a peculiar dress, that there should
be a peculiar luxury and variety in the dressing and serving of their
viands, and that they should meet with no denial in the pursuit of their
amours, however lawless. These habits having given rise in the one
case to envy and offence and in the other to an outburst of hatred and
passionate resentment, the kingship changed into a tyranny; the first
steps towards its overthrow were taken by the subjects, and conspiracies
began to be formed. These conspiracies were not the work of the worst
men, but of the noblest, most high-spirited, and most courageous,
because such men are least able to brook the insolence of princes.

8. The people now having got leaders, would combine with them against
the ruling powers for the reasons I stated above; king-ship and monarchy
would be utterly abolished, and in their place aristocracy would begin
to grow. For the commons, as if bound to pay at once their debt of
gratitude to the abolishers of monarchy, would make them their leaders
and entrust their destinies to them. At first these chiefs gladly
assumed this charge and regarded nothing as of greater importance than
the common interest, administering the private and public affairs of the
people with paternal solicitude. But here again when children inherited
this position of authority from their fathers, having no experience of
misfortune and none at all of civil equality and liberty of speech, and
having been brought up from the cradle amid the evidences of the power
and high position of their fathers, they abandoned themselves some to
greed of gain and unscrupulous money-making, others to indulgence in
wine and the convivial excess which accompanies it, and others again
to the violation of women and the rape of boys; and thus converting the
aristocracy info an oligarchy aroused in the people feelings similar
to those of which I just spoke, and in consequence met with the same
disastrous end as the tyrant.

9. For whenever anyone who has noticed the jealousy and hatred with
which they are regarded by the citizens, has the courage to speak or
act against the chiefs of the state he has the whole mass of the people
ready to back him. Next, when they have either killed or banished the
oligarchs, they no longer venture to set a king over them, as they still
remember with terror the injustice they suffered from the former ones,
nor can they entrust the government with confidence to a select few,
with the