Politics

Those who think that the statesman, the king, the household manager and the master of slaves are one and the same are mistaken. They suppose that each of these differs by the number of people ruled, not in kind: that someone who rules a few is a master, someone who rules more is a household manager, and someone who rules still more is a statesman or a king—as though a large household were no different from a small city. As for the statesman and the king, they say that when one person is in charge by himself he is a king, and when he rules and is ruled in turn according to the principles of this kind of knowledge, he is a statesman. None of this is true. What I mean will become clear if we examine the matter by the method we have been following.

Just as in other cases we must divide a composite down to its uncompounded elements (for these are the smallest parts of the whole), so too, by examining what a city is made up of, we will see more clearly how these rulers differ from one another, and whether it is possible to get any expert grasp of each of the kinds just mentioned.

By nature, then, 1252b female and slave are distinct. For nature makes nothing in a stingy way, like the smiths who make the Delphic knife, but one thing for one purpose; each tool is best made when it serves not many tasks but one. Among non-Greeks, however, the female and the slave have the same rank. The reason is that they have no natural ruler: their community is one of a female slave and a male slave. That is why the poets say “It is fitting that Greeks rule non-Greeks”—on the assumption that the non-Greek and the slave are by nature the same. Out of these two communities, then, the household first arises, and Hesiod was right when he wrote, “First of all a house, a wife, and an ox to plough”—for the poor, an ox takes the place of a servant.note

The community that is formed by nature to meet everyday needs is the household, whose members Charondas calls “bread-bin sharers” and Epimenides the Cretan “manger sharers.” The first community formed from several households for the sake of more than daily needs is the village. The village seems to be, most naturally, a colony of the household; some call its members “sharers of the same milk,” children and children’s children. That is why cities were at first ruled by kings, as non-Greek peoples still are: they came together from people already under kingly rule. For every household is ruled as a kingdom by its eldest member, and so too its offshoots, because of their kinship. This is what Homer means: “each lays down the law / for his children and wives.” For they lived scattered, and that is how people lived in ancient times.note

And this is why everyone says that the gods too are ruled by a king: because people themselves were ruled by kings, some still now and others in ancient times. Just as people imagine the gods’ appearance to be like their own, so too they imagine their way of life.

For nature, as we say, does nothing in vain, and of the animals only human beings have speech. Voice is a sign of what is painful and pleasant, which is why other animals have it too: their nature has come this far—to perceive what is painful and pleasant and to signal it to one another. But speech serves to make clear what is beneficial and what is harmful, and so also what is just and unjust. For this is what is distinctive of human beings compared with the other animals: they alone perceive good and bad, just and unjust, and the rest. And it is community in these things that makes a household and a city. The city is also prior by nature to the household and to each of us.

For the whole must be prior to the part. If the whole body is destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in name—as when someone speaks of a stone hand, for a dead hand will be like that. Everything is defined by its function and its capacity, so that when things are no longer such as to perform them, we should not say they are the same things, only that they share a name. It is clear, then, that the city is both natural and prior to each individual. For if each individual, when separated, is not self-sufficient, he will stand to the whole as other parts do to theirs. Anyone who cannot share in a community, or who needs nothing because he is self-sufficient, is no part of a city: he is either a beast or a god.

There is another part, which some think is household management itself and others its largest part. We must consider how things stand with it; I mean what is called the art of acquiring wealth. But first let us discuss master and slave, so as to see what bears on necessary needs, and whether we can get a better understanding of the subject than the views now held. Some think that mastership is a kind of knowledge, and that household management, mastership, statesmanship and kingship are all the same, as we said at the beginning. Others think that being a master is contrary to nature: that it is by law that one person is a slave and another free, while by nature they do not differ at all—and so it is not just either, since it rests on force.

For if each tool could do its own work when ordered, or by anticipating what is wanted—like the statues of Daedalus in the story, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which the poet says “entered the gods’ assembly of their own accord”—if shuttles wove by themselves and picks played the kithara, then master craftsmen would have no need 1254a of assistants, nor masters of slaves. Now the things called tools are tools of production, while a piece of property is a tool of action. From a shuttle something else comes about beyond its use, but from a garment or a bed there is only the use. Further, since production and action differ in kind, and both need tools, their tools must differ in the same way. Life is action, not production. That is why the slave, too, is an assistant in matters of action.

A piece of property is spoken of in the same way as a part. A part is not only part of something else but belongs wholly to something else; and the same is true of property. That is why the master is only the master of the slave and does not belong to him, while the slave is not only the slave of the master but belongs to him wholly.

There are many kinds of rulers and ruled, and rule over better subjects is always better—rule over a human being, for instance, rather than over a beast; for work accomplished by better agents is better work, and where one thing rules and another is ruled, there is some work that belongs to them together. For wherever something is made up of several parts and becomes one common thing, whether from continuous parts or separate ones, a ruling element and a ruled element show up in all of them. This comes to living things from nature as a whole; even in things that do not share in life there is a kind of rule, as in a musical scale. But this perhaps belongs to an inquiry further removed from our subject. An animal, to begin with, consists of soul and body, of which one is by nature the ruler and the other the ruled.

But we should look for what is natural in things that are in their natural condition, not in those that are corrupted. So we must study the human being who is in the best condition in both body and soul, since in him this is clear. For in those who are bad, or 1254b in a bad condition, the body would often seem to rule the soul, because they are in a poor and unnatural state.

The same must hold for all human beings. Those who differ from others as much as soul differs from body, or human from beast—and people are in this condition when their work is the use of their body, and this is the best that can come from them—are natural slaves, and for them it is better to be ruled with this kind of rule, if it is better for the things just mentioned. For a natural slave is someone who is capable of belonging to another (which is why he does belong to another), and who shares in reason to the extent of perceiving it but not having it. The other animals obey not reason but their feelings. And the use made of them differs only a little: help with the body’s necessities comes from both, from slaves and from tame animals.

Nature tends, then, to make the bodies of free people and slaves different too: the one strong for necessary work, the other upright and useless for such tasks but useful for the life of a citizen (which in turn is divided between the needs of war and those of peace). But the opposite often happens as well: some have the bodies of free people, others the souls. For this much is evident: if some people were as superior in body alone as the statues of the gods, everyone would say that those who fell short deserved to be their slaves. And if this is true of the body, it is far more just to make this distinction in the case of the soul. But it is not as easy to see 1255a the beauty of the soul as that of the body.

It is evident, then, that some people are by nature free and others slaves, and that for the latter being a slave is both beneficial and just.

The cause of this dispute, and what makes the arguments overlap, is this: in a way, excellence, when it happens to have the resources, is best able to use force, and what prevails always does so by being superior in some good. So it seems that force does not come without excellence, and that the dispute is only about what is just. (That is why some think justice is goodwill, while others think it is just this: that the stronger should rule.) For when these arguments are set apart from each other, the other arguments—that the one who is better in excellence should not rule and be master—have nothing forceful or persuasive about them.

Some, clinging, as they think, to a kind of justice (for law is a kind of justice), hold outright that slavery resulting from war is just; yet in the same breath they deny it. For the war may have been unjust in its origins, and no one would say that someone who does not deserve to be a slave is a slave. Otherwise, those thought to be of the noblest birth would turn out to be slaves and the children of slaves, if they happened to be captured and sold. That is why they are unwilling to call themselves slaves, but only non-Greeks. Yet when they say this, they are looking for nothing other than the natural slave we spoke of at the start. For they have to say that some people are slaves everywhere and others nowhere.

It is the same with good birth. They consider themselves well born not only at home but everywhere, while they think non-Greeks are well born only at home—as though there were one kind of good birth and freedom that is unqualified and another that is not. So Helen says in Theodectes’ play: “Sprung from divine roots on either side, / who would think fit to call me a servant?” But when they say this, they are distinguishing slave and free, well born and 1255b low born, by nothing but excellence and vice. For they think that just as a human comes from a human and a beast from beasts, so a good person comes from good people. Nature does often tend to do this, but it cannot always manage it.note

For some tasks are more honorable and others more necessary—as the proverb says, “slave before slave, master before master.” All such kinds of knowledge are slave knowledge. The master’s knowledge is the knowledge of how to use slaves, for the master is a master not in acquiring slaves but in using them. There is nothing great or dignified about this knowledge: the master need only know how to order what the slave must know how to do. That is why those who can afford to avoid the trouble have a steward take on this office, while they themselves engage in politics or philosophy. The art of acquiring slaves—the just kind of acquisition, that is—is different from both of these, being a kind of warfare or hunting. So much for how master and slave are to be defined.

It is clear that household management is not the same as the art of acquiring wealth: it belongs to the latter to provide and to the former to use—for what art will use the things in the household besides household management? But whether it is a part of household management or a different kind of thing is disputed. For if it belongs to the person skilled in acquiring wealth to study where money and property will come from, and property and wealth include many parts, we must first ask whether farming is a part of household management or a different kind of thing, and in general the care and acquisition of food. Now there are many kinds of food, which is why there are many ways of life among both animals and human beings. It is not possible to live without food, so differences in food have made the ways of life of animals different.

Among wild animals, some live in herds and others scattered, whichever is advantageous for getting their food, since some are carnivorous, others eat fruits and plants, and others eat everything. So nature has marked out their ways of life to suit the ease of getting, and the choice of, these foods. And since the same things are not naturally pleasant to each, but different things to different animals, the ways of life of the carnivores and of the plant-eaters themselves also differ from one another. The same is true of human beings, whose ways of life differ greatly.

The laziest are nomads. They get their food from tame animals without toil, at their leisure; but since their herds have to move about in search of pasture, they are forced to follow along, as if they were farming a living farm. Others live by hunting, and different people by different kinds of hunting: some by raiding, some by fishing—those who live beside lakes, marshes, rivers or a sea suited to it—and some by hunting birds or wild animals. But the largest class of human beings lives from the land and its cultivated crops.

At the very beginning of their birth, some animals produce along with their offspring enough food to last until the newborn can provide for itself—for instance, those that produce larvae or eggs. Those that bear live young carry food for their offspring within themselves for a certain time, the natural substance called milk. So in the same way it is clear that we must suppose that, once they are born, plants exist for the sake of animals, and the other animals for the sake of human beings: the tame ones for use and for food, and most if not all of the wild ones for food and other kinds of help, so that clothing and other tools can be made from them. If, then, nature makes nothing incomplete or in vain, it must have made all of them for the sake of human beings.

That is why the art of war too will in a way be by nature an art of acquisition (hunting is a part of it). It ought to be used against wild animals and against those human beings who are by nature fitted to be ruled but are unwilling, since this kind of war is just by nature.

Both are uses of a shoe. Someone who exchanges a shoe with a person who needs one, for money or food, is using the shoe as a shoe, but not in its proper use, since it was not made for the sake of exchange. The same holds for other possessions too. Exchange applies to all of them, and it began in the first place from what is natural, from the fact that people have more than enough of some things and less of others. (This also makes it clear that retail trade is not by nature part of the art of acquiring wealth, since people needed to make exchanges only to the extent of having enough.) In the first community, the household, it evidently has no work to do; it has a role only once the community has grown larger.

For the members of a household shared all the same things, while those who had separated shared many different things, which they had to exchange with one another according to their needs, as many non-Greek peoples still do, by barter. They trade useful things directly for useful things, and nothing beyond that—giving and taking wine for grain, for example, and so on with each thing of that kind. This kind of exchange is neither contrary to nature nor any form of acquiring wealth, since it existed to fill out natural self-sufficiency. Yet the other kind arose from it, reasonably enough. For as people came to rely more on foreign sources, importing what they lacked and exporting what they had in surplus, the use of money was necessarily introduced.

For not all the natural necessities are easy to carry. So for their exchanges people agreed to give and take something that was itself one of the useful things and was easy to handle for the purposes of life—iron, silver, or anything else of this sort. At first its value was defined simply by size and weight, but eventually they also stamped it, to spare themselves from measuring it; for the stamp was put on as a sign of the amount.

At other times, on the other hand, money seems to be nonsense, a pure convention with no basis in nature: if those who use it switch to another currency, it is worth nothing and useless for any of the necessities, and a person rich in money will often go short of the food he needs. Yet it is absurd for wealth to be something such that a person who has plenty of it will die of hunger—like Midas in the story, when, because of his insatiable prayer, everything set before him turned to gold. That is why people look for some other account of wealth and of the art of acquiring it, and they are right to look. For the art of acquiring wealth and wealth according to nature are something different: this belongs to household management, while the other is trade, which produces wealth not in every way but only through the exchange of goods. And it seems to be concerned with money, since money is the starting point and the limit of exchange.

The wealth that comes from this art of acquiring wealth is unlimited. Just as medicine pursues health without limit, and each of the crafts pursues its end without limit (for they want to achieve it as fully as possible), while the means to the end are not unlimited (since the end is a limit for all of them), so too this art of acquiring wealth has no limit to its end; its end is wealth of this sort, the acquisition of money. But the form of acquiring wealth that belongs to household management does have a limit, since this is not the work of household management. So in one way it appears that there must be a limit to all wealth; yet in practice we see the opposite happening, for all who are engaged in acquiring wealth increase their money without limit. The reason is that the two are so close. They overlap because each form of acquiring wealth makes use of the same thing.

They use the same property, but not in the same way: for one the end is something else, for the other it is increase. So some people think this is the work of household management, and they go on believing that they must either preserve their money or increase it without limit. The reason for this attitude is that they are serious about living, but 1258a not about living well. Since that desire is unlimited, they desire unlimited means to satisfy it. And even those who aim at living well seek what contributes to bodily enjoyments; and since this too seems to depend on property, their whole activity is spent on making money, and this is how the other form of acquiring wealth has come about.

For since enjoyment lies in excess, they look for the art that produces the excess that enjoyment requires. And if they cannot provide it through the art of acquiring wealth, they try to do so by some other means, using each of their capacities in a way contrary to nature. It is not the work of courage to make money, but to produce confidence; nor is it the work of generalship or medicine, but of the one to produce victory and of the other health. Yet these people make all of them into ways of making money, as though that were the end, and everything had to be directed toward the end.

In a way it is the business of the household manager and the ruler to see to health, and in a way it is not, but the doctor’s. So too with wealth: in a way it is the household manager’s business, and in a way not, but that of a subordinate art. Above all, as was said before, it must be supplied by nature. For it is nature’s work to provide food for what is born, since for everything, what remains of that from which it is born is its food. That is why the art of acquiring wealth from crops and animals is natural for everyone.

The art of acquiring wealth is twofold, as we said: one kind belongs to trade, the other to household management. The latter is necessary and praised, while the 1258b kind that is based on exchange is justly blamed, since it is not natural but involves gain at one another’s expense. So usury is hated with the best of reasons, because its gain comes from money itself and not from what money was introduced for. Money came into being for the sake of exchange, but interest makes it grow larger. (This is also where it got its name: offspring resemble their parents, and interest is money born of money.) So of all the forms of acquiring wealth this one is the most contrary to nature.note

These are the parts, and the primary ones, of the most proper art of acquiring wealth. Of the art of exchange, the largest part is commerce, which has three parts: shipowning, transport of goods, and retail selling. These differ from one another in that some are safer and others bring a larger return. The second part is lending at interest, and the third is working for wages—some in the vulgar crafts, some unskilled and useful only for their bodies. There is a third form of acquiring wealth between this one and the first, since it has something both of the natural kind and of exchange: all that comes from the earth and from things that grow from the earth which bear no fruit but are useful, such as logging and all mining. Mining itself already covers many kinds, since there are many kinds of things mined from the earth.note

The most skilled occupations are those where chance plays the smallest part; the most vulgar are those that most damage the body; the most slavish are those that make the most use of the body; and the most ignoble are those that least require excellence. We have now spoken about each of these in general terms. To go into detail would be useful for those who practice them, but to dwell on it would be tedious.

