vladimir wrote:It doesn't necessarily mean that democracy is evil, but people can be.

Username Taken wrote:^^ Have you ever met Captain Steve Rogers?

There are two patent causes of revolutions in oligarchies: (1) First, when
the oligarchs oppress the people, for then anybody is good enough to be
their champion, especially if he be himself a member of the oligarchy, as
Lygdamis at Naxos, who afterwards came to be tyrant. But revolutions
which commence outside the governing class may be further subdivided.
Sometimes, when the government is very exclusive, the revolution is
brought about by persons of the wealthy class who are excluded, as
happened at Massalia and Istros and Heraclea, and other cities. Those
who had no share in the government created a disturbance, until first the
elder brothers, and then the younger, were admitted; for in some places
father and son, in others elder and younger brothers, do not hold office
together. At Massalia the oligarchy became more like a constitutional
government, but at Istros ended in a democracy, and at Heraclea was
enlarged to 600. At Cnidos, again, the oligarchy underwent a considerable
change. For the notables fell out among themselves, because only a
few shared in the government; there existed among them the rule already
mentioned, that father and son not hold office together, and, if
there were several brothers, only the eldest was admitted. The people
took advantage of the quarrel, and choosing one of the notables to be
their leader, attacked and conquered the oligarchs, who were divided,
and division is always a source of weakness. The city of Erythrae, too,
in old times was ruled, and ruled well, by the Basilidae, but the people
took offense at the narrowness of the oligarchy and changed the constitution.
(2) Of internal causes of revolutions in oligarchies one is the personal
rivalry of the oligarchs, which leads them to play the demagogue.
Now, the oligarchical demagogue is of two sorts: either (a) he practices
upon the oligarchs themselves (for, although the oligarchy are quite a
small number, there may be a demagogue among them, as at Athens
Charicles’ party won power by courting the Thirty, that of Phrynichus
by courting the Four Hundred); or (b) the oligarchs may play the demagogue
with the people. This was the case at Larissa, where the guardians
of the citizens endeavored to gain over the people because they
were elected by them; and such is the fate of all oligarchies in which the
magistrates are elected, as at Abydos, not by the class to which they
belong, but by the heavy-armed or by the people, although they may be
required to have a high qualification, or to be members of a political
club; or, again, where the law-courts are composed of persons outside
the government, the oligarchs flatter the people in order to obtain a
decision in their own favor, and so they change the constitution; this
happened at Heraclea in Pontus. Again, oligarchies change whenever
any attempt is made to narrow them; for then those who desire equal
rights are compelled to call in the people. Changes in the oligarchy also
occur when the oligarchs waste their private property by extravagant
living; for then they want to innovate, and either try to make themselves
tyrants, or install some one else in the tyranny, as Hipparinus did
Dionysius at Syracuse, and as at Amphipolis a man named Cleotimus
introduced Chalcidian colonists, and when they arrived, stirred them up
against the rich. For a like reason in Aegina the person who carried on
the negotiation with Chares endeavored to revolutionize the state. Sometimes
a party among the oligarchs try directly to create a political change;
sometimes they rob the treasury, and then either the thieves or, as happened
at Apollonia in Pontus, those who resist them in their thieving
quarrel with the rulers. But an oligarchy which is at unity with itself is
not easily destroyed from within; of this we may see an example at
Pharsalus, for there, although the rulers are few in number, they govern
a large city, because they have a good understanding among themselves.
Oligarchies, again, are overthrown when another oligarchy is created
within the original one, that is to say, when the whole governing
body is small and yet they do not all share in the highest offices. Thus at
Elis the governing body was a small senate; and very few ever found
their way into it, because the senators were only ninety in number, and
were elected for life and out of certain families in a manner similar to
the Lacedaemonian elders. Oligarchy is liable to revolutions alike in
war and in peace; in war because, not being able to trust the people, the
oligarchs are compelled to hire mercenaries, and the general who is in
command of them often ends in becoming a tyrant, as Timophanes did
at Corinth; or if there are more generals than one they make themselves
into a company of tyrants. Sometimes the oligarchs, fearing this danger,
give the people a share in the government because their services are
necessary to them. And in time of peace, from mutual distrust, the two
parties hand over the defense of the state to the army and to an arbiter
between the two factions, who often ends the master of both.