n their view.

ATHENIAN: Why, yes, this is one of those false principles of government
to which we were referring.

CLEINIAS: Which do you mean?

ATHENIAN: Those which we were examining when we spoke of who ought to
govern whom. Did we not arrive at the conclusion that parents ought
to govern their children, and the elder the younger, and the noble the
ignoble? And there were many other principles, if you remember, and they
were not always consistent. One principle was this very principle of
might, and we said that Pindar considered violence natural and justified
it.

CLEINIAS: Yes; I remember.

ATHENIAN: Consider, then, to whom our state is to be entrusted. For
there is a thing which has occurred times without number in states--

CLEINIAS: What thing?

ATHENIAN: That when there has been a contest for power, those who gain
the upper hand so entirely monopolize the government, as to refuse all
share to the defeated party and their descendants--they live watching
one another, the ruling class being in perpetual fear that some one who
has a recollection of former wrongs will come into power and rise up
against them. Now, according to our view, such governments are not
polities at all, nor are laws right which are passed for the good of
particular classes and not for the good of the whole state. States
which have such laws are not polities but parties, and their notions of
justice are simply unmeaning. I say this, because I am going to assert
that we must not entrust the government in your state to any one
because he is rich, or because he possesses any other advantage, such as
strength, or stature, or again birth: but he who is most obedient to the
laws of the state, he shall win the palm; and to him who is victorious
in the first degree shall be given the highest office and chief ministry
of the gods; and the second to him who bears the second palm; and on a
similar principle shall all the other offices be assigned to those who
come next in order. And when I call the rulers servants or ministers of
the law, I give them this name not for the sake of novelty, but because
I certainly believe that upon such service or ministry depends the well-
or ill-being of the state. For that state in which the law is subject
and has no authority, I perceive to be on the highway to ruin; but I see
that the state in which the law is above the rulers, and the rulers are
the inferiors of the law, has salvation, and every blessing whi