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Still more remarkable are the corresponding portraits of

individuals: there is the family picture of the father and mother

and the old servant of the timocratical man, and the outward

respectability and inherent meanness of the oligarchical; the

uncontrolled licence and freedom of the democrat, in which the

young Alcibiades seems to be depicted, doing right or wrong as he

pleases, and who at last, like the prodigal, goes into a far

country (note here the play of language by which the democratic

man is himself represented under the image of a State having a

citadel and receiving embassies); and there is the wild-beast

nature, which breaks loose in his successor.