Manent on Polybius

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"Sketched in rather broad strokes, the mechanism goes roughly as follows: the simple good regime degenerates into its vicious form, because the new generations, the king's children, for example, take their advantages for granted and give into their appetites, and thus they provoke the revolt that brings about the new simple regime that will in its turn undergo the same alteration and the same fate." -- Metamorphoses of the City, p. 180

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