[555d]
but that one or the other of these two
ideals is inevitably neglected.” “That is pretty
clear,” he said. “And such negligence and encouragement
of licentiousness1 in oligarchies not infrequently
has reduced to poverty men of no ignoble quality.2” “It surely
has.” “And there they sit, I fancy, within the city,
furnished with stings, that is, arms, some burdened with debt, others
disfranchised, others both, hating and conspiring against the acquirers of
their estates and the rest of the citizens,
1 ἀκολασταίνεινCf. Gorg. 478 A, Phileb. 12 D.
2 Cf. Laws 832 Aοὐκ ἀφυεῖς. For the men reduced to poverty swelling the number of drones cf. Eurip.Herc. Fur. 588-592, and Wilamowitz ad loc.
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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