People were reproaching him for his poverty, the story goes, as proof that philosophy is useless. From his study of the stars he realized there would be a large olive crop, so while it was still winter he raised a little money and paid deposits on all the olive presses in Miletus and Chios, renting them cheaply since no one bid against him. When the season came, and many people wanted presses all at once and suddenly, he rented them out on whatever terms he liked. Having made a lot of money, he showed that it is easy for philosophers to be rich if they want to, but that this is not what they are serious about. This is how Thales is said to have given a demonstration of his wisdom. But as we said, this kind of thing is a general principle of making money: if one can create a monopoly for oneself. That is why some cities too resort to this source of revenue when they are short of money: they create a monopoly of goods for sale.

In Sicily, a man with whom money had been deposited used it to buy up all the iron from the ironworks. Later, when merchants arrived from the markets, he was the only seller, and though he did not raise the price very much, he still made a hundred talents on his fifty. When Dionysius learned of this, he told the man to take his money away, but not to stay in Syracuse any longer, since he had found ways of making money that were harmful to Dionysius’ own affairs. Yet Thales’ insight and this are the same: both contrived to create a monopoly for themselves. It is useful for statesmen too to know these things. Many cities need money-making and sources of revenue like these, just as a household does, and even more so. That is why some statesmen even devote their political activity to these matters alone.note

Rule over children is kingly, since the parent rules both by affection and by age, which is the kingly kind of rule. That is why Homer was right to address Zeus, the king of them all, as “father of men and gods.” For a king should be superior by nature, but the same in kind as his subjects—and this is the relation of older to younger, and of parent to child.

Much the same question arises about a woman and a child: do they too have excellences? Must a woman be moderate, courageous and just, and can a child be both undisciplined and moderate, or not? We must consider this question generally about what is by nature ruled and what rules: is their excellence the same or different? If both must share in being fine and good, why should one rule and the other be ruled once and for all? They cannot differ by more and less, since being ruled and ruling differ in kind, while more and less do not. But if one must have it and the other not, that is astonishing. For if the ruler is not to be moderate and just, how will he rule well? And if the one ruled is not, how will he be ruled 1260a well?

For if he is undisciplined and cowardly, he will do none of his duties. It is evident, then, that both must share in excellence, but that there are differences within it, as there are among those who are by nature ruled. And the nature of the soul shows us this directly: in it there is by nature a part that rules and a part that is ruled, and we say that each has a different excellence—the part that has reason and the part without reason. Clearly the same holds in other cases too, so that most instances of ruling and being ruled are natural. The free rules the slave in a different way from that in which the male rules the female and a man rules a child. The parts of the soul are present in all of them, but present in different ways.

The slave does not have the deliberative part at all; the female has it, but without authority; the child has it, but not fully developed. So the ruler must have intellectual excellence complete (for his work, taken without qualification, is that of a master craftsman, and reason is the master craftsman), while each of the others must have as much as falls to them. We must suppose that the same necessarily holds for the excellences of character: all must share in them, but not in the same way, only as much as each needs for his own work. It is evident, then, that all those we have mentioned have excellence of character, and that the moderation of a woman and of a man is not the same, nor their courage and justice, as Socrates thought: one courage is that of a ruler, the other that of a subordinate, and the same holds for the other excellences.

If what we have just said is true, one might ask whether craftsmen too will need to have excellence, since they often fall short in their work through lack of discipline. Or is there a very great difference here? The slave shares his master’s life, while the craftsman is further removed, and he has only as much excellence as he has servitude. For the vulgar craftsman 1260b has a kind of limited servitude; and while the slave is one of the things that exist by nature, no shoemaker is, nor any other craftsman. It is evident, then, that the master should be the cause of this sort of excellence in the slave, and not someone who has the art of teaching him his tasks. That is why those who deny slaves reason and say that one should only give them orders are wrong: slaves should be admonished even more than children.

And it must make a difference, since women are half of the free population, and it is from children that those who share in the constitution come. So, since these matters have been settled, and the rest must be discussed elsewhere, let us set aside the present discussion as complete and make a fresh start. And let us first examine the views of those who have put forward ideas about the best constitution.

It is evident that sharing nothing is impossible. A constitution is a kind of community, and first of all the citizens must share a location: the location of 1261a a single city is one, and the citizens are sharers in that one city. But is it better for a city that is to be well run to share everything that can be shared, or is it better to share some things and not others? For the citizens could share children, women and property with one another, as in Plato’s Republic, where Socrates says that children, women and property should be held in common. Is it better as things are now, then, or according to the law described in the Republic?

Yet it is evident that if a city goes on becoming more and more one, it will no longer be a city at all. For a city is by nature a kind of multitude, and as it becomes more one it will turn from a city into a household, and from a household into a single human being—for we would say that a household is more one than a city, and a single person more one than a household. So even if someone were able to do this, it should not be done, since it would destroy the city.

In this way it turns out that all rule, just as if shoemakers and carpenters changed places, and the same people were not always shoemakers and carpenters. Since it is better for things to be like this in political communities too, it is clearly better for the same people always to rule, if possible. But where this is not possible because 1261b all are equal by nature—and where it is also just for all to share in ruling, whether ruling is a good thing or a bad one—then those who are equal taking turns to give way imitates the original inequality: some rule and others are ruled in turn, as if they had become different people. And in the same way, among those who rule, different people hold different offices.

It is evident from this, then, that the city is not by nature one in the way some people say, and that what was said to be the greatest good in cities actually destroys them—yet the good of each thing preserves it. It is evident in another way too that seeking to unify the city excessively is not better. A household is more self-sufficient than one person, and a city than a household, and a city tends to be a city only once the community of its population is self-sufficient. If, then, what is more self-sufficient is more choiceworthy, what is less one is more choiceworthy than what is more one.

It is evident, then, that there is a fallacy in saying “all.” For “all,” “both,” “odd” and “even,” because of their double meaning, give rise to contentious arguments even in discussion. So for all to say the same thing is in one sense fine but impossible, and in the other sense does nothing for harmony. Besides, what is proposed has another drawback. What is shared by the most people receives the least care. People care most for what is their own, and less for what is common, or only as much as falls to each of them. Among other things, they neglect it more because they think someone else is looking after it—just as in household service many servants sometimes serve worse than fewer. Each citizen will have a thousand sons, and these will not be sons of each individually; any son will be equally the son of anyone 1262a whatever. So all will neglect them equally.

And it is not possible to avoid people supposing that certain others are their brothers, children, fathers and mothers. They will inevitably come to believe things about one another from the resemblances that children bear to their parents. Some of those who write accounts of journeys around the world say this actually happens: among some of the peoples of inland Libya, the women are held in common, but the children who are born are assigned according to their resemblances. And there are some females, both women and those of other animals such as horses and cattle, who have a strong natural tendency to produce offspring resembling their parents, like the mare at Pharsalus called “Just.”note

It is strange too that he forbids intercourse for no other reason than that the pleasure is too intense, while thinking it makes no difference that the two are father and son, or brothers of one another.

For we think friendship is the greatest good for cities, since it makes them least likely to fall into civil strife; and Socrates praises the unity of the city above all, which he, like everyone, takes to be the work of friendship. So we know that in the discussion of love Aristophanes says that lovers, because of the intensity of their affection, long to grow together and become one instead of two. In that case both, or one of them, would necessarily be destroyed. But in the city, friendship is bound to become watery because of such a community, and a son will be least likely to say “my father,” or a father “my son.”note

Just as a little sweet wine mixed into a lot of water makes the mixture imperceptible, so it turns out with the sense of kinship toward one another that these names convey: in such a constitution, there is the least necessity for a father to care for his sons, or a son for his father, or brothers for one another. For there are two things that most make people care and feel affection: that something is their own, and that it is precious to them. Neither can exist for those governed in this way. Moreover, there is a great deal of confusion about how the transfer of children will happen—moving those born among the farmers and craftsmen to the guardians, and those born among the guardians to the others. Those who hand them over and transfer them must know who is given to whom.

Further, the things mentioned earlier—assaults, love affairs, killings—are bound to happen even more with these people. For those given to the other citizens will no longer call the guardians brothers, children, fathers and mothers, nor will those placed with the guardians call the other citizens so, and so be careful not to do any such thing because of their kinship.

If the land is farmed by others, the situation would be different and easier. But if the citizens labor for themselves, arrangements about property would cause more trouble. For if people are not equal but unequal in what they enjoy and in what they do, complaints are bound to arise against those who enjoy or take a lot while working little, from those who take less and work more. In general, living together and sharing in any human affairs is difficult, and especially in things like these. Partnerships of fellow travelers show this: most of them quarrel, clashing with one another over everyday things and trifles. Again, among servants, we clash most with those we use most for routine services.

Even now this arrangement exists in outline in some cities, which shows it is not impossible; and especially in well-governed cities, parts of it are already in place and parts could come about. Each person has his own property, but he makes some of it available to his friends and uses some of theirs as common. In Sparta, for instance, people use one another’s slaves as practically their own, and horses and dogs too, and if they need provisions on a journey they take them from the fields anywhere in the countryside. It is clear, then, that it is better for property to be privately owned but to make it common in use; and seeing to it that citizens become people of this kind is the lawgiver’s own special task. Further, where pleasure is concerned, it makes an untold difference to regard something as one’s own. It is surely not for nothing that each person has love 1263b for himself: this is natural.

Being selfish is rightly blamed; but that is not loving oneself, it is loving oneself more than one should—just as with loving money, since practically everyone loves each of these things. Again, doing favors for friends, guests, or companions and helping them out is a great pleasure, and this happens when property is private. These things, then, do not come about for those who make the city excessively one. Besides that, they plainly do away with the work of two excellences: moderation with regard to women (for it is a fine act to keep away, out of moderation, from a woman who belongs to another), and generosity with regard to property. No one will be seen to be generous, or do a single generous act, since the work of generosity lies in the use of possessions.

Nor should we ignore this very point: we must pay attention to the long stretch of time, the many years, in which it would not have gone unnoticed if these arrangements were good. Practically everything has been discovered already; but some things have not been brought together, and others people know about but do not put to use. It would become especially clear if one saw such a constitution actually being set up. He will not be able to create the city without dividing and separating its members, some into common meals, others into brotherhoods and tribes. So nothing else will end up being legislated except that the guardians are not to farm—which is what the Spartans are trying to do even now.

But if, as in other cities, these things are private among the farmers too, what form will the community take? There will inevitably be two cities in one, and these opposed to each other. For he makes the guardians a kind of garrison, and the farmers, craftsmen, and the rest the citizens. Accusations and lawsuits, and all the other evils he says exist in cities, will all exist among these people too. And yet Socrates says that thanks to their education they will not need many regulations—those on city management, on markets, and the like—even though he gives the education only to the guardians. Further, he makes the farmers the owners of their holdings, paying a share of the produce; but they are likely to be far more troublesome and full of pride than the helots, the penestae, and the slaves that some peoples have.note

Whether these matters are equally necessary or not, nothing at any rate has been settled so far; nor on the related questions of what their constitution, their education, and their laws are to be. It is not easy to work out, and it makes no small difference, what sort of people these must be if the community of the guardians is to be preserved. But 1264b if he makes the wives common and the property private, who will manage the household, as the men manage things in the fields? And who will, even if both the property and the farmers’ wives are common? It is strange, too, to draw the comparison from wild animals, arguing that women should pursue the same activities as men—animals, which have no household to manage.

Being happy is not like being even. Evenness can belong to a whole without belonging to either of its parts, but happiness cannot. And if the guardians are not happy, who else is? Surely not the craftsmen and the mass of vulgar workers. The constitution Socrates has described, then, has these difficulties, and others no smaller.

Most of the Laws in fact consists of laws; he has said little about the constitution. And though he wants to make it more suitable for cities in general, he gradually brings it back round to the other constitution. Apart from the sharing of women and property, he gives both constitutions the same features: the same education, living free of necessary work, and common meals likewise—except that in this one he says there should be common meals for women too, and that the former has a thousand men bearing arms and this one five thousand.

It would also be good to add the neighboring regions, first, if the city is to live a political life. (It must use for war not only such weapons as are useful within its own territory, but also those that are useful against places outside it.) And if one does not accept such a life, either for the individual or for the city in common, the citizens must nonetheless be formidable to their enemies, not only when these invade their territory but also when they withdraw from it.

It is strange, too, to equalize property but make no provision about the number of citizens, leaving the begetting of children unlimited, on the grounds that the total will even out well enough to the same number because some couples are childless, however many children others have, 1265b since that seems to be what happens in cities now. But this needs far more precision in that city than in cities now. Nowadays nobody is left destitute, because estates are divided among any number of heirs; but there, since estates cannot be divided, the extra children must have nothing, whether they are fewer or more numerous. One might rather suppose that the begetting of children should be limited, more than property, so that no one has more than a certain number; and that this number should be set with an eye to chance, in case some of the children die, and to the childlessness of others.

Leaving it unregulated, as most cities do, inevitably causes poverty among the citizens, and poverty breeds civil strife and crime. Pheidon of Corinth, one of the most ancient lawgivers, thought that the households and the number of citizens should stay equal, even if at the start everyone’s allotments were unequal in size; but in these Laws it is the opposite. How we think these matters would be better arranged must be discussed later. These Laws also leave out how the rulers are to differ from the ruled. He says that, just as the warp is made from a different wool from the woof, so the rulers should stand toward the ruled.

And since he allows a person’s total property to increase up to fivefold, why should the same not hold for land, up to some limit? The division of house plots must also be examined, in case it does not serve household management well: he assigned each man two plots, set apart from each other, but it is hard to run two houses.

Some people say that the best constitution must be a mixture of all constitutions, and for this reason they praise the Spartan one. Some of them say it is made up of oligarchy, monarchy, and democracy: the kingship is monarchy, the office of the elders oligarchy, and it is democratic in the office of the ephors, because the ephors come from the people. Others say that the ephorate is a tyranny, and that the constitution is democratic in its common meals and the rest of its 1266a daily life. But in these Laws it is said that the best constitution should be composed of democracy and tyranny—which one would either not count as constitutions at all, or count as the worst of all. So those who mix more of them are closer to the truth; for a constitution made up of more elements is better.note

Next, it plainly has nothing monarchic in it, only oligarchic and democratic features, and it tends to lean toward oligarchy. This is clear from how officials are appointed. Choosing by lot from elected candidates is common to both. But requiring the better-off to attend the assembly, vote for officials, or perform some other political function, while the others are exempt, is oligarchic; so is trying to have most officials come from the well-off, and the highest offices from the highest property classes. He also makes the election of the council oligarchic.

Everyone is required to vote, but first for candidates from the first property class, then again for an equal number from the second, then from the third—except that not everyone was obliged to vote for candidates from the third or fourth class, and for the fourth class only members of the first and second were obliged. Then from these, he says, an equal number must be designated from each property class. So those from the highest property classes will be more numerous and better, because some of the common people will not vote, since they are not compelled to. That a constitution of this kind should not be composed of democracy and monarchy is clear from these points and from what will be said later, when the inquiry turns to this sort of constitution. Electing officials from elected candidates is also dangerous.

If some people, even a moderate number, choose to band together, the elections will always go as they wish. That, then, is how matters stand with the constitution in the Laws.

This 1266b he thought would not be hard to do in cities that were just being founded. In those already settled it was more laborious, but even so, equality could be reached very quickly if the rich gave dowries but did not receive them, and the poor received them but did not give them. Plato, when writing the Laws, thought inequality should be allowed up to a point, but that no citizen should be permitted to acquire more than five times the smallest property, as was said earlier.

