license. For this is the circle revolving within which all States are
and have been governed; although in the same State the same forms of
Government rarely repeat themselves, because hardly any State can have
such vitality as to pass through such a cycle more than once, and still
together. For it may be expected that in some sea of disaster, when a
State must always be wanting prudent counsels and in strength, it will
become subject to some neighbouring and better-governed State; though
assuming this not to happen, it might well pass for an indefinite period
from one of these forms of government to another.

I say, then, that all these six forms of government are pernicious--the
three good kinds, from their brief duration the three bad, from their
inherent badness. Wise legislators therefore, knowing these defects, and
avoiding each of these forms in its simplicity, have made choice of a
form which shares in the qualities of all the first three, and which
they judge to be more stable and lasting than any of these separately.
For where we have a monarchy, an aristocracy, and a democracy existing
together in the same city, each of the three serves as a check upon the
other.

Among those who have earned special praise by devising a constitution of
this nature, was Lycurgus, who so framed the laws of Sparta as to assign
their proper functions to kings, nobles, and commons; and in this way
established a government, which, to his great glory and to the peace and
tranquility of his country, lasted for more than eight hundred years.
The contrary, however, happened in the case of Solon; who by the turn he
gave to the institutions of Athens, created there a purely democratic
government, of such brief duration, that I himself lived to witness the
beginning of the despotism of Pisistratus. And although, forty years
later, the heirs of Pisistratus were driven out, and Athens recovered