This is an excerpt from Plutarch’s On Sparta. It is the introduction to the section of the work in which he discusses the rule of the Spartan kings Agis and Cleomenes.
When Phocion was asked by Antipater to do something that was not at all honorable, he said to him: ‘You cannot have Phocion both as a friend and as a toady.’ It is this, then, or something like it, which needs to be said to the crowd: ‘The same man cannot be your ruler and your servant.’ When this actually does occur, his situation is like that of the snake in the fable. Its tail rebelled against its head and demanded to take a turn at leading rather than continually following the head. So it took the lead and got into difficulties itself by going off the road as well as bruising the head, which was forced unnaturally to follow a part of the snake that was blind and stupid. We observe this to have been the predicament of those whose sole concern in politics is to win popularity. After making themselves dependent upon capriciously shifting mobs, they have later been unable either to reassert themselves or to control the disorder.