Those who legislate in this way must not overlook something they now do overlook: in fixing the amount of property, they ought to fix the number of children as well. If the number of children outgrows the size of the property, the law is bound to be broken; and quite apart from its being broken, it is a bad thing for many people to go from rich to poor, since it is hard to keep such people from becoming revolutionaries.

That equality of property has some power over the political community, some people in the past as well plainly recognized. Solon, for instance, made a law about it, and elsewhere there is a law preventing anyone from acquiring as much land as he wants. Laws likewise prevent people from selling their property: at Locri, for example, there is a law against selling unless one can show that an evident misfortune has befallen one; and there are laws requiring the ancient allotments to be preserved. (The repeal of this law at Leucas made their constitution excessively democratic, since it no longer came about that people entered office from the fixed property classes.) But it is possible for there to be equality of property, and yet for the amount to be either too great, so that people live in luxury, or too small, so that they live meanly.

It is clear, then, that it is not enough for the lawgiver to make property equal; he must aim at the mean. And even if one assigned a moderate property to everyone, it would do no good; for one should equalize desires rather than properties, and that cannot happen unless people are adequately educated by the laws. Phaleas might perhaps reply that this is just what he says himself, since he thinks cities should have equality in these two things, property and education. But one has to say what the education is to be; its merely being one and the same is no help. It can be one and the same and yet be the kind that makes people inclined to grasp for more money, or honor, or both.

For the first, a modest property and work; for the second, moderation; and third, if some want to find enjoyment through themselves alone, they will find no cure for it except from philosophy, since the other pleasures need other people. In fact the greatest wrongs are done out of excess, not for the sake of necessities: people do not become tyrants to keep from being cold. That is why the honors are great for killing not a thief but a tyrant. So the kind of constitution Phaleas proposes helps only against small wrongs. Further, he mostly wants to set up arrangements that will let the citizens govern well among themselves; but they must also do so with respect to their neighbors and all outsiders. The constitution must therefore be organized with a view to military strength, about which he has said nothing. The same goes for property.

It must be sufficient not only for use within the city but also against dangers from outside. So there should not be so much of it that nearby, stronger peoples will covet it while its owners are unable to fend off the attackers; nor so little that they cannot sustain a war even against equals and peers. He has determined nothing about this, but we must not overlook it: what amount of wealth is advantageous. Perhaps the best limit is that it should not pay the stronger to go to war because of the excess, but that they would do so only as they would if the property were not so large.

When Autophradates, for example, was about to besiege Atarneus, Eubulus told him to consider how long it would take to capture the place, and to reckon up what that length of time would cost; for he himself was willing to take less than that and abandon Atarneus at once. By saying this he made Autophradates think it over and give up the siege.note

Nor has he dealt well with equality of property. He equalizes only landholding; but there is also wealth in slaves, livestock, and money, and a large stock of what are called movables. So one must seek equality in all of these, or some moderate regulation, or else leave them all alone. It also appears from his legislation that he is making the city small, if all the craftsmen are to be public slaves and not form any part of the citizen body. But if those who carry out public works are to be public slaves, it should be on the pattern followed at Epidamnus and once instituted by Diophantus at Athens. As for Phaleas’ constitution, then, one can pretty well see from this whether he has said anything well or not.

He divided the territory into three parts: sacred, public, and private. The sacred land was to provide for the customary offerings to the gods; the public land was to support the defenders; and the private land was to belong to the farmers. He thought there were also only three kinds of law, since the matters that lawsuits arise over are three in number: outrage, damage, and death. He also legislated a single supreme court, to which all cases thought to have been wrongly decided were to be appealed; he composed it of certain elected 1268a elders. He thought verdicts in the courts should not be given by casting ballots. Instead, each juror should carry a tablet: if he convicted outright, he would write the penalty on it; if he acquitted outright, he would leave it blank; and if he convicted on one point but not another, he would specify this.

He thought the present law was badly made, since it forces jurors to perjure themselves whichever way they vote. He also proposed a law that those who discover something useful to the city should receive an honor, and that the children of those who die in war should be brought up at public expense—as though this had never yet been legislated elsewhere, though in fact this law exists now at Athens and in other cities too. All the officials were to be elected by the people, and he made the people consist of the three parts of the city. Those elected were to take care of public affairs, matters concerning foreigners, and matters concerning orphans.

That is not easy unless they are numerous; and if they are, why should the others share in the constitution and have authority over the appointment of officials? Again, what use are the farmers to the city? Craftsmen are necessary, since every city needs craftsmen, and they can make a living from their craft as in other cities. The farmers, if they supplied food to those who possess arms, might reasonably be some part of the city; but as it is, they have their own land and will farm it for themselves.

Further, as for the common land from which the defenders are to get their food: if they farm it themselves, the fighting part would not be distinct from the farming part, which is what the lawgiver wants. If some other people are to farm it, distinct both from those who farm their own land and from the fighters, this will be yet a fourth part of the city, sharing in nothing and alien to the constitution. And if one makes the same people farm both the private and the common land, the quantity of produce will be insufficient for 1268b each of them to farm for two households; and why will they not straight away take food for themselves and supply it to the fighters from the same land and the same allotments? All of this involves a great deal of confusion.

Nor is the law about judging well made, the one requiring a juror to make distinctions in his verdict when the charge has been written without qualification, so that the juror becomes an arbitrator. In arbitration this is possible even with several arbitrators, since they confer with one another about the verdict; but in the courts it is not possible. On the contrary, most lawgivers take steps to prevent jurors from conferring with one another. Then how will the verdict not be a muddle, when a juror thinks the defendant owes something, but not as much as the plaintiff claims? The plaintiff claims twenty minas, but one juror will award ten (or the one more and the other less), another five, another four; clearly they will split it up in this way, while some will award the whole sum and others nothing.note

How, then, will the votes be counted? Further, nothing forces a juror to perjure himself who simply acquits or convicts, provided the charge has been written without qualification, and rightly so. The one who acquits is not judging that nothing is owed, only that the twenty minas are not owed. It is the one who convicts who perjures himself, if he does not believe the twenty minas are owed.

At any rate, in the other sciences this has proved beneficial: medicine, for instance, has been changed from its ancestral ways, and gymnastic training, and in general all the arts and capacities. So since statesmanship too must be counted as one of these, it is clear that the same must hold for it as well. One might say that the facts themselves provide evidence: the ancient laws were excessively simple and uncivilized. The Greeks used to go about carrying iron weapons, and bought their wives from one another; and whatever remains of ancient custom anywhere is altogether foolish. 1269a At Cyme, for example, there is a law about homicide: if the prosecutor produces a certain number of witnesses from among his own relatives, the defendant is guilty of the murder.note

In general, everyone seeks not what is ancestral but what is good. And it is likely that the first human beings, whether they were born from the earth or were survivors of some catastrophe, were like ordinary or even foolish people today—which is in fact what is said of the earthborn—so it would be strange to abide by their opinions. Besides, it is not better to leave even written laws unchanged. Just as in the other arts, so with political order it is impossible for everything to be written down precisely, since what is written must be universal, whereas actions concern particulars.

Further, even if laws are to be changed, should all of them be, and in every constitution, or not? And by anyone at all, or by certain people? These questions make a great difference. So let us leave this inquiry for now; it belongs to another occasion.

The reason is perhaps that the neighboring 1269b cities, even when at war with one another, never ally themselves with rebels, since that is not in their interest, as they too have subject populations of their own. The Spartans, by contrast, had neighbors who were all hostile—Argives, Messenians, and Arcadians. The Thessalians too first faced revolts because they were still at war with the peoples bordering them, the Achaeans, Perrhaebians, and Magnesians. And even if there were nothing else, the task of supervising them seems troublesome in itself: how one ought to deal with them. If given free rein they become insolent and claim equality with their masters; if made to live wretchedly, they plot against them and hate them. Clearly, then, those who have this experience with their serf population have not found the best way.

So in such a constitution wealth is inevitably held in honor, especially if the men happen to be dominated by their women, as is true of most military and warlike peoples—apart from the Celts and any others who have openly held sexual relations between males in honor. The first teller of myths seems to have had good reason to pair Ares with Aphrodite, for all such peoples appear to be strongly drawn either to intimacy with males or to women. This is why it was so among the Spartans, and in the days of their empire many things were managed by women. And yet what difference is there between women ruling and rulers being ruled by women? The result is the same. Boldness is of no use in everyday affairs, but only, if at all, in war; yet even here Spartan women were extremely harmful.note

They showed this at the time of the Theban invasion: they were of no use at all, as women in other cities are, and caused more confusion than the enemy. It seems, then, that from the beginning the laxity regarding women 1270a arose among the Spartans with some reason. The men spent long periods abroad away from their own land on campaign, fighting the war against the Argives and then again the one against the Arcadians and Messenians. When they had leisure they presented themselves to the lawgiver already prepared by military life, which contains many elements of excellence. But as for the women, they say Lycurgus tried to bring them under the laws, but when they resisted he gave up.note

These, then, are the causes of what happened, and so clearly of this error too. But we are not examining whom we should excuse or not excuse, but what is right and not right. The poor state of affairs concerning women seems, as was said before, not only to create a certain unseemliness in the constitution taken by itself, but also to contribute something to love of money. After what has just been said, one might criticize the unevenness in the distribution of property. Some Spartans have come to own far too much property, others very little indeed; that is why the land has fallen into the hands of a few.

This too has been badly arranged by the laws. The lawgiver made it dishonorable to buy or sell land one already holds, and in this he did right; but he gave anyone who wished the freedom to give it away or bequeath it—and yet the same result must follow either way. Almost two-fifths of all the land belongs to women, both because there are many heiresses and because large dowries are given. Yet it would have been better to prescribe no dowry, or a small or at any rate moderate one. As it is, a man may give an heiress in marriage to whomever he likes; and if he dies without a will, whoever he leaves as heir gives her to whomever he wishes. The result is that although the land could support fifteen hundred cavalry and thirty thousand hoplites, their number fell below a thousand.note

The facts themselves have made it clear that this arrangement of theirs was bad: the city could not withstand a single blow, but was ruined by its shortage of men. They say that under the earlier kings they used to grant citizenship to others, so that there was no shortage of men then, despite their being at war for long periods; and they say that the Spartiates once numbered as many as ten thousand. Whether or not this is true, it is better for the city to be full of men through the equalization of property. The law about having children also runs counter to this reform. 1270b Wishing the Spartiates to be as numerous as possible, the lawgiver encourages the citizens to have as many children as possible: they have a law that a man who has fathered three sons is exempt from military guard duty, and one who has fathered four is exempt from all taxes.note

Yet it is clear that if many are born while the land is divided up as it is, many must inevitably become poor.

This office does hold the constitution together: the people keep quiet because they share in the highest office, so whether it came about through the lawgiver or by chance, it serves their affairs well. For a constitution that is to be preserved must have all the parts of the city wanting it to exist and to continue on the same terms. The kings are in this state because of their own honor, the gentlemen because of the council of elders (for this office is a prize for excellence), and the people because of the ephorate (for it is filled from everyone). But while this office should be elected from everyone, it should not be in the way it is now, which is extremely childish. Further, the ephors have authority over important judgments, though they are just anyone; so it would be better for them to judge not on their own discretion but according to written rules and the laws.note

The way of life of the ephors, too, is not in keeping with the aim of the city. Their own is too relaxed, whereas for the others it goes rather to the extreme of harshness, so that they cannot endure it, but secretly evade the law and enjoy bodily pleasures.

Further, the way they elect the elders is childish in its method of decision, and it is not right for the person who is to be judged worthy of the office to ask for it himself: the man worthy of the office should hold it whether he wants to or not. As it is, the lawgiver is evidently doing here what he does in the rest of the constitution: he makes the citizens ambitious for honor and has used this in the election of the elders, since no one would ask to hold office unless he were ambitious. And yet most of the wrongs that people commit deliberately arise pretty much from love of honor and love of money.

The institution of the common meals is meant to be democratic, but legislated in this way it turns out to be the least democratic of all. It is not easy for the very poor to take part, yet their ancestral definition of citizenship is that anyone unable to pay this contribution does not share in it. The law about the admirals has also been criticized by others, and rightly so, since it becomes a cause of civil strife: alongside the kings, who are permanent generals, the admiralty has been set up as practically another kingship. One might also criticize 1271b the lawgiver’s fundamental principle on this ground, as Plato too has criticized it in the Laws: the whole system of laws aims at one part of excellence, the military part, since this is useful for conquest.note

So they remained secure while they were at war, but came to ruin once they had an empire, because they did not know how to use leisure and had never practiced any discipline higher than that of war. There is another mistake no smaller than this. They believe that the goods people fight over are won by excellence rather than by vice, and in this they are right; but they suppose that these goods are better than excellence, and in this they are wrong. The Spartiates’ public finances are also badly managed. There is nothing in the city’s treasury, even though they are compelled to fight major wars, and they are bad at paying their taxes: since most of the land belongs to the Spartiates, they do not scrutinize one another’s contributions. The outcome is the opposite of what benefits the lawgiver’s aim: he has made the city short of money and its private citizens fond of it. So much, then, for the constitution of Sparta; these are the points one would most criticize.

The island seems to be naturally suited, and well situated, to rule over the Greek world. It lies across the whole sea, around which nearly all the Greeks are settled: on one side it is not far from the Peloponnese, on the other from Asia, near Triopium and Rhodes. That is why Minos gained command of the sea, conquering some of the islands and settling others; and in the end he attacked Sicily and died there, near Camicus.note

The ephors have the same power as the officials in Crete called kosmoi, except that the ephors are five in number and the kosmoi ten. The elders correspond to the elders whom the Cretans call the council. There used to be a kingship, but later the Cretans abolished it, and the kosmoi hold command in war. Everyone takes part in the assembly, but it has authority over nothing except to ratify by vote what the elders and the kosmoi have decided.

It is clear, then, that the common meals are better arranged among the Cretans than among the Spartans; but the arrangements concerning the kosmoi are even worse than those concerning the ephors. The defect that the ephors’ office has also belongs to them, since just anyone can become one; but what benefits the constitution there is absent here. There, because the election is made from everyone, the people share in the highest office and want the constitution to remain. Here they elect the kosmoi not from everyone but from certain families, and the elders from those who have served as kosmoi; and one might say the same about them as about those who hold the office in Sparta. Freedom from audit and tenure for life are a greater privilege than they deserve, and ruling not according to written rules but at their own discretion is hazardous.

That the people keep quiet though they have no share in office is no sign that things are well arranged. The kosmoi have no chance of profit, as the ephors do, since they live far 1272b away, on an island, from anyone who might corrupt them.

A city in this condition is in danger from those who want to attack it and are able to. But, as was said, it is kept safe by its location, since its distance has had the effect of an expulsion of foreigners. That is also why the subject population stays loyal to the Cretans, whereas the helots frequently revolt. The Cretans take no part in any foreign empire, and only recently a foreign war has crossed over to the island, which has made plain the weakness of the laws there. So much, then, for this constitution.note

It resembles the Spartan constitution in these respects: the common meals of its associations correspond to the phiditia, and the office of the Hundred and Four to the ephors—except that it is not worse: the ephors come from just anyone, whereas the Carthaginians elect this office on the basis of merit. Their kings and council of elders correspond to the kings and elders there. It is also better that the kings are neither a separate family nor just any family, and that if a family is outstanding, they are elected from it rather than by seniority. Placed in authority over important matters, if they are worthless 1273a they do great harm, and they have already harmed the city of Sparta.

