The existence of such persons is to be attributed to want of education, ill-training, and an evil constitution of the State?
True.
Such, then, is the form and such are the evils of oligarchy; and there may be many other evils.
Very likely.
[553] Then oligarchy, or the form of government in which the rulers are elected for their wealth, may now be dismissed. Let us next proceed to consider the nature and origin of the individual who answers to this State. 259
By all means.
Does not the timocratical man change into the oligarchical on this wise?
How?
The ruin of the timocratical man gives birth to the oligarchical. A time arrives when the representative of timocracy has a son: at first he begins by emulating his father and walking in his footsteps, but presently he sees him of a sudden [B]foundering against the State as upon a sunken reef, and he and all that he has is lost; he may have been a general or some other high officer who is brought to trial under a prejudice raised by informers, and either put to death, or exiled, or deprived of the privileges of a citizen, and all his property taken from him.
Nothing more likely.