r of number
Agamemnon could not have counted his feet; the art by which we are made
to believe that this State of ours is not a dream only; the gravity
with which the first step is taken in the actual creation of the State,
namely, the sending out of the city all who had arrived at ten years of
age, in order to expedite the business of education by a generation, are
also truly Platonic. (For the last, compare the passage at the end of
the third book, in which he expects the lie about the earthborn men to
be believed in the second generation.)

BOOK VIII. And so we have arrived at the conclusion, that in the perfect
State wives and children are to be in common; and the education and
pursuits of men and women, both in war and peace, are to be common, and
kings are to be philosophers and warriors, and the soldiers of the State
are to live together, having all things in common; and they are to be
warrior athletes, receiving no pay but only their food, from the other
citizens. Now let us return to the point at which we digressed. 'That is
easily done,' he replied: 'You were speaking of the State which you had
constructed, and of the individual who answered to this, both of whom
you affirmed to be good; and you said that of inferior States there were
four forms and four individuals corresponding to them, which although
deficient in various degrees, were all of them worth inspecting with
a view to determining the relative happiness or misery of the best or
worst man. Then Polemarchus and Adeimantus interrupted you, and this led
to another argument,--and so here we are.' Suppose that we put ourselves
again in the same position, and do you repeat your question. 'I should
like to know of what constitutions you were speaking?' Besides the
perfect State there are only four of any note in Hellas:--first, the
famous Lacedaemonian or Cretan commonwealth; secondly, oligarchy, a
State full of evils; thirdly, democracy, which follows next in order;
fourthly, tyranny, which is the disease or death of all government.
Now, States are not made of 'oak and rock,' but of flesh and blood; and
therefore as there are five States there must be five human natures in
individuals, which correspond to them. And first, there is the ambitious
nature, which answers to the Lacedaemonian State; secondly, the
oligarchical nature; thirdly, the democratical; and fourthly, the
tyrannical. This last will have to be compared with the perfectly just,
which is the