That the boards of five, which have authority over many important matters, are chosen by co-option, that they elect the Hundred, the highest office, and further that they hold office longer than the others (they are in power both after leaving office and before entering it)—all this is oligarchic. That they are unpaid and not chosen by lot must be counted aristocratic, as must any other such feature, and also that all lawsuits are judged by the boards, not some by some officials and others by others as in Sparta. But the arrangement of the Carthaginians deviates from aristocracy toward oligarchy most of all through an idea that most people share: they think officials should be chosen not only on merit but also on wealth, since it is impossible for a poor man to rule well and have leisure.

If, then, choosing by wealth is oligarchic and choosing by excellence is aristocratic, this would be a third arrangement, the one on which the Carthaginian constitution is organized. They elect with an eye to these two things, especially for the highest offices, the kings and the generals.

It is reasonable to expect that those who buy office will get into the habit of making a profit from it, when they have spent money to hold it. It would be strange if a man who is poor but decent will want to make a profit, while a worse man who has spent money will not. That is why those able to rule best should be the ones who rule. And even if the lawgiver passed over the wealth of decent people, it would be better at least to see to their leisure while they hold office. It would also seem bad for the same man to hold several offices, which is well regarded among the Carthaginians; for one task is best done by one person. The lawgiver must see to it that this happens, and not require the same man to play the pipes and make shoes. So where the city is not small, it is more constitutional, and more democratic, for more people to share in the offices. It is more widely shared, as we said, and each task is done better and more quickly when the same people do the same things.

This is clear in military and naval affairs: in both of these, ruling and being ruled extend through pretty much everyone. Although the constitution is oligarchic, they escape its dangers very well by growing rich, constantly sending out part of the people to the cities. In this way they cure the problem and make the constitution stable. But this is the work of fortune, whereas freedom from civil strife should be due to the lawgiver. As it is, if some misfortune occurs and the mass of those who are ruled revolt, the laws provide no remedy to restore peace. Such, then, are the constitutions of Sparta, Crete, and Carthage, which are justly well regarded.

But it seems that Solon 1274a did not abolish the institutions that already existed, the council and the election of officials, but established the people’s power by making the courts open to all. That is why some people blame him: they say he undid the other elements by making the court, which was chosen by lot, sovereign over everything. For once the court grew strong, people courted the favor of the people as if it were a tyrant and changed the constitution into the present democracy. Ephialtes and Pericles curtailed the council of the Areopagus; Pericles introduced pay for jurors; and in this way each of the demagogues increased the people’s power and carried the constitution forward to the present democracy.note

But this seems to have happened not according to Solon’s intention, but rather by circumstance. The people, having been responsible for naval supremacy in the Persian Wars, grew proud and took up worthless demagogues when the decent people opposed their policies. Solon, at any rate, seems to have given the people only the most necessary power, that of electing officials and auditing them (for if the people did not have authority even over this, they would be enslaved and hostile). He appointed all the officials from the notable and well-off, from the five-hundred-bushel men, the teamsters, and a third class called the knights; the fourth class, the laborers, had no share in any office.note

Even now people point out their tombs, which are in full view of each other, but one of which is in view of the territory of Corinth while the other is not. The story goes that they arranged their burial in this way: Diocles, out of loathing for what he had suffered, so that Corinthian land would not be visible from his burial mound, and Philolaus so that it 1274b would. That, then, is why they settled among the Thebans. Philolaus became their lawgiver on various matters, including the having of children—the laws they call laws of adoption. This is his distinctive legislation, meant to preserve the number of allotments. There is nothing distinctive of Charondas except lawsuits for perjury, since he was the first to introduce the formal denunciation of false witnesses; but in the precision of his laws he is more polished even than present-day lawgivers.

Pittacus too was a craftsman of laws, though not of a constitution. A law peculiar to him is that drunk people who commit some offense pay a heavier penalty than sober ones. Because more people commit violent outrages when drunk than when sober, he looked not to the leniency that one might think drunk people deserve, but to what is advantageous. Androdamas of Rhegium also became lawgiver to the Chalcidians in Thrace; the laws about homicide and about heiresses are his. Still, there is nothing peculiar to him that one could point to. So let our study of constitutions, both those actually in force and those proposed by particular thinkers, be taken as complete in this way.note

For the citizen too is often disputed: not everyone agrees that the same person is a citizen. Someone who is a citizen in a democracy is often not a citizen in an oligarchy. Now we should set aside those who obtain the title in some other way, such as citizens by grant. A citizen is not a citizen by living in a place (resident foreigners and slaves share the place of residence too). Nor are those citizens who share in legal rights only to the extent of being able to be sued and to sue (this belongs also to those who share in them under treaties [for they too have these rights]—indeed in many places resident foreigners do not share fully even in this, but must take a patron, so that they share in this sort of community incompletely). Rather, just as with children who are not yet enrolled because of their age, and old men who have been released from their duties, we must say they are citizens in a sense, but not quite without qualification: we must add that the former are incomplete and the latter past their prime, or something else of the kind (it makes no difference, since what is meant is clear).note

For we are looking for the citizen without qualification, the one with no defect of this kind that needs correcting; similar difficulties can be raised, and solved, about those who have lost their civic rights and about exiles. The citizen without qualification is defined by nothing else so much as by sharing in judgment and office. Some offices are limited in time, so that some may not be held twice by the same person at all, or only after fixed intervals. Another kind is indefinite, like that of the juror and the assembly member. Now someone might perhaps say that such people are not officials at all, and do not share in office through these roles; yet it’s ridiculous to deny office to those who hold the most authority. But let this make no difference, since the argument is about a word: what is common to juror and assembly member, the thing we should call them both, has no name. For the sake of a definition, then, let it be called “indefinite office.”

We set down, then, as citizens those who share in office in this way.

For in some there is no popular element, and they do not recognize an assembly but only specially summoned councils, and they judge lawsuits by sections. In Sparta, for instance, the ephors judge suits about contracts, different ephors taking different cases, while the elders judge homicide cases, and perhaps some other office judges still others. It’s not the same way in Carthage either, where certain offices judge all the lawsuits. But our definition of the citizen admits of correction. For in the other constitutions it is not the holder of indefinite office who is assembly member and juror, but the holder of an office defined by its term; it is to all or some of these that deliberating and judging are assigned, either about all matters or about some.

What the citizen is, then, is evident from this: anyone who has the right to share in deliberative or judicial office we now say is a citizen of that city, and a city, to put it simply, is a multitude of such people large enough for a self-sufficient life.

The most superficial way of investigating the puzzle concerns the place and the people: for the place and the people can be split apart, and some can settle in one place and others in another.

For if the city is a kind of community, and it is a community of citizens in a constitution, then when the constitution becomes different in kind and changes, it would seem necessary that the city too is not the same. Just so, we say a chorus is different when it is comic at one time and tragic at another, though it is often made up of the same people. Likewise every other community and combination is different if the form of the combination is different: we say, for instance, that a musical mode made of the same notes is different if it is Dorian at one time and Phrygian at another. If this is how things stand, it is evident that we should call a city the same chiefly by looking to its constitution; it is possible to call it by a different name or the same one whether the same people inhabit it or entirely different people.

Whether it is just to discharge obligations or not when a city changes to a different constitution is another question.

Similarly, then, with citizens: though they are unlike, their work is the safety of the community, and the community is the constitution. That is why the excellence of the citizen must be relative to the constitution. If, then, there are several kinds of constitution, it is clear that there cannot be a single excellence of the good citizen, the complete excellence; but the good man, we say, is good in virtue of a single excellence, the complete one.

Again, a city is made up of unlike parts. Just as an animal consists, to begin with, of soul and body, and soul of reason and desire, and a household of husband and wife, and property of master and slave, in the same way a city is composed of all these and of other unlike kinds besides. So the excellence of all the citizens cannot be one, just as the excellence of a chorus leader and of the dancer beside him is not.

But if the excellence of a good ruler and of a good man is the same, and the one who is ruled is also a citizen, then the excellence of citizen and man would not be the same without qualification, though it would be for a particular citizen; for the excellence of a ruler and of a citizen is not the same. And perhaps this is why Jason said he went hungry whenever he was not a tyrant, meaning that he did not know how to be a private individual.note

One class of these is made up of manual laborers, who are, as their very name indicates, those who live by 1277b their hands; the vulgar craftsman belongs among them. That is why in some places, in the old days, craftsmen had no share in offices, before the extreme form of democracy arose. So neither the good man, nor the statesman, nor the good citizen should learn the tasks of those who are ruled in this way, except perhaps for his own personal use; otherwise the distinction between master and slave no longer holds.

For clearly the excellence of a good man who is ruled but free, justice for example, would not be single; it would have kinds, one by which he will rule and one by which he will be ruled, just as a man’s moderation and courage differ from a woman’s. (A man would seem a coward if he were brave the way a brave woman is, and a woman would seem talkative if she were as reserved as a good man; since household management too is different for a man and a woman: his work is to acquire, hers to preserve.) Practical wisdom is the only excellence peculiar to the ruler. The others, it seems, must be common to both the ruled and the rulers; but for the ruled, the excellence is not practical wisdom but true opinion. The one ruled is like a pipe-maker, while the ruler is like the piper who uses the pipe.

Whether, then, the excellence of a good man and of a good citizen is the same or different, and how it is the same and how different, is evident from this.

In ancient times, in some places, the vulgar class was slave or foreign, which is why most vulgar craftsmen are such even now. The best city will not make a vulgar craftsman a citizen. But if he too is a citizen, then the citizen’s excellence we described must be said to belong not to everyone, nor to the free alone, but only to those who are released from necessary work. Of those who do the necessary work, those who serve one person are slaves, while those who serve the public are vulgar craftsmen and hired laborers. How things stand with them is evident with a little further examination [indeed, what has been said makes it plain, once it is understood].

For since there are several constitutions, there must also be several kinds of citizen, and especially of the citizen who is ruled. So in one constitution the vulgar craftsman and the hired laborer must be citizens, while in others this is impossible: for example, in any constitution that people call aristocratic, in which honors are given according to excellence and merit, since one cannot pursue the things of excellence while living the life of a vulgar craftsman or a hired laborer. In oligarchies a hired laborer cannot be a citizen (since a share in offices depends on high property assessments), but a vulgar craftsman can, since even most craftsmen become rich. At Thebes there was a law that anyone who had not kept away from the market for ten years could not share in office.

In many constitutions the law even draws in some foreigners: in some democracies a man born of a citizen mother is a citizen, and in many places the same holds for illegitimate children. But since they make such people citizens through a shortage of legitimate citizens (it is underpopulation that leads them to use their laws this way), when they are well supplied with a population they gradually exclude first those with a slave father or slave mother, then those whose citizenship comes through their mothers, and finally they make citizens only of those born of two citizen parents.

It was said in our first discussions, in which household management and mastery were determined, that the human being is by nature a political animal. That is why, even when they need no help from one another, people desire to live together no less. Nonetheless the common advantage also brings them together, to the extent that each gets a share of living well. This, above all, is the end, both for all in common and for each separately. But they also come together for the sake of life itself, and maintain the political community for that; for perhaps there is some share of what is fine even in mere living, as long as life’s hardships are not too overwhelming. It is evident that most people endure much suffering in their clinging to life, as if there were a kind of joy and natural sweetness in it.

For nothing prevents the trainer from sometimes being one of those in training himself, just as the helmsman is always one of the sailors. The trainer or helmsman looks to the good of those under his rule, but when he himself becomes one of them, he shares in the benefit incidentally: the helmsman is a sailor, and the trainer, while remaining a trainer, becomes one of those in training. That is why, in the case of political offices too, when the constitution is established on the basis of equality and similarity among the citizens, they think it right to rule in turn. In earlier times, as is natural, people thought it right to serve in turn, and for someone else in his turn to look to their good, just as they themselves, when in office, had looked to his advantage. But now, because of the benefits to be had from public property and from office, people want to be in office continuously, as if officeholders, sickly as they were, always happened to be healthy while in office.

In that case they would perhaps chase after offices in just this way. It is evident, then, that all constitutions that look to the common advantage are correct according to what is just without qualification, while all those that look only to the rulers’ own advantage are mistaken, deviations from the correct constitutions. For they are like the rule of a master, whereas the city is a community of free people.

Among monarchies, we usually call the one that looks to the common advantage kingship; rule by a few, but more than one, we call aristocracy (either because the best people rule, or because it aims at what is best for the city and those who share in it); and when the multitude governs for the common advantage, it is called by the name common to all constitutions: polity. (This happens with good reason. It is possible for one person or a few to be outstanding in excellence, but for larger numbers it is hard 1279b to be accomplished in every excellence, except above all in military excellence, since this arises in a multitude. That is why in this constitution the class that fights in its defense is most sovereign, and those who possess arms share in it.) The deviations from those mentioned are tyranny from kingship, oligarchy from aristocracy, and democracy from polity.

For tyranny is monarchy aimed at the advantage of the monarch, oligarchy at that of the well-off, and democracy at the advantage of the poor; none of them aims at what benefits the community.

For suppose the majority, being well-off, were sovereign over the city, when democracy is when the multitude is sovereign; and similarly, again, suppose it somewhere happened that the poor were fewer than the well-off but stronger, and sovereign over the constitution, when people say that where a small number is sovereign there is oligarchy. Then the constitutions would not seem to have been well defined.

The argument seems, then, to make clear that whether few or many are sovereign is incidental, the one to oligarchies and the other to democracies, because everywhere the well-off are few and the poor are many (which is also why the factors mentioned do not turn out to be the causes of the difference). What democracy and oligarchy really differ by is poverty and wealth; 1280a and necessarily, wherever people rule because of wealth, whether they are fewer or more, this is oligarchy, and wherever the poor rule, democracy. But it happens, as we said, that the one group is few and the other many. For few are well-off, but all share in freedom; and these are the grounds on which both lay claim to the constitution.

So since justice is for certain persons, and is divided in the same way with respect to the things and to the persons, as was said earlier in the Ethics, they agree about the equality of the thing but dispute about the equality of the persons. This is chiefly for the reason just given, that they judge badly about what concerns themselves, but also because both sides speak of justice up to a point and think they are speaking of justice without qualification. The one side think that if they are unequal in some respect, such as wealth, they are wholly unequal; the others think that if they are equal in some respect, such as freedom, they are wholly equal.

But neither are there offices common to all of them for 1280b these purposes, each side having its own; nor does either side care what sort of people the others are, or that no one covered by the agreements should be unjust or have any vice at all, but only that they not wrong one another. Those who care about good order, though, look into political excellence and vice. Hence it is evident that a city that is truly so called, and not just for the sake of the word, must concern itself with excellence. Otherwise the community becomes an alliance, differing only in location from the other alliances whose members live far apart. And the law becomes a compact and, as the sophist Lycophron said, a guarantor of just dealings with one another, but not the sort of thing to make the citizens good and just. That this is how things are is evident.

For even if someone were to bring the places together into one, so that the city of the Megarians and that of the Corinthians touched each other’s walls, it would still not be one city, not even if they gave each other rights of intermarriage, though this is one of the forms of community peculiar to cities. Likewise, suppose some people lived apart, but not so far apart as to have no dealings, and had laws against wronging one another in their exchanges: for instance, one was a carpenter, another a farmer, another a shoemaker, another something else of the kind, and they numbered ten thousand. If they shared in nothing else but things like exchange and alliance, even so this would not yet be a city.

