18
And yet how can we praise or tolerate a government which has in the past been the cause of so many evils and which is now year by year ever drifting on from bad to worse? And how can we escape the fear that if we continue to progress after this fashion we may finally run aground on rocks more perilous than those which at that time loomed before us?
19
But in order that you may make a choice and come to a decision between the two constitutions, not from the summary statement you just heard, but from exact knowledge, it behoves you, for your part, to render yourselves attentive to what I say, while I, for my part, shall try to explain them both to you as briefly as I can.
20
For those who directed the state in the time of Solon and Cleisthenes did not establish a polity which in name merely was hailed as the most impartial and the mildest of governments, while in practice showing itself the opposite to those who lived under it, nor one which trained the citizens in such fashion that they looked upon insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty, impudence of speech as equality, and licence to do what they pleased as happiness,For similar caricatures of the later Athenian democracy see Thuc. 3.82.4 ff., and especially Plat. Rep. 560-561. but rather a polity which detested and punished such men and by so doing made all the citizens better and wiser.
21
But what contributed most to their good government of the state was that of the two recognized kinds of equality—that which makes the same award to all alike and that which gives to each man his dueFor these two kinds of equality cf. Isoc. 3.14 ff.; Isoc. 2.14; Plat. Rep. 558c, and Plat. Laws 757b; Aristot. Pol. 1301a 26 ff.—they did not fail to grasp which was the more serviceable; but, rejecting as unjust that which holds that the good and the bad are worthy of the same honors,
