but
only a poor, helpless creature.

Yes, that is an evil which also first begins in this State.

The evil is certainly not prevented there; for oligarchies have both
the extremes of great wealth and utter poverty.

True.

But think again: In his wealthy days, while he was spending his money,
was a man of this sort a whit more good to the State for the purposes
of citizenship? Or did he only seem to be a member of the ruling body,
although in truth he was neither ruler nor subject, but just a
spendthrift?

As you say, he seemed to be a ruler, but was only a spendthrift.

May we not say that this is the drone in the house who is like the
drone in the honeycomb, and that the one is the plague of the city as
the other is of the hive?

Just so, Socrates.

And God has made the flying drones, Adeimantus, all without stings,
whereas of the walking drones he has made some without stings but
others have dreadful stings; of the stingless class are those who in
their 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 cutpurses 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;