That is why marriage connections arose in cities, and brotherhoods, sacrifices, and the cultivated pastimes of living together. This sort of thing is the work of friendship, since friendship is the decision to live together. The end of the city, then, is living well, and these things are for the sake of the end. A city is the community of families and villages 1281a in a complete and self-sufficient life, and this, as we say, is living happily and finely. The political community must therefore be set down as existing for the sake of fine actions, not for the sake of living together. That is why those who contribute most to such a community have a greater share in the city than those who are equal or greater in freedom and birth but unequal in political excellence, or than those who surpass others in wealth but are surpassed in excellence.

It is evident, then, from what has been said, that all who dispute about constitutions speak of some part of justice.

Again, all the actions a tyrant has performed would have to be just, since he uses force because he is stronger, just as the multitude does with the rich. But then is it just for the minority, the rich, to rule? If they too do the same, plundering and seizing the possessions of the multitude, is that just? Then so is the other. That all these things are bad and unjust, then, is evident. But should the decent rule and be sovereign over everything? Then all the others must be without honor, not honored with political offices; for we say that offices are honors, and when the same people are always in office, the others must be without honor. Is it better, then, for the one most excellent person to rule? But that is still more oligarchic, since those without honor are more numerous.

But perhaps someone might say that it is bad for a human being, rather than law, to be sovereign at all, since a human being is subject to the feelings that arise in the soul. But if the law is oligarchic or democratic, what difference will it make to the puzzles raised? The same results described before will follow.

But excellent men differ from each individual among the many in the same way as beautiful people, they say, differ from those who are not beautiful, and painted images from real things: by bringing together into one what is scattered separately. For taken separately, this person’s eye, or some other part of someone else, would be more beautiful than the painted figure.

For it is not safe for them to share in the highest offices, since through injustice and folly they would inevitably do wrong in some things and make mistakes in others. But not to give them a share, and not to let them participate, is dangerous, since when many people are without honor and poor, that city is bound to be full of enemies. What remains, then, is for them to share in deliberating and judging. That is why Solon and some other lawgivers assign them to the election of officials and the auditing of officials, but do not allow them to hold office individually. For all of them together have adequate perception, and mixed with the better sort they benefit their cities, just as impure food mixed with pure makes the whole more useful than a small amount of pure; but each of them on his own is incomplete in judging.note

For choosing correctly is also the work of those who know: a geometer should be chosen by those who know geometry, and a helmsman by those who know navigation. Even if in some tasks and crafts some laymen also have a say, they do not have more of one than those who know. So by this argument the multitude should not be made sovereign over either the election of officials or their audits.

But perhaps not all of this is well said. This is partly because of the earlier argument, provided the multitude is not too servile (for each individual will be a worse judge than those who know, but all of them together will be better, or no worse). It is also because in some cases the maker would not be the only or the best judge: in the case of those things whose products are recognized even by people who lack the craft. For instance, knowing a house is not only for the one who built it; the one who uses it will judge it even better (and the user is the householder). Likewise a helmsman will judge a rudder better than a carpenter, and a guest will judge a feast, not the cook.

For it is not the individual juror, council member, or assembly member who rules, but the court, the council, and the people; each of those mentioned is a part of these (by “part” I mean the council member, the assembly member, and the juror). So it is just for the multitude to be sovereign over greater matters, since the people, the council, and the court are made up of many. And the combined property assessment of all of these is greater than that of those who hold the great offices individually or in small numbers.

Let these points be settled 1282b in this way. The first puzzle mentioned makes nothing so evident as that the laws, rightly laid down, should be sovereign, and that the ruler, whether one or more, should be sovereign over those matters on which the laws cannot speak precisely, since it is not easy to make universal determinations about everything. But what sort of laws the rightly laid down ones should be is not yet clear at all; the puzzle raised long ago still remains. For laws too must be bad or good, just or unjust, at the same time and in the same way as constitutions. This much, at any rate, is evident: the laws must be laid down to suit the constitution.

But if so, it is clear that laws in accordance with the correct constitutions must be just, and those in accordance with the deviant ones unjust.

For perhaps someone might say that offices should be distributed unequally on the basis of superiority in any good whatever, provided that in every other respect people did not differ but happened to be alike; for those who differ, what is just and what accords with merit are different. But if this is true, then complexion, height, or any good at all will give those who excel in it some advantage in political rights. Or is this falsehood obvious? It is evident in the other sciences and capacities. Among pipers who are alike in their craft, the better pipes should not be given to those of better birth (they won’t play any better); it is the one who excels at the work who should be given the superior instruments. If what is being said is not yet clear, it will become more evident if we take it further.

Suppose someone excels at piping but falls far short in good birth or beauty. Even if each of these is a greater good than piping (I mean good birth and beauty), and even if proportionally they exceed piping by more than he excels at piping, still the outstanding 1283a pipes must be given to him. For superiority in wealth and good birth ought to contribute to the work, and they contribute nothing.

That is why the well-born, the free, and the rich reasonably lay claim to honor. For there must be free people and people who pay property taxes, since a city could not consist entirely of the poor, any more than of slaves. But if these are needed, clearly justice and political excellence are needed too, since without these a city cannot be managed either; except that without the former a city cannot exist, while without the latter it cannot be managed well.

It has been said before too that all dispute with a kind of justice, but not all with justice without qualification. The rich claim because they have a greater share of the land, and the land is common property, and further because they are for the most part more reliable in contracts. The free and the well-born claim on grounds closely connected with each other (for the better born are more truly citizens than the lowborn, and good birth is held in honor at home among every people); and further, because those from better parents are likely to be better, since good birth is excellence of family. Likewise we shall say that excellence too has a just claim, since we say justice is the excellence of community, which all the others must follow. And the majority too have a claim against the minority, since they are stronger, richer, and better, when the majority is taken together in comparison with the minority.

There is a puzzle facing all who dispute over political honors. Those who claim to rule because of their wealth would seem to have nothing just to say, and likewise those who claim on the basis of birth. For clearly, if again some one person is richer than all the rest, then by the same justice this one person will have to rule over all; and likewise the one outstanding in good birth will have to rule over those whose claim rests on freedom. Perhaps the same will happen with aristocracies in the case of excellence: if some one man were better than the others in the governing body, excellent though they are, then by the same justice this man should be sovereign.

Then if the multitude too should be sovereign because they are stronger than the few, then if one person, or more than one but fewer than the many, were stronger than the rest, these would have to be sovereign rather than the multitude. All this seems to make evident that none of these definitions is correct by which people claim that they themselves should rule and everyone else be ruled by them. For against those who claim to be sovereign over the governing body on the basis of excellence, and likewise against those who claim on the basis of wealth, the multitudes could offer a just argument: nothing prevents the multitude from sometimes being better and richer than the few, not individually but collectively. So this is also how one may respond to the puzzle that some people investigate and put forward.

For some raise the puzzle whether a lawgiver who wishes to lay down the most correct laws should legislate for the advantage of the better people or for that of the majority, when the situation described arises. What is correct must be taken as what is equal; and what is correct in the sense of equal is correct with a view to the advantage of the whole city and the common good of the citizens. A citizen in general is one who shares in ruling and being ruled, 1284a but he differs under each constitution, and under the best constitution he is one who is able and chooses to be ruled and to rule with a view to the life that accords with excellence.

For they would perhaps say what Antisthenes’ lions said when the hares made speeches in the assembly and claimed that everyone should have equal shares. That is why democratically governed cities institute ostracism, and for this sort of reason. They seem to pursue equality above all things, so they used to ostracize those who seemed to be superior in power because of wealth or many friends or some other political strength, and remove them from the city for fixed periods. The story goes that the Argonauts left Heracles behind for this sort of reason too: the Argo refused to carry him along with the other sailors, since he so far surpassed them.note

So those who criticize tyranny, and Periander’s advice to Thrasybulus, should not be thought entirely right in their censure. (They say that Periander said nothing to the herald sent to ask his advice, but leveled the field by lopping off the ears of grain that stood out; the herald did not understand the reason for what was happening, but reported what had occurred, and Thrasybulus realized that he should do away with the outstanding men.) For this is not only advantageous to tyrants, nor do tyrants alone do it; it is the same with oligarchies and democracies. Ostracism has in a way the same effect, by cutting down and exiling those who stand out.note

Those who control power do the same to cities and peoples: the Athenians, for instance, to the Samians, Chians, and Lesbians (once they had a firm hold on their empire, they humbled them in violation of the treaties), while the Persian 1284b king repeatedly cut down the Medes, the Babylonians, and any others who had grown proud from having once held power.

It is better, then, for the lawgiver to establish the constitution from the start in such a way that it needs no such remedy; but the second-best course, if the need arises, is to try to set things right with a corrective of this kind. This is not what happened in the cities: they did not look to the advantage of their own constitution but used ostracism as a weapon in civil strife. In the deviant constitutions, then, it is evident that ostracism is advantageous and just from their own point of view; perhaps it is also evident that it is not just without qualification. But in the best constitution there is a great puzzle, not about superiority in other goods, like strength, wealth, and many friends, but about what should be done if someone turns up who is outstanding in excellence.

Surely people would not say that such a man should be expelled and banished; but neither should he be ruled, since that would be like claiming to rule Zeus by sharing out the offices. What remains, and what seems natural, is for everyone to obey such a person gladly, so that people like this are permanent kings in their cities.

This kingship, then, is a kind of generalship with full powers, held for life. For the king has no authority to put anyone to death, except in certain circumstances, as in ancient times on military expeditions, by right of force. Homer shows this: Agamemnon put up with being abused in the assemblies, but when they had marched out he had authority even to kill. At any rate he says: “Whomever I see away from the battle… / … he will have no sure hope / of escaping the dogs and birds; / for death is in my hands.”note

For citizens guard kings with their arms, while tyrants are guarded by a foreign force; kings rule according to law and over willing subjects, tyrants over unwilling ones, so that kings have a guard drawn from the citizens, tyrants a guard against them.

In ancient times, then, these kings ruled continuously over the affairs of the city, both at home and beyond the borders. But later, as the kings gave up some of these powers and the crowds took away others, in most cities only the sacrifices were left to the kings, and where there was anything worth calling a kingship, they held only the leadership in wars beyond the borders.

The starting point of the inquiry is this: whether it is more advantageous to be ruled by the best man or by the best laws.

Clearly, then, he must himself be a lawgiver, and there must be laws laid down; but they must not be authoritative where they go astray, though they should be authoritative in all other matters. As for the things the law cannot decide, either at all or well, should the one best man rule, or everyone? For as things are now, people come together to try cases, deliberate and make judgments, and these judgments all concern particulars. Taken one at a time, any one of them is perhaps inferior. But the city is made up of many, and just as a feast to which many contribute is finer than a single, simple one, so for this reason a crowd also judges many things better than any one person.

If, then, the rule of a number of people who are all good men is to be counted as aristocracy, and the rule of one as kingship, aristocracy would be preferable to kingship for cities—whether the office is backed by force or not—provided it is possible to find a number of people who are alike. And perhaps this is why people were ruled by kings in earlier times: it was rare to find men who greatly surpassed others in excellence, especially since in those days they lived in small cities. Besides, they appointed their kings on the strength of benefactions, which is the work of good men. But when it came about that there were many people alike in excellence, they no longer put up with this; they looked for something shared in common and established a constitution. And when they grew worse and began enriching themselves from public property, it is reasonable to suppose that oligarchies arose from something of this sort, for they made wealth a thing of honor.

From oligarchies they changed first into tyrannies, and from tyrannies into democracy. For by constantly narrowing power into fewer hands out of greed for gain, they made the multitude stronger, so that it rose against them and democracies came into being. And now that cities have in fact grown larger, it is perhaps no longer easy for any constitution other than democracy to arise.

Perhaps, then, it is not hard to settle matters concerning such a king. He should have a force, and it should be large enough to be stronger than any one individual, or even several together, but weaker than the multitude. This is how the ancients assigned bodyguards whenever they appointed someone over the city whom they called an aesymnete or tyrant; and when Dionysius asked for bodyguards, someone advised the Syracusans to give him guards in that number.

And this is already law, since an arrangement is a law. It is therefore preferable for the law to rule rather than any one of the citizens. And by this same reasoning, even if it is better for certain people to rule, they should be appointed as guardians of the law and servants of the laws. For there must be some offices, but it is not just, they say, for this to be one person—at least when all are alike. And yet whatever the law seems unable to determine, a human being could not discern either. Rather, the law deliberately educates the officials and then sets them to judge and administer the remaining matters “by the most just judgment.” Further, it allows them to amend whatever seems to them, from experience, to be better than the established laws.

And yet doctors 1287b who fall ill call in other doctors to treat them, and trainers who are exercising call in other trainers, on the grounds that they can’t judge the truth, because they are judging their own case and are under the influence of feeling. So it is clear that in seeking what is just people are seeking the mean, for the law is the mean. Further, laws based on custom are more authoritative, and concern more authoritative matters, than written laws; so even if a human ruler is safer than written laws, he is not safer than customary ones.

But since some things can be covered by the laws and others cannot, it is the latter that make people raise the difficulty and ask whether it is preferable for the best law to rule or the best man. For the things people deliberate about are among those that can’t be legislated for. So they don’t deny that it must be a human being who judges such matters; they say only that it should not be one alone but many.

For, as was said earlier, this is so not only according to the kind of justice that those who establish constitutions usually put forward—whether aristocratic, oligarchic or, again, democratic ones (for they all claim rights on the basis of superiority, though not the same superiority)—but also according to what was said before. It is surely not fitting to kill such a person, or exile him, or ostracize him, nor to expect him to be ruled in turn. For it is not natural for the part to surpass the whole, and that is what has happened in the case of someone with so great a superiority. So the only remaining option is to obey such a person, and for him to be sovereign not in turn but without qualification. As for kingship, then—what varieties it has, whether it is advantageous for cities or not, for which ones and how—let this be our account.

[So anyone who is going to conduct the appropriate inquiry into it must…]note

So it is clear that it belongs to the same science to study the best constitution—what it is and what it would be like if it were to be most as one would pray for, with nothing external standing in its way—and also which constitution suits which people. (For many, perhaps, cannot attain the best, so the good lawgiver and the true politician must not overlook either the best without qualification or the best given the circumstances.) Third, there is the constitution based on a hypothesis: one must also be able to study a given constitution, both how it might originally come into being and, once it exists, how it might be preserved for the longest time. I mean, for instance, if a city happens to be governed neither by the best constitution—being unequipped even with the necessities—nor by the best possible in its circumstances, but by some inferior one. Besides all these, one must know the constitution that best suits all cities. So most of those who have set out views about constitutions, even if they say other things well, miss what is useful.

For one must study not only the best constitution but also the possible one, and likewise the one that is easier and more widely shared by all. As it is, some seek only the highest, which needs a great deal of equipment, while others, though speaking of a more common one, do away with the existing constitutions and praise the Spartan 1289a or some other. What one should do is introduce an arrangement that people will easily be persuaded to accept and be able to take part in, given their existing circumstances; for it is no less a task to reform a constitution than to set one up from the beginning, just as unlearning something is no less a task than learning it from the beginning. That is why, in addition to what has been said, the politician must also be able to help existing constitutions, as was said earlier too. But this is impossible if he doesn’t know how many kinds of constitution there are. As it is, some people think there is one democracy and one oligarchy; but that is not true.

So one must not overlook the varieties of the constitutions—how many there are, and in how many ways they are combined. And after that, it takes this same practical wisdom to see both the best laws and those that suit each of the constitutions. For laws should be laid down to suit constitutions, and all laws are, not constitutions to suit laws. A constitution is the arrangement of the offices in cities: how they have been distributed, what is sovereign in the constitution and what the end of each community is. Laws, distinct from what defines the constitution, are those by which the officials must rule and must guard against those who transgress them.

