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Updated: May 16, 2025
As the first class consisted of those who had an estate of 100,000 sesterces, this ordinance changed the democracy into a timocracy, transferring the power from the people generally to the wealthier classes: but, considering how voting had been manipulated of late, it was perhaps a measure due to the Senate quite as much as to Sulla.
There are immense difficulties, however, in the way of such a Utopia, some physical and others moral. Timocracy would have to begin by uprooting the individual from his present natural soil and transplanting him to that in which his spirit might flourish best.
Yes, that is the type of character which answers to timocracy. Such an one will despise riches only when he is young; but as he gets older he will be more and more attracted to them, because he has a piece of the avaricious nature in him, and is not singleminded towards virtue, having lost his best guardian. Who was that? said Adeimantus.
And what manner of government do you term oligarchy? A government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it. I understand, he replied. Ought I not to begin by describing how the change from timocracy to oligarchy arises? Yes. Well, I said, no eyes are required in order to see how the one passes into the other. How?
An assembly has only the lights common to the majority of its members, far less, therefore, than its members have when added together and less even than the wiser part of them. A timocracy would therefore seem to unite the advantages of all forms of government and to avoid their respective abuses. It would promote freedom scientifically.
People would be born equal, but they would grow unequal, and the only equality subsisting would be equality of opportunity. If power remained in the people's hands, the government would be democratic; but a full development of timocracy would allow the proved leader to gain great ascendancy.
At the same time a new motive would be added to common labour, I mean ambition. For there would be not only a possibility of greater reward but a possibility of greater service. The competitive motive which socialism is supposed to destroy would be restored in timocracy, and an incentive offered to excellence and industry.
The Fraternal Friendship is like that of Companions, because brothers are equal and much of an age, and such persons have generally like feelings and like dispositions. Like to this also is the Friendship of a Timocracy, because the citizens are intended to be equal and equitable: rule, therefore, passes from hand to hand, and is distributed on equal terms: so too is the Friendship accordingly.
Timocracy requires this kind of patriotism in everybody; so that if public duty is not to become a sacrifice imposed on the many for the sake of the few, as in aristocracy, the reason can only be that the many covet, appreciate, and appropriate their country's ideal glories, quite as much as the favoured class ever could in any aristocracy. Is this possible?
Of Political Constitutions there are three kinds; and equal in number are the deflections from them, being, so to say, corruptions of them. Of these the best is Monarchy, and Timocracy the worst. But Despotism is on a contrary footing to this Kingship, because the Despot pursues his own good: and in the case of this its inferiority is most evident, and what is worse is contrary to what is best.
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