The essential problem was posed by Plato in the Republic, his work on government and morality. The perfect society as described by Socrates, the main character of the work (see Socratic dialogue), relies on laborers, slaves and tradesmen. The guardian class is to protect the city. The question is put to Socrates, "Who will guard the guardians?" or, "Who will protect us against the protectors?". Plato's answer to this is that they will guard themselves against themselves. We must tell the guardians a "noble lie". The noble lie will inform them that they are better than those they serve and it is therefore their responsibility to guard and protect those lesser than themselves. We will instill in them a distaste for power or privilege; they will rule because they believe it right, not because they desire it.

The saying has since been used by many people to ponder the insoluble question of where ultimate power should reside. The way in which modern democracies attempt to solve this problem is in the separation of powers. The idea is to never give ultimate power to any one group; the executive, legislative, or judicial; have the interests of each compete and conflict. Each group will then find it in its best interest to impede the functioning of the rest and this will keep ultimate power under constant struggle and, thereby, out of any one group's hands.

Origin

However, modern editors regard these three lines as an interpolation inserted into the text. In 1899 an undergraduate student at Oxford, E.O. Winstedt, discovered a manuscript (now known as O, for Oxoniensis) containing 34 lines which some believe to have been omitted from other texts of Juvenal's poem. The debate on this manuscript is ongoing, but even if the poem is not by Juvenal, it is likely that it preserves the original context of the phrase. If so, the original context is as follows (O 29–33):

Notes

External links

• Satire VI in Latin, at The Latin Library
• Satire VI in English (translation by G.G. Ramsay) at the Internet Ancient History Sourcebook