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Quotation from The Histories, Book VI by Polybius
“For just as rust is the natural dissolvent of iron, wood-worms and grubs to timber, by which they are destroyed without any external injury, but by that which is engendered in themselves; so in each constitution there is naturally engendered a particular vice inseparable from it”
The Histories, Book VI, Book VI, ch. 10, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh
The image that explains why Lycurgus refused to build Sparta on a single kind of power.
Citation: "For just as rust is the natural dissolvent of iron, wood-worms and grubs to timber, by which they are destroyed without any external injury, but by that which is engendered in themselves; so in each constitution there is naturally engendered a particular vice inseparable from it" — Polybius, The Histories, Book VI, Book VI, ch. 10, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. (id polybius-histories-book-vi-q2)
