The young men assume the gravity of sages, and sages must stoop to the follies of children, lest they should be hated and oppressed by them.
The very slaves even are under but little restraint; wives boast the same rights as their husbands; dogs, horses, and asses are emancipated in this outrageous excess of freedom, and run about so violently that they frighten the passengers from the road.

At length the termination of all this infinite licentiousness is, that the minds of the citizens become so fastidious and effeminate, that when they observe even the slightest exertion of authority they grow angry and seditious, and thus the laws begin to be neglected, so that the people are absolutely without any master at all.
Then Laelius said: You have very accurately rendered the opinions which he expressed.
XLIV.

_Scipio._ Now, to return to the argument of my discourse.

It appears that this extreme license, which is the only liberty in the eyes of the vulgar, is, according to Plato, such that from it as a sort of root tyrants naturally arise and spring up.

For as the excessive power of an aristocracy occasions the destruction of the nobles, so this excessive liberalism of democracies brings after it the slavery of the people.