Plato's Mother and other Terrible Women

Abstract

In the eighth and ninth books of theRepublicPlato describes the four inferior or corrupt types of government – timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny – and the four related types of human personality – the timocratic, oligarchic, democratic, and tyrannical man (544dff.). Closest to the ideal, and first therefore in sequence of decline, is the timocratic state, the term timocracy being employed not in the Aristotelian sense of a polity demanding a property qualification of its ruling class but with ‘the peculiar meaning of government by the principle of honour (τιμ). The timocratic state, it is claimed (545cff.), develops when its members no longer live in harmony but come into conflict as the guardians join brides and bridegrooms ‘inopportunely’ (παρ καιρν, 546d), so that their offspring are neither well-born nor blessed by fortune. The result is a form of government which retains some of the features of its good predecessor, anticipates some of the features of its worse successor, and also boasts some features unique to itself, such as a preference for the ‘spirited’, men better suited for war than for peace. Above all else such a state will be distinguished by a cultivation of competition and a passion for honour: διαϕανστατον δ’ ναὐστν τι μνον… ϕιλονκαι κα ϕιλοτμαι (548c).