ave had the appearance
of wisdom, but was really, as we assert, the greatest ignorance, and
utterly overthrew the whole empire by dissonance and harsh discord.

CLEINIAS: Very likely.

ATHENIAN: Good; and what measures ought the legislator to have then
taken in order to avert this calamity? Truly there is no great wisdom
in knowing, and no great difficulty in telling, after the evil has
happened; but to have foreseen the remedy at the time would have taken a
much wiser head than ours.

MEGILLUS: What do you mean?

ATHENIAN: Any one who looks at what has occurred with you
Lacedaemonians, Megillus, may easily know and may easily say what ought
to have been done at that time.

MEGILLUS: Speak a little more clearly.

ATHENIAN: Nothing can be clearer than the observation which I am about
to make.

MEGILLUS: What is it?

ATHENIAN: That if any one gives too great a power to anything, too large
a sail to a vessel, too much food to the body, too much authority to the
mind, and does not observe the mean, everything is overthrown, and, in
the wantonness of excess, runs in the one case to disorders, and in the
other to injustice, which is the child of excess. I mean to say, my dear
friends, that there is no soul of man, young and irresponsible, who will
be able to sustain the temptation of arbitrary power--no one who will
not, under such circumstances, become filled with folly, that worst of
diseases, and be hated by his nearest and dearest friends: when this
happens his kingdom is undermined, and all his power vanishes from him.
And great legislators who know the mean should take heed of the danger.
As far as we can guess at this distance of time, what happened was as
follows:--

MEGILLUS: What?

ATHENIAN: A God, who watched over Sparta, seeing into the future, gave
you two families of kings instead of one; and thus brought you more
within the limits of moderation. In the next place, some human wisdom
mingled with divine power, observing that the constitution of your
government was still feverish and excited, tempered your inborn strength
and pride of birth with the moderation which comes of age, making the
power of your twenty-eight elders equal with that of the kings in the
most important matters. But your third saviour, perceiving that your
government was still swelling and foaming, and desirous to impose a curb
upon it, instituted the Ephors, whose power he made to resemble that of
magistrates elected by lot; and