[552e]
that there are also many criminals in them furnished with stings, whom the
rulers by their surveillance forcibly1 restrain?”
“We must think so,” he said. “And shall we not
say that the presence of such citizens is the result of a defective culture
and bad breeding and a wrong constitution of the state?”
“We shall.” “Well, at any rate such would be
the character of the oligarchical state, and these, or perhaps even more
than these, would be the evils that afflict it.” “Pretty
nearly these,” he said.
1 βίᾳ is so closely connected with κατέχουσιν that the double dative is not felt to be awkward. But Adam takes ἐπιμελείᾳ as an adverb.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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