[569]
And what have you to say, I said,
in case the people protests and says that it is not right that a grown-up son should be supported by his father, but the reverse,
569a
and that it did not beget and establish him in order that, when he had grown great, it, in servitude to its own slaves, should feed him and the slaves together with a nondescript rabble of aliens, but in order that, with him for protector, it might be liberated from the rule of the rich and the so-called
better classes,
1
and that it now bids him and his crew depart from the city as a father expels
2
from his house a son together with troublesome revellers?
The demos, by Zeus, he said,
will then learn to its cost
3
569b
what it is and what
4
a creature it begot and cherished and bred to greatness, and that in its weakness it tries to expel the stronger.
What do you mean? said I;
will the tyrant dare to use force against his father, and, if he does not yield, to strike him
5
?
Yes, he said,
after he has once taken from him his arms.
A very parricide, said I,
you make the tyrant out to be, and a cruel nurse of old age, and, as it seems, this is at last tyranny open and avowed, and, as the saying goes, the demos trying to escape the smoke of submission to the free would have plunged
569c
into the fire
6
of enslavement to slaves, and in exchange for that excessive and unseasonable liberty
7
has clothed itself in the garb of the most cruel and bitter servile servitude.
8
Yes indeed, he said,
that is just what happens.
Well, then, said I,
shall we not be fairly justified in saying that we have sufficiently described the transformation of a democracy into a tyranny and the nature of the tyranny itself?
Quite sufficiently, he said.
Republic. Plato. Paul Shorey (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1935-37.
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