So it is clear that one must grasp the varieties of each constitution, and how many there are, with a view to the enactment of laws as well. For the same laws cannot be advantageous to all oligarchies, or to all democracies, given that there are several kinds and not just one democracy or one oligarchy.

For the deviation from the first and most divine constitution must be the worst. Kingship must either have the name only, not 1289b being a kingship in fact, or it must rest on the great superiority of the man who reigns; so tyranny, being the worst, is the furthest removed from a constitution, oligarchy second (for aristocracy is far removed from this constitution), and democracy the most moderate. Someone before us has already expressed this view, but he was not looking at the same thing we are. He judged that when all of them are decent—a good oligarchy, for instance, and so on—democracy is the worst, but when they are bad it is the best. We, by contrast, say that these are wholly mistaken, and that it is not right to call one oligarchy better than another, only less bad.note

But let us set aside that sort of judgment for now. We must first distinguish how many varieties of constitution there are, given that there are several kinds of democracy and of oligarchy. Next, which is the most common, and which the most choiceworthy after the best constitution; and if there happens to be some other one that is aristocratic and well constituted but not suited to most cities, which it is. Next, which of the others is choiceworthy for which people (for perhaps democracy is necessary for some rather than oligarchy, and for others the latter rather than the former). After that, in what way someone who wants to establish these constitutions should do so—I mean each kind of democracy and, again, of oligarchy. Finally, when we have briefly made what mention we can of all these, we must try to go over what destroys and what preserves constitutions, both in general and each one separately, and through what causes these things most naturally come about.

Among the notables, too, there are differences according to wealth and the size of their property—for instance, in horse-breeding, which is not easy to do without being rich. (That is why in ancient times the cities whose strength lay in horses had oligarchies; they used horses in their wars against their neighbors, as did the Eretrians, the Chalcidians, the Magnesians on the Maeander and many others in Asia.) Further, in addition to differences in wealth there is difference by birth and 1290a by excellence, and anything else of this sort that was called a part of the city in the discussion of aristocracy; for there we distinguished how many necessary parts every city has. Of these parts, sometimes all share in the constitution, sometimes fewer, sometimes more.note

It is clear, then, that there must be several constitutions differing in kind from one another, since these parts too differ in kind from one another. For a constitution is the arrangement of the offices, and everyone distributes these either according to the power of those who share in them or according to some equality common to them—I mean, for instance, of the poor, or of the well-off, or some equality common to both. There must therefore be as many constitutions as there are arrangements according to the kinds of superiority and the differences of the parts.

This is chiefly how people are accustomed to think about constitutions. But it is truer and better to divide them as we did: there are one or two that are well constituted, and the others are deviations—some from the well-blended mode, others from the best constitution—the oligarchic ones being the more tightly strung and more like the rule of a master, the relaxed and soft ones democratic.

Rather, one should say that 1290b it is rule by the people when the free are sovereign, and oligarchy when the rich are; it just happens that the former are many and the latter few, since many are free but few are rich. For if offices were distributed by height, as some say happens in Ethiopia, or by beauty, it would be an oligarchy, since the number of the beautiful and of the tall is small.

Still, it isn’t adequate to distinguish these constitutions by these features alone either. Since there are several parts both of a democracy and of an oligarchy, we must further grasp that it is not rule by the people if the free, being few, rule over a majority who are not free—as in Apollonia on the Ionian Gulf and in Thera, where in each of these cities the honors were held by those who were outstanding in good birth and had been the first to settle the colonies, a few ruling over many. Nor is it rule by the people if the rich rule because they are superior in number, as in Colophon long ago, where the majority had acquired large properties before the war against the Lydians. Rather, it is democracy when the free and poor, being the majority, are sovereign over office, and oligarchy when the rich and better-born, being few, are.note

Suppose we set out to grasp the kinds of animal. We would first mark off what every animal must have: for instance, some of the sense organs, the parts that work on and take in food, such as the mouth and stomach, and in addition the parts by which each of them moves. Now if there were only this many parts, but there were varieties of them—I mean, for instance, several types of mouth and stomach and sense organs, and also of the parts for locomotion—then the number of ways of combining these would necessarily produce several types of animal. (For the same animal cannot have several varieties of mouth, nor likewise of ears.) So when all the possible pairings of these have been taken, they will produce kinds of animal, and there will be as many kinds of animal as there are combinations of the necessary parts. It is the same way with the constitutions we have mentioned.

For cities too are made up not of one part but of many, as has often been said. One is the multitude concerned with food, the so-called farmers. 1291a Second is what is called the vulgar class: this is the part concerned with the crafts without which a city cannot be lived in—some of these crafts must exist out of necessity, others for luxury or living finely. Third is the market class—by “market class” I mean those who spend their time buying and selling, in wholesale and retail trade. Fourth is the laboring class. The fifth type is the one that will fight in defense, which is no less necessary than these if the people are not to become slaves of those who attack them.

For surely it is impossible for something that is by nature slavish to deserve the name of city, since a city is self-sufficient, and what is slavish is not self-sufficient. That is why this point is made cleverly, but not adequately, in the Republic. Socrates says that a city is made up of the four most necessary people, and he says they are a weaver, a farmer, a shoemaker and a builder. Then, as if these were not self-sufficient, he adds a smith, those in charge of the necessary livestock, and also a merchant and a retailer. All these together make up the complement of his first city—as if every city were constituted for the sake of necessities rather than of the fine, and needed shoemakers and farmers equally. He does not assign the part that fights in defense until the territory grows, encroaches on that of its neighbors, and they end up at war.note

But even among the four, or however many partners there are, there must be someone to assign and judge what is just. So if one would count the soul as more a part of an animal than the body, then in cities too one should count parts of this sort more than those that contribute to necessary uses: the warrior part, the part that shares in judicial justice and, in addition, the deliberative part, which is the work of political intelligence. Whether these belong to separate groups or to the same people makes no difference to the argument, for it often happens that the same people serve as heavy infantry and farm. So if both these and those are to be counted as parts of the city, it is clear that the heavy-armed part, at any rate, is a necessary part of the city.

Many people think the other capacities can belong to the same people—that the same people can be defenders, farmers and craftsmen, and also those who deliberate and judge. Everyone lays claim to excellence, too, and thinks he is able to hold most offices. But the same people cannot be both poor and rich. That is why these seem to be the parts of the city above all, the well-off and the poor. Further, because for the most part the one group is few and the other many, these appear to be the opposing parts among the city’s parts. So people establish constitutions according to the superiority of one or the other, and there seem to be two constitutions, democracy and oligarchy.

This, then, is one kind of democracy. Another is where offices are based on property assessments, though these are low; a person who acquires the amount must be allowed to take part, and one who loses it must not. 1292a Another kind of democracy is where all the citizens who are not open to challenge share in office, but the law rules. Another kind of democracy is where everyone shares in the offices, provided only that he is a citizen, but the law rules. Another kind of democracy is the same in other respects, but the multitude is sovereign and not the law. This happens when decrees are sovereign and not the law, and it comes about because of the demagogues. In democracies governed according to law there is no demagogue; the best of the citizens hold the foremost place. But where the laws are not sovereign, demagogues arise.note

For the people become a monarch, one made up of many, since the many are sovereign not as individuals but all together. Which kind of “rule of many” Homer means when he says it is not good—this kind, or when there are several rulers acting as individuals—is unclear. At any rate, a people of this kind, being a monarch, seeks to rule as a monarch because it is not ruled by law, and it becomes like a master, so that flatterers are held in honor. Such a people is the counterpart of tyranny among monarchies. That is why their character is also the same: both lord it over the better sort, decrees are like the commands issued there, and the demagogue and the flatterer are the same, or counterparts. Each has the most power in his own sphere, flatterers with tyrants and demagogues with peoples of this kind.note

These people are responsible for decrees being sovereign rather than laws, since they refer everything to the people. They become great because the people are sovereign over everything, and they are sovereign over the people’s opinion, since the multitude obeys them. Further, those who bring charges against officials say that the people should judge, and the people gladly accept the invitation, so that all the offices are dissolved. It would seem reasonable to object that such a democracy is not a constitution at all. For where the laws do not rule, there is no constitution. The law should rule over everything, while the offices decide particular matters, and one should judge this to be a constitution.

So if democracy is one of the constitutions, it is clear that an arrangement of this kind, in which everything is administered by decrees, is not even a democracy in the strict sense, since no decree can be universal. Let the kinds of democracy, then, be distinguished in this way.

This, then, is one kind of democracy, for these reasons. Another kind arises from the next distinction. It is possible for participation to be open to everyone whose descent is not open to challenge, but for only those able to have leisure actually to take part. That is why in this sort of democracy the laws rule: because there are no revenues. A third kind is where all who are free may share in the constitution, but do not actually take part for the reason just given, so that in this one too the law must rule. The fourth kind of democracy 1293a is the one that has arisen in cities most recently. Because cities have become much larger than they were originally, and there are ample revenues available, everyone shares in the constitution because of the superior numbers of the multitude, and they take part and govern because even the poor can have leisure, since they receive pay.

This sort of multitude, in fact, has the most leisure of all. For looking after their private affairs doesn’t hinder them at all, whereas it does hinder the rich, so that they often take no part in the assembly or in the courts. That is why the multitude of the poor becomes sovereign over the constitution, and not the laws.

If they tighten things further by being fewer and having larger properties, the third stage of oligarchy arises: they hold the offices themselves, but under a law requiring sons to succeed their fathers when they die. And when they come to far surpass others in their properties and their many connections, this sort of dynasty is close to monarchy, and it is human beings who become sovereign and not the law. This is the fourth kind of oligarchy, the counterpart of the last kind of democracy.

Now it is right to give the name “aristocracy” to the constitution we went through in our first discussions. For only the constitution made up of those who are best, without qualification, in excellence—and not good men relative to some assumption—is justly called an aristocracy, since only in it is the same person a good man and a good citizen without qualification, whereas those who are good in the others are good relative to their own constitution. Still, there are some constitutions that differ both from those governed oligarchically and from what is called polity, and they are called aristocracies. For where offices are chosen not only on the basis of wealth but also on the basis of merit, this constitution differs from both and is called aristocratic. For even in cities that do not make excellence a common concern there are nonetheless some people of good repute who are thought to be decent.

So where the constitution looks to wealth, excellence and the people, as in Carthage, it is aristocratic; and so also those that look to only two, as the Spartan constitution does, to excellence and the people, so that there is a mixture of these two, democracy and excellence. These, then, are two kinds of aristocracy besides the first, the best constitution; and a third is those forms of so-called polity that lean more toward oligarchy.

People are accustomed to call those that lean toward democracy polities, and those that lean more toward oligarchy aristocracies, because education and good birth tend to go along with the better-off. Further, the well-off are thought to have the things for whose sake wrongdoers do wrong; that is why people call them gentlemen and notables. So since aristocracy aims to assign superiority to the best of the citizens, people say that oligarchies too are made up more of gentlemen. 1294a And it seems impossible for a city governed not by the best but by the worst to be well governed, and likewise for a city that isn’t well governed to be an aristocracy. But being well governed is not a matter of the laws being well laid down if they are not obeyed.

So we must take good government to be, in one sense, obedience to the established laws, and in another, the laws that people abide by being finely laid down (for it is possible to obey laws that are badly laid down, too). This second can happen in two ways: people may obey the best laws possible for them, or the laws that are best without qualification.

Now in most cities this is the kind of constitution that is called polity, since the mixture aims only at the well-off and the poor, at wealth and freedom (for among most people the well-off are thought to occupy the place of gentlemen). But since there are three things that lay claim to equal standing in the constitution—freedom, wealth and excellence (the fourth, which they call good birth, goes along with the other two, since good birth is ancient wealth and excellence)—it is clear that the mixture of the two, of the well-off and the poor, should be called polity, and the mixture of the three should be called aristocracy more than any of the others, apart from the true and first one.

It has been stated, then, that there are other kinds of constitution besides monarchy, democracy and oligarchy, and what they are, and how the aristocracies and the polities differ from each other; and it is clear that these are not far apart from each other.

One may take both of the things that each side legislates—concerning jury service, for instance. In oligarchies they impose a fine on the well-off if they don’t serve on juries, and give no pay to the poor; in democracies they give pay to the poor and impose no fine on the well-off. What is common to them and in the middle is to do both, which is why it is 1294b characteristic of polity, since it is a mixture of both. This, then, is one way of combining them. Another is to take the middle between what each side prescribes: for instance, one side sets no property qualification, or a very small one, for attending the assembly, and the other a high one; what is common here is neither, but a property qualification midway between the two. A third is from two arrangements, taking some features from the oligarchic law and others from the democratic.

I mean, for instance, it is thought democratic for offices to be filled by lot and oligarchic for them to be elected, and democratic for them not to be based on property qualification and oligarchic for them to be so based. It is aristocratic and characteristic of polity, then, to take one feature from each: from oligarchy, making offices elective, and from democracy, not basing them on property qualification.

Many people try to describe it as a democracy because its arrangement has many democratic features. First, for instance, there is the upbringing of the children: the children of the rich are brought up in the same way as those of the poor, and educated in a way that the children of the poor could manage too. The same holds for the next age group, and when they become men it is the same again, for in this way there is nothing to distinguish rich from poor: the food is the same for everyone at the common messes, and the rich wear clothing of a kind that any of the poor could afford. Further, of the two highest offices, the people elect to one and share in the other: they elect the elders, and they share in the ephorate. Others call it an oligarchy because it has many oligarchic features—for instance, all offices are elected and none filled by lot, a few people have authority to impose death and exile, and many other such things.

In a finely mixed constitution it should seem to be both and neither. It should be preserved through itself and not from outside—and through itself not because those outside who want it preserved are the majority (for that could be true of a bad constitution too), but because no part of the city at all would even want a different constitution. How one should establish a polity, then, and likewise the so-called aristocracies, has now been stated.

Any monarchy that rules without being accountable over people who are all equal or better, with a view to its own advantage and not that of the ruled, must be a tyranny of this kind. That is why it is involuntary, for no free person willingly endures rule of this sort. These, then, are the kinds of tyranny and their number, for the reasons stated.

For if it was rightly said in the Ethics that the happy life is the life in accordance with excellence, unimpeded, and that excellence is a mean, then the middle life must be the best—the life of attaining the mean that is possible for each. And these same criteria must hold for the excellence and badness of a city and of a constitution, since the constitution 1295b is a sort of life of the city. Now in all cities there are three parts of the city: the very well-off, the very poor and, third, the middle class between them. Since it is agreed, then, that what is moderate and in the middle is best, it is clear that in the goods of fortune too a middling possession is the best of all.note

For it is easiest to obey reason with such possessions. But someone who is exceedingly beautiful, or strong, or well-born, or rich—or the opposite, exceedingly poor, or weak, or utterly without honor—finds it hard to follow reason. The first sort tend to become arrogant and wicked on a grand scale, the second criminal and wicked in petty ways; and some wrongs are done out of arrogance, others out of criminality. Further, the middle class are the least likely either to shun office or to chase after it, both of which are harmful to cities. In addition, those who have an excess of the goods of fortune—strength, wealth, friends and other such things—neither want to be ruled nor know how. This starts right at home when they are children: because of their luxurious upbringing they don’t get used to being ruled even at school. Those who are in excessive need of these things, on the other hand, are too abject.

So the latter don’t know how to rule, only how to be ruled with the rule of a slave, while the former don’t know how to be ruled with any kind of rule, only how to rule with the rule of a master. The result is a city not of free people but of slaves and masters, the one group envious and the other contemptuous—which is the furthest thing from friendship and political community. For community involves friendship: people don’t want to share even a road with their enemies. But the city wants to be made up of people who are equal and alike as far as possible, and this is true above all of the middle class. So this city must be the best governed, the one made up of those we say are the natural constituents of a city. And these are also the citizens who are safest in cities.

