681
Athenian
Ath. The next step necessary is that these people should come together and choose out some members of each clan who, after a survey of the legal usages of all the clans, shall notify publicly to the tribal leaders and chiefs (who may be termed their kings) which of those usages please them best, and shall recommend their adoption. These men will themselves be named legislators, and when they have established the chiefs as magistrates, and have framed an aristocracy, or possibly even a monarchy, from the existing plurality of headships, they will live under the constitution thus transformed.
Clinias
Clin. The next steps would certainly be such as you describe.
Athenian
Ath. Let us go on to describe the rise of a third form of constitution, in which are blended all kinds and varieties of constitutions, and of States as well.For this mixed polity of the city of the plain, cp. the description of democracy in Plat. Rep. 557d ff.
Clinias
Clin. What form is that?
Athenian
Ath. The same that Homer himself mentioned next to the second, when he said that the third form arose in this way. His verses run thus— Dardania he founded when as yetThe Holy keep of Ilium was not builtUpon the plain, a town for mortal folk,But still they dwelt upon the highland slopesOf many-fountained Ida.Hom. Il. 20.216 ff.
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