The Republic · ¶5004

Government, forms of. [The classification of forms of government which Plato adopts in the Republic is not exactly the same with that given in the Statesman or the Laws. Both in the Republic and the Statesman the series commences with the perfect state, which may be either monarchy or aristocracy, accordingly as the ‘one best man’ bears rule or many who are all ‘perfect in virtue’ [cp. Arist. Pol. iv. 2, § 1]. But in the Republic the further succession is somewhat fancifully connected with the divisions of the soul. The rule of reason [i.e. the perfect state] passes into timocracy, in which the ‘spirited element’ is predominant (8. 548), timocracy into three governments in turn, which represent the ‘appetitive principle,’—first, oligarchy, in which the desire of wealth is supreme (8. 533 D; 9. 581); secondly, democracy, characterised by an unbounded lust for freedom (9. 561); thirdly,…

Plato · translated by Benjamin Jowett · composite transcription based on the 1888 third edition
Benjamin Jowett, revised third edition (1888), with Stephanus numbering from the 1908 edition; composite transcription, Project Gutenberg #55201
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