Except a city?—or would you include a city?
Nay, he said, the case of a city is the strongest of all, inasmuch as the rule of a city is the greatest and most difficult of all.
[D] This, then, will be the first great defect of oligarchy?
Clearly.
And here is another defect which is quite as bad.
What defect?
The extreme division of classes in such a State. The inevitable division: such a State is not one, but two States, the one of poor, the other of rich men; and they are living on the same spot and always conspiring against one another.
That, surely, is at least as bad.
They dare not go to war. Another discreditable feature is, that, for a like reason, they are incapable of carrying on any war. Either they arm [E]the multitude, and then they are more afraid of them than of the enemy; or, if they do not call them out in the hour of battle, they are oligarchs indeed, few to fight as they are few to rule. And at the same time their fondness for money makes them unwilling to pay taxes.
How discreditable!