conspiracies were not the work of the worst men, but of the noblest,
most high-spirited, and most courageous, because such men are least
able to brook the insolence of princes.

8. The people now having got leaders, would combine with them
against the ruling powers for the reasons I stated above; king-ship
and monarchy would be utterly abolished, and in their place
aristocracy would begin to grow. For the commons, as if bound to pay
at once their debt of gratitude to the abolishers of monarchy, would
make them their leaders and entrust their destinies to them. At first
these chiefs gladly assumed this charge and regarded nothing as of
greater importance than the common interest, administering the private
and public affairs of the people with paternal solicitude. But here
again when children inherited this position of authority from their
fathers, having no experience of misfortune and none at all of civil
equality and liberty of speech, and having been brought up from the
cradle amid the evidences of the power and high position of their
fathers, they abandoned themselves some to greed of gain and
unscrupulous money-making, others to indulgence in wine and the
convivial excess which accompanies it, and others again to the
violation of women and the rape of boys; and thus converting the
aristocracy info an oligarchy aroused in the people feelings similar
to those of which I just spoke, and in consequence met with the same
disastrous end as the tyrant.

9. For whenever anyone who has noticed the jealousy and hatred with
which they are regarded by the citizens, has the courage to speak or
act against the chiefs of the state he has the whole mass of the
people ready to back him. Next, when they have either killed or
banished the oligarchs, they no longer venture to set a king over