

(End of Episode 8 — continued in Episode 9: The Tyrant)