Degeneration of Constitutions
But as soon as the people got leaders, they cooperated with them against the dynasty for
note
the reasons I have mentioned; and then
kingship and despotism were alike entirely
abolished, and aristocracy once more began to revive and
start afresh. For in their immediate gratitude to those
who had deposed the despots, the people employed them as
leaders, and entrusted their interests to them; who, looking
upon this charge at first as a great privilege, made the public
advantage their chief concern, and conducted all kinds of
business, public or private, with diligence and caution. But
when the sons of these men received the same position of
authority from their fathers,—having had no experience of
misfortunes, and none at all of civil equality and freedom of
speech, but having been bred up from the first under the
shadow of their fathers' authority and lofty position,—some
of them gave themselves up with passion to avarice and
-- 465 --
unscrupulous love of money, others to drinking and the
boundless debaucheries which accompanies it,
and others to the violation of women or the
forcible appropriation of boys; and so they
turned an aristocracy into an oligarchy. note But it was not long
before they roused in the minds of the people the same
feelings as before; and their fall therefore was very like the
disaster which befell the tyrants.
