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The Oligarch is the sort of man who, when the people are considering whom they shall join to the chief magistrates to direct the procession with him, will come forward and declare that these men ought to have full powers, and if someone else moves that there should be ten he will say ‘One is enough, but be must be a man.' The only line of Homer he will have any knowledge of is, The rule of the many is ill: best is the rule oi one' and will be absolutely ignorant of all the rest. He is fond of using these sorts of phrases, ‘Let us meet and discuss these things away from the crowd and the market- place,’ ‘We must stop this running after position in the government and condescending to endure the insults or honours of these people,’ ‘It is either they or we who are going to rule in this city, not both.’ He goes about at midday with his cloak carefully adjusted, his hair trimmed in the prevailing fashion, his nails properly pared, and struts along the street of the Odeion saying ' With these informers we can’t live in this city,’ We are disgracfully treated by the juries,' 'I wonder why men want to mix themselves up in affairs of state?' 'How thankless this mob is always at the beck and call of anyone to will nttr presents and bribes!’ ‘How ashamed I am in the Assembly when a ragged dirty fellow sits beside me' 'When are they going to stop ruining us with public services and equipment of ships?’ 'How hateful that crowd of agitators is! —but Theseus1 was the cause of all these evils: he brought the twelve states into one kingdom and subverted the monarchy. But he got his deserts: he was the first to be destroyed by the people.' Other such things he utters to foreigners and those of the. citizens who are of like mind and opinion. 1.To the hero-king Theseus was ascribed the formation of the villages into a compact state and thus the foundation of a demos.
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OLIGARCHY,
or the aristocratic temper, seems to be a love of ruling, and covetousness,
not of gain, but of power.
