YOUNG SOCRATES: Who are they? You seem to be gazing on some strange
vision.
STRANGER: Yes; every one looks strange when you do not know him; and just
now I myself fell into this mistake--at first sight, coming suddenly upon
him, I did not recognize the politician and his troop.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Who is he?
STRANGER: The chief of Sophists and most accomplished of wizards, who must
at any cost be separated from the true king or Statesman, if we are ever to
see daylight in the present enquiry.
YOUNG SOCRATES: That is a hope not lightly to be renounced.
STRANGER: Never, if I can help it; and, first, let me ask you a question.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What?
STRANGER: Is not monarchy a recognized form of government?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes.
STRANGER: And, after monarchy, next in order comes the government of the
few?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Of course.
STRANGER: Is not the third form of government the rule of the multitude,
which is called by the name of democracy?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly.
STRANGER: And do not these three expand in a manner into five, producing
out of themselves two other names?
YOUNG SOCRATES: What are they?
YOUNG SOCRATES: What are they?
STRANGER: There is a criterion of voluntary and involuntary, poverty and
riches, law and the absence of law, which men now-a-days apply to them; the
two first they subdivide accordingly, and ascribe to monarchy two forms and
two corresponding names, royalty and tyranny.
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