Letters

Plato To Perdiccas wishes well-doing. I counselled Euphraeus, in accordance with your message, to devote his time to the task of caring for your interests; and I feel myself bound also to give you friendly, and what is called sacred, counsel both about the other matters you mention and as to how you ought now to make use of Euphraeus. For the man is useful for many things, the most important being that in which you yourself are deficient owing to your youth, and also because it is a matter about which there are not many counsellors available for the young. For forms of government, like animals, have each their own kind of language, one for democracy, another for oligarchy, and a third kind for monarchy; and though a vast number of people would assert that they understand these languages, yet all but a few of them are very far indeed from discerning them. Now each of these polities, if it speaks its own language both to gods and to men, and renders its actions conformable to its language, remains always flourishing and secure; but if it imitates another it becomes corrupted.