For they neither covet the property of others, as the poor do, nor do others covet theirs, as the poor covet that of the rich. And since they neither are plotted against nor plot, they live out their lives free of danger. That is why Phocylides was right to pray: “Many things are best for those in the middle; in the middle I want to be in the city.”note

That the middle constitution is best is clear, since it alone is free of civil strife. Where the middle class is large, civil strife and divisions among the citizens are least likely to arise. Large cities are freer of civil strife for the same reason, because the middle class is large. In small cities, by contrast, it is easy to divide everyone into two groups, leaving nothing in the middle, and almost everyone is either poor or well-off. Democracies, too, are safer and longer-lasting than oligarchies because of the middle class, who are more numerous and have a greater share of honors in democracies than in oligarchies. For when the poor predominate in numbers without these people, things go badly and democracies are quickly destroyed.

One should also take it as a sign that the best lawgivers come from the middle class. Solon was one of them, as is clear from his poetry; so was Lycurgus, for he was not a king; and so were Charondas and nearly all the others.

Further, of those who came to hold the leadership of Greece, each looked to its own constitution and set up democracies in the cities or oligarchies, with an eye not to the cities’ advantage but to their own. So for these reasons the middle constitution either never arises or does so rarely and in few places. Among those who have held leadership in the past, only one man was ever persuaded to grant this arrangement. And by now it has become a habit 1296b among the people in the cities not even to want equality, but either to seek to rule or, if they are overpowered, to put up with it.note

What the best constitution is, then, and for what reason, is clear from this. As for the others, since we say there are several democracies and several oligarchies, it is not hard to see, once the best has been determined, which should be placed first, which second and so on in order, according to whether one is better and another worse. For the one nearest to the best must always be better, and the one further removed from the middle worse—unless one is judging relative to a hypothesis. By “relative to a hypothesis” I mean that often, although one constitution is more choiceworthy, nothing prevents a different one from being more advantageous for some people.

Where the number of the poor exceeds the proportion we mentioned, there it is natural for there to be democracy, and each kind of democracy according to the predominance of each kind of people. For instance, if the number of farmers predominates, the first democracy; if that of vulgar craftsmen and wage earners, the last; and likewise the others in between. But where the well-off and notable class exceeds in quality more than it falls short in quantity, there it is natural for there to be oligarchy, and in the same way each kind of oligarchy according to the predominance of the oligarchic multitude.

Many, even among those who want to create aristocratic constitutions, make a mistake not only in giving too much to the well-off, but also in deceiving the people. For in time, sooner or later, a genuine evil must come of false goods, since the grasping ways of the rich destroy the constitution more than those of the people.

In some places everyone who has registered may attend the assembly and serve on juries, but if after registering they don’t attend or serve, heavy fines are imposed on them. The aim is that the fine will make people avoid registering, and not being registered will keep them from serving on juries or attending the assembly. They legislate in the same way about owning arms and about athletic training. The poor are allowed not to own arms, but the well-off are fined if they don’t; and if they don’t train, there is no fine for the former, but the well-off are fined—so that the latter will take part because of the fine, and the former will not take part because they have nothing to fear. These, then, are oligarchic devices in legislation. In democracies they have counter-devices: they provide pay for the poor to attend the assembly and serve on juries, but impose no fine on the well-off.

So it is clear that if one wants to mix them justly, one must combine what each side does, and provide pay for the one group and fines for the other. For in this way everyone would take part, whereas in the other ways the constitution comes to belong 1297b to one side only. The constitution should be made up only of those who bear arms. As for the size of the property qualification, it isn’t possible to lay down without qualification that it must be so much; one should look for the highest figure that still makes those who share in the constitution more numerous than those who don’t, and set that. For the poor are willing to keep quiet even without a share in honors, provided no one treats them with arrogance or takes away any of their property. But this isn’t easy, since those who share in the governing body don’t always happen to be gracious.

And when there is a war they tend to hang back, if they are poor and don’t receive rations; but if someone provides rations, they are willing to fight.

For with their small populations they had no large middle class, and so, being few in number and poorly organized, they put up with being ruled. We have now stated why there are several constitutions, and why there are others besides those commonly named (for democracy is not one in number, and the same goes for the others); further, what their differences are and why they arise; and in addition, which constitution is best, speaking generally, and which of the other constitutions suits which kinds of people.

Necessarily, either all these decisions are assigned to all the citizens, or all of them to some (for instance to a single office or to several, or different ones to different offices), or some of them to all and some to some.

Another way is for all to meet together, but only to elect officials, to legislate, to decide about war and peace, and to conduct audits, while the offices assigned to each area deliberate about everything else, these being chosen from all either by election or by lot. Another way is for the citizens to meet about the offices and the audits, and to deliberate about war and alliances, while the offices manage everything else, being elected wherever possible—and these are the offices that must be held by those with expert knowledge. A fourth way is for all to meet and deliberate about everything, while the offices decide nothing but only make preliminary examinations. This is how the final form of democracy is run nowadays—the one we say is analogous to dynastic oligarchy and tyrannical monarchy.

All these ways, then, are democratic. For some to deliberate about everything is oligarchic. This too has several varieties. When they are elected on the basis of fairly moderate property assessments, and there are many of them because the assessment is moderate, and they do not tamper with what the law forbids but follow it, and anyone who acquires the required property may take part, such an arrangement is an oligarchy, but one with the character of a polity, because of its moderation. When not everyone shares in deliberation 1298b but only people selected in advance, who nonetheless rule according to law as in the previous case, it is oligarchic. And when those with authority over deliberation choose themselves, and son succeeds father, and they have authority over the laws, this arrangement is necessarily oligarchic.

When some decide some things—for instance, when all decide about war and peace and audits, while officials decide the rest, and these are elected, not chosen by lot—the constitution is an aristocracy. If for some matters the officials are elected and for others chosen by lot, and chosen by lot either simply or from a preselected list, or elected and chosen by lot jointly, then some of these arrangements belong to an aristocratic polity, others to polity itself.

In oligarchies, on the other hand, it is advantageous either to co-opt some members from the multitude, or to set up an office such as exists in some constitutions under the name of “preliminary councillors” or “guardians of the law,” and to deal only with business on which these have deliberated in advance. (In this way the people will share in deliberation, but will not be able to overturn anything in the constitution.) Further, the people should either vote for the same measures, or for nothing contrary to what is brought before them; or everyone should be allowed to give advice, while the officials do the deliberating.

One should also do the opposite of what happens in polities. The multitude should be made authoritative when it votes to acquit, but not when it votes to condemn; in that case the matter should be referred back to the officials. In polities they do the reverse: the few are authoritative when they vote to acquit, but not when they vote to condemn; the matter is referred instead to the majority 1299a every time. Let this, then, be how we determine the deliberative part, which is the part that has authority in the constitution.

Nor is it easy to determine which ought to be called offices. The political community needs many supervisors, so not all those who are elected or chosen by lot should be counted as officials—first of all the priests, for instance (this must be counted as something different from the political offices); and again, sponsors of choruses and heralds are elected, and ambassadors too. Some supervisory posts are political, concerned either with all the citizens in some activity—as a general has charge of those on campaign—or with a section of them, like the supervisor of women or of children; others concern household-type management (they often elect grain-measurers); others are menial, and to these, if the city is well off, they assign slaves. But, speaking simply, those are most properly to be called offices to which it has been assigned to deliberate about certain matters, to judge, and to give orders—and especially the last, since giving orders is most characteristic of ruling.note

This makes practically no difference in practice (no judgment has yet been given between people disputing over the name), though it does raise another, theoretical question.

Small cities sometimes need the same offices and laws as large ones, except that the large need them often, while for the small the need comes round only at long intervals. So nothing prevents assigning many duties to one person at once (they will not get in each other’s way), and, given the small population, the offices must be made like spit-lamps. If, then, we can say how many offices every city must have, and how many it need not have but should, anyone who knows this could more easily see which offices it is appropriate to combine into one.note

It is also right not to overlook which matters should be supervised by many local offices and which by one office with authority everywhere. Take good order, for instance: should there be a market supervisor in the marketplace and a different official in each other place, or the same one everywhere? And should the division be made by task or by persons—I mean, for instance, one official for good order, or one for children and another for women? And with regard to the constitutions, too: does the kind of offices differ with each, or not at all? For instance, in democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy and monarchy, are the same offices authoritative, only not filled from equal or similar people but from different people in different constitutions—in aristocracies from the educated, in oligarchies from the rich, in democracies from the free? Or are there some offices that correspond to these very differences, while in some cases the same offices are advantageous and in others different ones (for in one place it suits the same offices to be large, in another small)?

A supervisor of children and a supervisor of women, and any other official with authority over this sort of oversight, is aristocratic, not democratic (how could one stop the wives of the poor from going out?), nor oligarchic (for the wives of oligarchs live in luxury).

Either all the citizens appoint, or some; and either from all, or from some defined group (defined, for instance, by property assessment, by birth, by excellence, or some other such thing—as at Megara, from those who had returned from exile together and fought together against the people); and these either by election or by lot. And again these can be combined—I mean some offices appointed by some and others by all, some from all and others from some, and some by election and others by lot.

Of these, three modes of appointment are democratic: for all to appoint from all by election, or by lot, or by both—some offices by lot and some by election. For not all to appoint at once, but to appoint from all or from some, by lot or by election or both, or some offices from all and others from some, by both (by “both” I mean some by lot and some by election), is characteristic of polity. For some to appoint from all, either by election or by lot or by both (some by lot, some by election), is oligarchic—though doing it by both is more oligarchic.

For some offices to be filled from all and others from some is characteristic of polity, of an aristocratic kind, 1300b or some by election and others by lot. For some to appoint from some by election is oligarchic, and so is for some to appoint from some by lot (even if this does not actually occur, it is oligarchic all the same), and for some to appoint from some by both. For some to appoint from all, and for all to appoint from some by election, is aristocratic. This, then, is the number of the modes concerning the offices, and this is how they are divided according to the constitutions. Which suit which, and how appointments ought to be made, will become clear together with what the powers of the offices are. By the power of an office I mean, for instance, authority over revenues or authority over the city’s defense; for the power of a generalship, say, is a different kind from that of the office with authority over contracts in the marketplace.

There are eight in number: one for audits; another for anyone who wrongs the public interest; another for matters that bear on the constitution; a fourth for officials and private individuals who dispute about penalties; a fifth concerning private contracts of some size; and besides these the homicide court and the court for foreigners. (There are kinds of homicide court—whether with the same jurors or with others—for premeditated killings, for involuntary ones, for cases where the act is admitted but its justice is disputed, and a fourth for charges brought against those exiled for homicide on their return, like the court at Phreatto, as it is called, at Athens; but such cases are few over the whole course of time, even in large cities. Of the court for foreigners, one kind is for foreigners against foreigners, another for foreigners against citizens.) And besides all these, there is one for small contracts, those involving one drachma, five drachmas, or a little more.note

These too must be decided, but they do not come before a large body of jurors.

These modes, then, as stated, are the counterparts of those already mentioned. Further, the same can be combined—I mean, for instance, some from all, some from some, some from both (for instance, if in the same court some were from all and some from some), and either by lot or by election or by both. We have now said in how many ways courts can be constituted. Of these, the first kinds are democratic—those drawn from all and judging all matters; the second are oligarchic—those drawn from some and judging all matters; and the third are aristocratic and characteristic of polity—those drawn partly from all and partly from some.

Of all people, those outstanding in excellence would have the most justice on their side in stirring up strife, yet they are the least likely to do it; 1301b for they alone can most reasonably be regarded as unequal absolutely. There are also some who, being superior in birth, think themselves too good for merely equal shares because of this inequality; for people are thought to be well born who have ancestral excellence and wealth.

Again, a change can be a matter of more and less: for instance, making an existing oligarchy more oligarchic or less, or an existing democracy more democratic or less, and similarly with the other constitutions, so as to tighten or loosen them. Again, it may aim at changing some part of the constitution, for instance to establish or abolish some office—as some say Lysander tried to abolish the kingship at Sparta, and King Pausanias the ephorate. At Epidamnus too the constitution changed in one part: they set up a council in place of the tribal chiefs; but it is still compulsory for the officials alone, of those in the citizen body, to attend the popular court whenever an office is put to the vote; and the single supreme official was also an oligarchic feature of that constitution.note

Everywhere, strife arises from inequality, where the unequal do not receive what is proportionate (a permanent kingship is unequal if it exists among equals); for in general it is in seeking equality that people turn to strife. Equality is twofold: numerical, and according to worth. By numerical I mean what is the same and equal in number or size; by according to worth, what is equal by ratio. For example, numerically three exceeds two by the same amount as two exceeds one; but by ratio four exceeds two as two exceeds one, since two is the same fraction of four as one is of two—both are halves.

While agreeing that what is just absolutely is what accords with worth, they differ, as was said earlier: some because, if they are equal in some respect, they think themselves equal entirely; others because, if unequal in some respect, they claim an unequal share of everything. That is also why there come to be chiefly two constitutions, democracy and oligarchy. Good birth and excellence 1302a are found in few, the other qualities in more: nowhere are there a hundred well-born and good men, but in many places there are plenty of well-off people. But to arrange things simply and entirely according to either kind of equality is bad. This is clear from what happens: none of such constitutions lasts. The reason is that when there is an error at the first, at the beginning, it is impossible for something bad not to result in the end. So one should use numerical equality in some things, and equality according to worth in others.

Those who aim at equality turn to strife if they think they have less though they are equal to those who have more; and those who aim at inequality and superiority turn to strife if they suppose that, though unequal, they have not more but equal or less. (It is possible to desire these things justly, and also unjustly.) For those who are lesser turn to strife to become equal, and those who are equal, to become greater. That, then, is the condition in which people turn to strife. What they fight over is gain and honor and their opposites; for people engage in strife in cities to avoid dishonor and loss, either for themselves or for their friends. The causes and origins of the upheavals—which lead people to be disposed in the way described and about the things mentioned—are in one way seven in number, in another way more.

Two of them are the same as those mentioned, but not in the same way. For people are provoked against one another through gain and honor, not in order to acquire these for themselves, as was said before, but because they see others, 1302b some justly and some unjustly, getting more of them. Further, there is insolence, fear, preeminence, contempt, and disproportionate growth; and, in another way, electioneering, negligence, small changes, and dissimilarity.

Through preeminence, when someone—one person or more—has power too great for the city and for the power of the citizen body; for from such people a monarchy or a dynastic clique tends to arise. That is why in some places they practice ostracism, as at Argos and Athens. Yet it is better to see to it from the start that no one so preeminent arises, than to let them arise and heal the damage afterward. Through fear, people turn to strife both when they have done wrong, afraid of paying the penalty, and when they are about to be wronged, wanting to strike first—as at Rhodes, where the notables combined against the people because of the lawsuits being brought against them.

