Furthermore, all associations and friendships are part of the greater community, the " polis ", and different relationships can be compared to the different types of constitution, according to the same classification system Aristotle explains in his " Politics " ( Monarchy, Tyranny, Aristocracy, Oligarchy, Timocracy, and Democracy ).
22.
While Plato spends much of the " Republic " having Socrates narrate a conversation about the city he founds with Glaucon and Adeimantus " in speech ", the discussion eventually turns to considering four regimes that exist in reality and tend to degrade successively into each other : timocracy, oligarchy ( also called plutocracy ), democracy and tyranny ( also called despotism ).
23.
According to Plato, a state made up of different kinds of souls will, overall, decline from an aristocracy ( rule by the best ) to a timocracy ( rule by the honorable ), then to an oligarchy ( rule by the few ), then to a democracy ( rule by the people ), and finally to tyranny ( rule by one person, rule by a tyrant ).
