[559d]
by his
necessary appetites is the thrifty oligarchical man?”
“Why, surely.”“To return, then,” said I, “we have to tell
how the democratic man develops from the oligarchical type. I think it is
usually in this way.” “How?” “When a
youth, bred in the illiberal and niggardly fashion that we were describing,
gets a taste of the honey of the drones and associates with fierce1 and
cunning creatures who know how to purvey pleasures of every kind and
variety2 and condition, there you must doubtless conceive is the beginning
1 αἴθων occurs only here in Plato. It is common in Pindar and tragedy. Ernst Maass, “Die Ironie des Sokrates,”Sokrates, 11, p. 94 “Platon hat an jener Stelle des Staats, von der wir ausgingen, die schlimmen Erzieher gefährliche Fuchsbestien genannt.” (Cf. Pindar, Ol. xi. 20.)
2 Cf. on 557 C, p. 286, note a.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.