The individual who answers to timocracy has some noticeable qualities.

He is described as ill educated, but, like the Spartan, a lover of literature; and although he is a harsh master to his servants he has no natural superiority over them.

His character is based upon a reaction against the circumstances of his father, who in a troubled city has retired from politics; and his mother, who is dissatisfied at her own position, is always urging him towards the life of political ambition.

Such a character may have had this origin, and indeed Livy attributes the Licinian laws to a feminine jealousy of a similar kind.

But there is obviously no connection between the manner in which the timocratic State springs out of the ideal, and the mere accident by which the timocratic man is the son of a retired statesman.
The two next stages in the decline of constitutions have even less historical foundation.