soul side there are individual personality types, as we might call them, which correspond to these cities. There is the timocratic man who wants nothing but honor, the oligarchic man who wants wealth, the democratic man who wants freedom. Worst of all is the tyrannical man, whose lust for power ironically winds up enslaving him to his own desires (579b). Just as it’s natural for, say, an oligarchic city to degenerate into a democratic one, so it’s natural for a father with an oligarchic character to have a son who goes bad and develops a democratic character.
