[545d]
Or is this the simple and unvarying
rule, that in every form of government revolution takes its start from the
ruling class itself,1
when dissension arises in that, but so long as it is at one with itself,
however small it be, innovation is impossible?” “Yes,
that is so.” “How, then, Glaucon,” I said,
“will disturbance arise in our city, and how will our helpers and
rulers fall out and be at odds with one another and themselves? Shall we,
like Homer, invoke the Muses2 to tell “‘how faction first fell upon
them,’”Hom. Il. 1.6
1 For the idea that the state is destroyed only by factions in the ruling class cf. also Laws 683 E. Cf. 465 B, Lysias xxv. 21, Aristot.Pol. 1305 b, 1306 a 10ὁμονοοῦσα δὲ ὀλιγαρχία οὐκ εὐδιάφθορος ἐξ αὑτῆς, 1302 a 10 Polybius, Teubner, vol. ii. p. 298 (vi. 57). Newman, Aristot.Pol. i. p. 521, says that Aristotle “does not remark on Plato's observation . . . though he cannot have agreed with it.” Cf. Halévy, Notes et souvenirs, p. 153 “l'histoire est là pour démontrer clairement que, depuis un siècle, not gouvernements n'ont jamais été renversés que par eux-mêmes”; Bergson, Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion, p. 303: “Mais l'instinct résiste. Il ne commence à céder que lorsque Ia classe supérieure elle-même l'y invite.”
2 For the mock-heroic style of this invocation Cf. Phaedr. 237 A, Laws 885 C.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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