[576c]
will also be the most miserable,
and the man who is most of a tyrant for the longest time is most and longest
miserable1 in sober truth? Yet the many have many opinions.2”
“That much, certainly,” he said, “must needs
be true.” “Does not the tyrannical man,” said
I, “correspond to the tyrannical state in similitude,3 the democratic to the
democratic and the others likewise?” “Surely.”
“And may we not infer that the relation of state to state in
respect of virtue and happiness
1 Cf. Gorgias 473 C-E.
2 Cf. the defiance of 473 A and 579 Dκἂν εἰ μή τῳ δοκεῖ, Phaedr. 277 Eοὐδὲ ἂν ὁ πᾶς ὄχλος αὐτὸ ἐπαινέσῃ, and Phileb. 67 B, also Gorg. 473 E “you say what nobody else would say,” and perhaps 500 Dδιαβολὴ δ᾽ ἐν πᾶσι πολλή. Cf. Schopenhauer's “The public has a great many bees in its bonnet.”
3 Cf. Tim. 75 D, Rep. 555 A, Parmen. 133 A. For the analogy of individual and state cf. on 591 E.
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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