mnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then
once more living the life of a philosopher; often he-is busy with
politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into
his head; and, if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior, off he is
in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life
has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy
and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on.

Yes, he replied, he is all liberty and equality.

Yes, I said; his life is motley and manifold and an epitome of the
lives of many;--he answers to the State which we described as fair and
spangled. And many a man and many a woman will take him for their
pattern, and many a constitution and many an example of manners is
contained in him.

Just so.

Let him then be set over against democracy; he may truly be called the
democratic man.

Let that be his place, he said.

Last of all comes the most beautiful of all, man and State alike,
tyranny and the tyrant; these we have now to consider.

Quite true, he said.

Say then, my friend, in what manner does tyranny arise?--that it has a
democratic origin is evident.

Clearly.

And does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same manner as
democracy from oligarchy--I mean, after a sort?

How?

The good which oligarchy proposed to itself and the means by which it
was maintained was excess of wealth--am I not right?

Yes.

And the insatiable desire of wealth and the neglect of all other things
for the sake of money-getting was also the ruin of oligarchy?

True.

And democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable desire brings
her to dissolution?

What good?

Freedom, I replied; which, as they tell you in a democracy, is the
glory of the State--and that therefore in a democracy alone will the
freeman of nature deign to dwell.

Yes; the saying is in everybody's mouth.

I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the
neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which
occasions a demand for tyranny.

How so?

When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil cupbearers
presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine
of freedom, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a
plentiful draught, she calls them to account and punishes them, and
says that they are cursed oligarchs.

Yes, he replied, a very common occurrence.

Yes, I said;