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[520d] for shadows1 and wrangle for office as if that were a great good, when the truth is that the city in which those who are to rule are least eager to hold office2 must needs be best administered and most free from dissension, and the state that gets the contrary type of ruler will be the opposite of this.” “By all means,” he said. “Will our alumni, then, disobey us when we tell them this, and will they refuse to share in the labors of state each in his turn while permitted to dwell the most of the time with one another in that purer world3?”

1 Cf. on 586 C, p. 393.

2 Cf. on 517 C, p. 131, note 3.

3 The world of ideas, the upper world as opposed to that of the cave. Cf. Stallbaum ad loc.

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