noticed; for if one party is so much more powerful than the other, as
to be evidently stronger, that other will not be willing to hazard the
danger: for which reason those who are superior in excellence and virtue
will never be the cause of seditions; for they will be too few for that
purpose when compared to the many. In general, the beginning and the
causes of seditions in all states are such as I have now described, and
revolutions therein are brought about in two ways, either by violence or
fraud: if by violence, either at first by compelling them to submit to
the change when it is made. It may also be brought about by fraud in
two different ways, either when the people, being at first deceived,
willingly consent to an alteration in their government, and are
afterwards obliged by force to abide by it: as, for instance, when the
four hundred imposed upon the people by telling them that the king
of Persia would supply them with money for the war against the
Lacedaemonians; and after they had been guilty of this falsity, they
endeavoured to keep possession of the supreme power; or when they are
at first persuaded and afterwards consent to be governed: and by one of
these methods which I have mentioned are all revolutions in governments
brought about.
CHAPTER V
We ought now to inquire into those events which will arise from these
causes in every species of government. Democracies will be most subject
to revolutions from the dishonesty of their demagogues; for partly, by
informing against men of property, they induce them to join together
through self-defence, for a common fear will make the greatest enemies
unite; and partly by setting the common people against them: and this is
what any one may continually see practised in many states. In the island
of Cos, for instance, the democracy was subverted by the wickedness
of the demagogues, for the nobles entered into a combination with
each other. And at Rhodes the demagogues, by distributing of bribes,
prevented the people from paying the trierarchs what was owing to them,
who were obliged by the number of actions they were harassed with to
conspire together and destroy the popular state. The same thing was
brought about at Heraclea, soon after the settlement of the city, by
the same persons; for the citizens of note, being ill treated by them,
quitted the city, but afterwards joining together they returned and
overthrew the popular state. Just in the same manner the democracy
was destroyed in Megara; for there the demagogues, to procure money by
confiscations, drove out the nobles, till the number of those who were
banished was considerable, who, [1305a] returning, got the better of the
people in a battle, and established an oligarchy. The like happened at
Cume, during the time of the democracy, which Thrasymachus destroyed;
and whoever considers what has happened in other states may perceive the
same revolutions to have arisen from the same causes. The demagogues,