ABSTRACT
Plato was in a quandary. Although his idealized Republic was a stratified society, he wanted its citizens to be distributed by merit rather than inherited advantage. The Greece of his experience was, of course, quite otherwise. Still divided into aristocratic and vulgar elements, the battles over who would rule filled his imagination and life space. The Athens of his time had only recently fought, and lost, the Peloponnesian War. It had also seen its democracy overturned by the victors and a short-lived oligarchy put in its place. Yet the so-called thirty tyrants were so unpopular that the discredited democrats were soon able to restore a more broadly based franchise. This development was, to be sure, not well received by the aristocratic faction. Its members continued to harbor hopes of regaining power. They knew this would take some doing but were nevertheless prepared to engage in the conspiracies that would make it so.
