Oligarchy comes next and is a government ruled by the wealthy property owner who, in terms of individual men, is the avaricious son of the timocrat. The timocratic man then, reflects the State in that he is contentious and ambitious. Taking the ideal aristocratic State as a starting point, Socrates describes its disintegration into timocracy, the first and least unjust form of corrupt government. They begin with government, of which there are principally four defective forms. Now that the true State and true human have been clearly illustrated, the philosophers can revive the thread introduced earlier in the dialogue: that on the nature of corrupt forms of government and individual. The discourse begins with Socrates heralding their need to backtrack a little.
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