gs. There was a battle between them, and at last they
agreed to distribute their land and houses among individual owners;
and they enslaved their friends and maintainers, whom they had formerly
protected in the condition of freemen, and made of them subjects and
servants; and they themselves were engaged in war and in keeping a watch
against them.

I believe that you have rightly conceived the origin of the change.

And the new government which thus arises will be of a form intermediate
between oligarchy and aristocracy?

Very true.

Such will be the change, and after the change has been made, how will
they proceed? Clearly, the new State, being in a mean between oligarchy
and the perfect State, will partly follow one and partly the other, and
will also have some peculiarities.

True, he said.

In the honour given to rulers, in the abstinence of the warrior class
from agriculture, handicrafts, and trade in general, in the institution
of common meals, and in the attention paid to gymnastics and military
training--in all these respects this State will resemble the former.

True.

But in the fear of admitting philosophers to power, because they are no
longer to be had simple and earnest, but are made up of mixed elements;
and in turning from them to passionate and less complex characters, who
are by nature fitted for war rather than peace; and in the value set
by them upon military stratagems and contrivances, and in the waging of
everlasting wars--this State will be for the most part peculiar.

Yes.

Yes, I said; and men of this stamp will be covetous of money, like those
who live in oligarchies; they will have, a fierce secret longing after
gold and silver, which they will hoard in dark places, having magazines
and treasuries of their own for the deposit and concealment of them;
also castles which are just nests for their eggs, and in which they will
spend large sums on their wives, or on any others whom they please.

That is most true, he said.

And they are miserly because they have no means of openly acquiring the
money which they prize; they will spend that which is another man's on
the gratification of their desires, stealing their pleasures and running
away like children from the law, their father: they have been schooled
not by gentle influences but by force, for they have neglected her
who is the true Muse, the companion of reason and philosophy, and have
honoured gymnastic more than music.

Undo