heir old
age end as paupers; of the stingers come all the criminal class, as they
are termed.

Most true, he said.

Clearly then, whenever you see paupers in a State, somewhere in that
neighborhood there are hidden away thieves, and cut-purses and robbers
of temples, and all sorts of malefactors.

Clearly.

Well, I said, and in oligarchical States do you not find paupers?

Yes, he said; nearly everybody is a pauper who is not a ruler.

And may we be so bold as to affirm that there are also many criminals to
be found in them, rogues who have stings, and whom the authorities are
careful to restrain by force?

Certainly, we may be so bold.

The existence of such persons is to be attributed to want of education,
ill-training, and an evil constitution of the State?

True.

Such, then, is the form and such are the evils of oligarchy; and there
may be many other evils.

Very likely.

Then oligarchy, or the form of government in which the rulers are
elected for their wealth, may now be dismissed. Let us next proceed to
consider the nature and origin of the individual who answers to this
State.

By all means.

Does not the timocratical man change into the oligarchical on this wise?

How?

A time arrives when the representative of timocracy has a son: at first
he begins by emulating his father and walking in his footsteps, but
presently he sees him of a sudden foundering against the State as upon
a sunken reef, and he and all that he has is lost; he may have been
a general or some other high officer who is brought to trial under a
prejudice raised by informers, and either put to death, or exiled, or
deprived of the privileges of a citizen, and all his property taken from
him.

Nothing more likely.

And the son has seen and known all this--he is a ruined man, and his
fear has taught him to knock ambition and passion headforemost from his
bosom's throne; humbled by poverty he takes to money-making and by mean
and miserly savings and hard work gets a fortune together. Is not such
an one likely to seat the concupiscent and covetous element on the
vacant throne and to suffer it to play the great king within him, girt
with tiara and chain and scimitar?

Most true, he replied.

And when he has made reason and spirit sit down on the ground obediently
on either side of their sovereign, and taught them to know their place,
he compels the one to think only of how lesser sums may be turned into
larger ones, and