on any ground of that sort, but because he is a soldier and has
performed feats of arms; he is also a lover of gymnastic exercises and
of the chase.

Yes, that is the type of character which answers to timocracy.

Such an one will despise riches only when he is young; but as he gets
older he will be more and more attracted to them, because he has a
piece of the avaricious nature in him, and is not singleminded towards
virtue, having lost his best guardian.

Who was that? said Adeimantus.

Philosophy, I said, tempered with music, who comes and takes her abode
in a man, and is the only saviour of his virtue throughout life.

Good, he said.

Such, I said, is the timocratical youth, and he is like the
timocratical State.

Exactly.

His origin is as follows:--He is often the young son of a grave father,
who dwells in an ill-governed city, of which he declines the honours
and offices, and will not go to law, or exert himself in any way, but
is ready to waive his rights in order that he may escape trouble.

And how does the son come into being?

The character of the son begins to develop when he hears his mother
complaining that her husband has no place in the government, of which
the consequence is that she has no precedence among other women.
Further, when she sees her husband not very eager about money, and
instead of battling and railing in the law courts or assembly, taking
whatever happens to him quietly; and when she observes that his
thoughts always centre in himself, while he treats her with very
considerable indifference, she is annoyed, and says to her son that his
father is only half a man and far too easy-going: adding all the other
complaints about her own ill-treatment which women are so fond of
rehearsing.

Yes, said Adeimantus, they give us plenty of them, and their complaints
are so like themselves.

And you know, I said, that the old servants also, who are supposed to
be attached to the family, from time to time talk privately in the same
strain to the son; and if they see any one who owes money to his
father, or is wronging him in any way, and he falls to prosecute them,
they tell the youth that when he grows up he must retaliate upon people
of this sort, and be more of a man than his father. He has only to
walk abroad and he hears and sees the same sort of thing: those who do
their own business in the city are called simpletons, and held in no
esteem, while the busy-bodies are honoured a