'I should like to know of what constitutions you were speaking ?' Besides the perfect State there are only four of any note in Hellas:--first, the famous Lacedaemonian or Cretan commonwealth; secondly, oligarchy, a State full of evils; thirdly, democracy, which follows next in order; fourthly, tyranny, which is the disease or death of all government.
Now, States are not made of 'oak and rock,' but of flesh and blood; and therefore as there are five States there must be five human natures in individuals, which correspond to them.

And first, there is the ambitious nature, which answers to the Lacedaemonian State; secondly, the oligarchical nature; thirdly, the democratical; and fourthly, the tyrannical.

This last will have to be compared with the perfectly just, which is the fifth, that we may know which is the happier, and then we shall be able to determine whether the argument of Thrasymachus or our own is the more convincing.

And as before we began with the State and went on to the individual, so now, beginning with timocracy, let us go on to the timocratical man, and then proceed to the other forms of government, and the individuals who answer to them.
But how did timocracy arise out of the perfect State?
Plainly, like all changes of government, from division in the rulers.

But whence came division?
'Sing, heavenly Muses,' as Homer says;--let them condescend to answer us, as if we were children, to whom they put on a solemn face in jest.