For they established government by the people, not the kind which operates at haphazard, mistaking licence for liberty and freedom to do what one likes for happiness,See Isoc. 7.20 and note. but the kind which frowns upon such excesses and makes use of the rule of the best. Now the majority count the rule of the best,Aristocracy. which is the most advantageous of governments (just as they do government based upon a property qualificationTimocracy.), among the distinct kinds of polity, being mistaken, not because of ignorance, but because they have never taken any interest in the things which should claim their attention.

But I, for my part, hold that there are three types of polity and three only: oligarchy, democracy, and monarchy,Plat. Rep. 544c ff., distinguishes these three types: monarchy, which may be either a constitutional or an absolute rule; government by the few, which may be either an aristocracy or an oligarchy; and democracy. Aristot. Pol. 3.6 ff., recognizes three types: monarchy, aristocracy, and a republic, and, corresponding to them (aberrations from them), three debased forms, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. Isocrates’ point is that any one of these forms may be an aristocracy; it is the spirit of the constitution which matters (Isoc. 12.138); that government is best (i.e. an aristocracy) where the best men rule. and that of the people who live under these all who are wont to place in charge of their offices and of their affairs in general those of their fellow-citizens who are most competent and who will most ably and justly direct the affairs of state—all these, I hold, will govern well, under any type of polity, both in their domestic relations and in their relations to the rest of the world.

On the other hand, when men employ in these positions of leadership those of their citizens who are the most brazen and the most depraved and who take no thought for the things which are advantageous to the commonwealth but are ready to go to any extreme to further their personal advantage, the character of their government will correspond to the depravity of the men at the head of their affairs. Again, all who are not of the latter class nor of that which I mentioned previously, but who, when they feel secure, honor before others those who speak for the gratification of the public and, when they are afraid, seek refuge in the best and wisest of their citizens—such men will fare now worse now better as the case may be.

This, then, is the truth regarding the natures and powers of the several polities—a theme which will, I think, furnish to others material for much more extended discussion, although I must not speak further on the general subject but must confine myself to the polity of our ancestors. For I undertook to prove that this has been of greater worth and the source of greater benefits than the polity which obtains in Sparta.

And what I say on this head will prove, for those who would gladly hear me discuss an excellent polity, neither burdensome nor untimely but of due measure and in keeping with what I have said before; those, however, who take pleasure, not in the things which have been spoken in deep seriousness, but rather in the orators who rail at each other most of all at the public assemblies, or, if the speakers refrain from this madness, in those who deliver encomiums on the most trivial thingsIt appears to have been a common practice for speakers to show off their oratorical powers by extolling such themes. See Isoc. 4.close and note; Isoc. 10.12. or on the most lawless men who have ever lived—to these, I think, what I say will seem much longer than it should be.