Through contempt, too, people turn to strife and make attacks: for instance in oligarchies, when those who have no share in the constitution are more numerous (for they think they are stronger), and in democracies, when the well-off come to despise the disorder and anarchy. So at Thebes, after the battle of Oenophyta, the democracy was destroyed because they were badly governed; so too the Megarian democracy, when they were defeated through disorder and anarchy; so at Syracuse before the tyranny of Gelon; and at Rhodes, the people before the uprising.note

This sometimes happens through chance events, too. At Tarentum, for instance, when many notables were defeated and killed by the Iapygians a little after the Persian Wars, the polity became a democracy. At Argos, when those who fell on the seventh had been killed by Cleomenes the Spartan, they were forced to admit some of the perioikoi to citizenship. And at Athens, when they met with disasters on land, the notables became fewer, because in the war against Sparta the soldiers were drawn from the muster roll. This happens in democracies too, though less often: when the well-off become more numerous or their properties grow, democracies change into oligarchies and dynastic cliques.note

Constitutions also change without strife: through electioneering, as at Heraea (they switched from election to lot for this reason, because they kept electing those who canvassed); and through negligence, when people let those who are not friendly to the constitution into the authoritative offices—as at Oreus the oligarchy was overthrown when Heracleodorus became one of the officials, and he set up a polity and a democracy in place of the oligarchy. Also through small changes. By “small changes” I mean that often a large change in customs takes place unnoticed when people overlook something small—as at Ambracia the property qualification was small, and in the end people held office with none at all, on the ground that little is close to nothing, or no different from it.

In oligarchies it is the many who turn to strife, on the ground that they are wronged because they do not share equally although they are equal, as was said before; in democracies it is the notables, because they share equally although they are not equal. Cities sometimes fall into strife also because of their location, when the territory is not naturally suited to being a single city—for instance at Clazomenae, the people at Chytrum against those on the island, and the Colophonians and the Notians. At Athens too people are not alike: those who live in the Piraeus are more democratic than those in the town. For just as in war the crossing of ditches, even very small ones, breaks up the ranks of the phalanx, so, it seems, every difference makes a division.

The greatest division is perhaps that between excellence and wickedness, then between wealth and poverty, and so on, one being greater than another; and one of these is the one just mentioned.

In general, the quarrels of the notables make the whole city suffer with them, as happened at Hestiaea after the Persian Wars, when two brothers quarreled over the division of their father’s estate. The poorer one, claiming that the other was not declaring the property or the treasure their father had found, drew the democratic party to his side, while the other, who had much property, drew in the well-off. And at Delphi a quarrel arising from a marriage was the beginning of all the later strife: 1304a the bridegroom, taking some mishap as a bad omen when he came for his bride, left without taking her; her family, regarding themselves as insulted, slipped some of the sacred valuables among his things while he was sacrificing, and then killed him as a temple robber.

At Mytilene too, strife arising over heiresses was the beginning of many evils, including the war against the Athenians in which Paches captured their city. Timophanes, a wealthy man, left two daughters; Dexander, who was rebuffed and did not get them for his sons, started the strife and stirred up the Athenians, whose proxenos he was. And among the Phocians, when strife arose over an heiress involving Mnaseas, the father of Mnason, and Euthycrates, the father of Onomarchus, this strife became the beginning of the Sacred War for the Phocians. At Epidamnus too the constitution changed as a result of a marriage: a man had promised his daughter in marriage, and the father of the young man she was promised to, having become an official, fined him; the other, feeling that he had been insulted, took those outside the constitution as his allies.note

In general one must not overlook this: those who have been responsible for power—whether private individuals, offices, tribes, or in general any part or group whatever—set strife in motion. Either those who envy them for being honored start the strife, or they themselves, because of their preeminence, are unwilling to remain on equal terms. Constitutions are also disturbed when parts of the city that are thought to be opposed are evenly matched 1304b with each other—for instance the rich and the people—and there is no middle class, or only a very small one. For if either part is far superior, the rest is unwilling to take risks against what is clearly stronger. That is also why those outstanding in excellence practically never cause strife: they are few against many.

Such, then, in general, for all constitutions, are the origins and causes of strife and change. People overturn constitutions sometimes by force, sometimes by deception. By force, either right from the start or by compulsion later. Deception too is twofold. Sometimes, having first deceived people, they change the constitution with their consent, and later keep hold of it by force against their will—as under the Four Hundred they deceived the people by claiming that the Persian King would provide money for the war against the Spartans, and after lying, tried to keep hold of the constitution. At other times they persuade people at the start, and later persuade them again and rule them with their consent. Put simply, then, in all constitutions changes have come about from the causes mentioned.note

At Heraclea too the democracy was overthrown right after the colony was founded, because of the demagogues. The notables, wronged by them, went into exile; then the exiles gathered, returned, and overthrew the people. The democracy at Megara was overthrown in much the same way. The demagogues, to have property to confiscate, drove many of the notables out, until they had made the exiles numerous; these returned, defeated the people in battle, and set up the oligarchy. The same thing happened at 1305a Cyme with the democracy that Thrasymachus overthrew. One can see, looking at other cases too, that changes generally follow this pattern. Sometimes, to curry favor, they wrong the notables and so make them band together—either by redistributing their property or by draining their incomes through public services; sometimes by slandering them, so as to be able to confiscate the possessions of the rich.

Further, because cities were not large then, and the people lived out in the fields, busy with their work, the people’s champions, when they were warlike, would attempt tyranny. They all did this after winning the people’s trust, and the basis of that trust was their hostility toward the rich. So at Athens Pisistratus, by leading a faction against the men of the plain; so Theagenes at Megara, by slaughtering the flocks of the well-off, which he caught grazing beside the river; and Dionysius, by denouncing Daphnaeus and the rich, was judged fit for tyranny, trusted because of that enmity as a man of the people.note

Democracies also change from the traditional form into the newest one. Where offices are elective but without property qualifications, and the people elect, those eager for office, playing the demagogue, bring things to the point where the people have authority even over the laws. A remedy that prevents this, or makes it happen less, is for the tribes, rather than the whole people, to put forward the officials. The changes in democracies, then, practically all come about for these reasons.

Sometimes the overthrow comes from the well-off themselves—those not in office—when the people holding honors are very few, as has happened at Massalia, at Istros, at Heraclea, and in other cities. Those who had no share in the offices kept agitating until first the elder brothers were admitted, and later the younger ones in turn. (In some places father and son may not hold office at the same time, and in others an elder and a younger brother may not.) In one case the oligarchy became more like a polity; at Istros it ended in democracy; at Heraclea it went from a smaller number to six hundred.

At Cnidus too the oligarchy changed when the notables fell into strife among themselves, because few shared in office and, as has been said, if a father took part his son could not, nor, if there were several brothers, any but the eldest. The people seized on their strife, took a champion from among the notables, attacked, and won—for a side divided by strife is weak. And at Erythrae, under the oligarchy of the Basilids in ancient times, although those in the constitution managed things well, the people nonetheless resented being ruled by a few and changed the constitution.

Changes in oligarchy also happen when its members squander their private means in dissolute living. Such people seek revolution, and either attempt a tyranny themselves or 1306a set someone else up—as Hipparinus did Dionysius at Syracuse; and at Amphipolis a man named Cleotimus brought in the settlers from Chalcis and, when they came, set them at odds with the well-off; and at Aegina the man who carried out the transaction with Chares tried to change the constitution for a reason of this kind. Sometimes, then, they try at once to stir up change; at other times they steal public funds, and then strife arises against them, either from these men themselves or from those who fight them for stealing—as happened at Apollonia on the Black Sea. But an oligarchy that is of one mind is not easily destroyed from within. Evidence of this is the constitution at Pharsalus: there, few as they are, they are masters of many, because they treat one another well.

Oligarchies also change both in war and in peace. In war, because distrust of the people forces them to use mercenaries. (The man they put in charge often becomes a tyrant, as Timophanes did at Corinth; and if they put several in charge, these secure a dynastic power for themselves; and sometimes, fearing this, they give the multitude a share in the constitution, because they are forced to make use of the people.) In peace, through distrust of one another, they hand over their protection to mercenaries and a neutral commander, who sometimes becomes master of both sides—as happened at Larisa under the rule of the Aleuadae, Simus and his circle, and at Abydos in the time of the political clubs, one of which was that of Iphiades.

Changes also occur by accident, both in so-called polity and in those oligarchies where serving on the council, sitting on juries and holding the other offices depend on a property assessment. Often the assessment was first fixed to suit the circumstances of the time, so that in an oligarchy few would take part, and in a polity the middle class; but when prosperity comes through peace or some other good fortune, the same properties turn out to be worth many times the assessment, so that everyone takes part in everything. Sometimes the change comes gradually, little by little and unnoticed, and sometimes faster.

Oligarchies, then, change and fall into strife for such reasons. (In general, both democracies and oligarchies sometimes turn not into the opposite constitutions but into those of the same kind—for instance, from law-abiding democracies and oligarchies into ones where the rulers are sovereign, and from these into those.)

This is bound to happen especially when there is a large group of people who are high-spirited on the ground that they are equal in excellence—as at Sparta the so-called Partheniae (who were descended from the Equals), whom the Spartans caught conspiring and sent away to found Tarentum; or when some men who are great, and inferior to no one in excellence, are dishonored by others more highly honored—as Lysander was by the kings; or when a man of courage has no share in honors, like Cinadon, who organized the attack on the Spartiates in the reign of Agesilaus. Again, when some are very poor and others well-off (this happens most in wartime; it happened at Sparta at the time of the Messenian War, as is clear from Tyrtaeus’ poem called 1307a Good Order, for some who were hard-pressed because of the war demanded that the land be redistributed). Again, when someone is great and capable of becoming still greater, so as to rule alone—as Pausanias, who commanded in the Persian War, seems to have done at Sparta, and Hanno at Carthage.note

Aristocracies differ from what are named polities in this respect, and because of it some of them are less and some more stable. Those that lean more toward oligarchy they call aristocracies, and those that lean toward the multitude polities. That is why the latter are safer than the former: the larger number is stronger, and people are more content when they have an equal share, whereas those who are prosperous, if the constitution gives them superiority, seek to be insolent and to grasp for more.

In general, whichever way the constitution leans, it shifts in that direction as each side increases its own—polity into democracy, aristocracy into oligarchy—or else into the opposites: aristocracy into democracy (for the poorer people, feeling wronged, drag it round to the opposite), and polities into oligarchy (for the only stable thing is equality according to worth, and people having what is their own). What I have described happened at Thurii. Because the offices were based on a rather high property assessment, the assessment was changed to a lower one and the offices were divided among more boards; and because the notables had bought up all the land against the law (for the constitution was rather oligarchic, so that they were able to grasp for more), the people, trained in the war, became stronger than the garrison troops, until those who had more land than was allowed gave it up.note

There was a law that one could serve as general only at intervals of five years. Some of the younger men, who had become good soldiers and were popular with the mass of the garrison troops, came to despise those in charge of affairs and, thinking they would easily get control, first tried to repeal this law so that the same men could serve as generals continuously, since they saw that the people would eagerly vote for them. The officials in charge of this matter, called the advisers, at first moved to oppose it but were won over, supposing that once these men had changed this law they would leave the rest of the constitution alone. Later, when they wanted to stop other changes, they could no longer do anything; and the whole order of the constitution turned into a dynastic regime of those who had set out to make innovations.

For the equality that democrats seek for the multitude is, among peers, not only just but also advantageous. So if there are many in the citizen body, many democratic institutions are advantageous, such as having offices last six months, so that all the peers may take part; for the peers are already like a people (which is why demagogues often arise even among them, as was said earlier). Then too, oligarchies and aristocracies fall less into dynastic rule. (It is not as easy to do mischief when holding office for a short time as for a long time; for it is from this cause that tyrannies arise in oligarchies and democracies: either the greatest men in each attempt tyranny—in the one the demagogues, in the other the dynasts—or those holding the greatest offices, when they hold them for a long time.)

As for the change from oligarchy and polity that comes about because of the property assessments, when this happens because the assessments stay the same while money becomes plentiful, it is advantageous to review the total assessed wealth of the community in comparison with the past—in cities where assessment is annual, over that period, 1308b and in larger cities every third or fifth year—and if it is many times greater or many times smaller than before, when the qualifications for the constitution were set, there should be a law to tighten or relax the assessments too: tightening them in proportion to the increase if it has grown, and relaxing them and making the qualification smaller if it has fallen short. For in oligarchies and polities, if they do not do this, in the one case the result is oligarchy in one place and dynastic rule in another; in the other case, democracy arises from polity, and polity or democracy from oligarchy.

Since people also start revolutions because of their private lives, one should set up an office to watch over those who live in a way that is out of keeping with the constitution—in a democracy, with democracy; in an oligarchy, with oligarchy; and similarly for each of the other constitutions. For the same reasons one must guard against any one part of the city prospering at the expense of the rest. The remedy for this is always to entrust business and offices to the opposing parts (by opposing I mean the respectable as against the multitude, and the poor as against the well-off), and to try either to blend the mass of the poor with that of the well-off or to increase the middle class (for this dissolves strife caused by inequality). But the most important thing in every constitution is to have things so arranged, by the laws and the rest of the administration, that officials cannot make a profit from office.

For everyone being allowed to hold office is democratic, while the notables holding the offices is aristocratic; and this will happen when there is no profit to be made from office. The poor will not want to hold office because there is no gain in it, but will rather attend to their own affairs, while the well-off will be able to hold office because they need nothing from public funds. So the result will be that the poor become well-off by spending their time at their work, and the notables are not ruled by just anyone. To prevent public funds from being stolen, let the handing over of the money take place in the presence of all the citizens, and let copies of the accounts be deposited with the phratries, the military companies and the tribes. And to ensure that officials hold office without profit, there must be honors established by law for those who earn a good reputation.

In democracies the well-off must be spared: not only should their properties not be redistributed, but not their incomes either, as happens unnoticed in some constitutions; and it is better to prevent them, even if they are willing, from undertaking public services that are expensive but useless, such as sponsoring choruses, torch races, and the like. In an oligarchy, on the other hand, one must take great care of the poor, and assign them the offices that bring some income; and if any of the well-off commits an outrage against them, the penalties should be greater than for outrages among themselves; and inheritances should pass not by bequest but by kinship, and no one should inherit more than one estate. In this way properties would be more equal, and more of the poor would become well-off.

It is also advantageous, in both democracy and oligarchy, to give either equality or precedence in other matters to those who have less share in the constitution—in a democracy to the well-off, in an oligarchy to the poor—except for the offices with authority over the constitution; these should be entrusted only, or mostly, to those who belong to the constitution.

It seems one must look to two things: which quality everyone has more of, and which less. So in choosing a general one should look to experience rather than excellence, since people share less in generalship and more in decency. In choosing a guardian or a treasurer, the opposite: these posts need more excellence than most people have, while the knowledge involved is common to all.

Those who think that this defining feature is the one and only excellence push it to excess. They do not see that a nose may deviate from the most beautiful straightness toward the hooked or the snub and still be beautiful and pleasing to look at; but if someone exaggerates it still further toward the extreme, first he will destroy the proportion of the feature, and in the end he will make it not look like a nose at all, because it has too much of one opposite and too little of the other. The same holds for the other features, and it happens with constitutions too. An oligarchy or a democracy can be adequate even though it has departed from the best arrangement; but if someone intensifies either of them further, first he will make the constitution worse, and in the end it will not be a constitution at all.

That is why the lawgiver and the statesman must not be ignorant of which democratic measures preserve a democracy and which destroy it, and which oligarchic measures preserve or destroy an oligarchy. For neither of them can exist and endure without both the well-off and the multitude; when property becomes equal, the constitution must become a different one. 1310a So when they destroy one of these groups with laws that go to extremes, they destroy their constitutions.

As things are, in oligarchies the sons of the rulers live in luxury, while the sons of the poor are hardened by exercise and toil, so that they are both more willing and more able to start a revolution. And in the democracies that are thought most democratic, the opposite of what is beneficial has become established. The reason is that they define freedom badly. There are two things by which democracy is thought to be defined: the sovereignty of the majority, and freedom. What is just is thought to be what is equal; what is equal, that whatever the multitude decides is sovereign; and freedom, doing whatever one wants. So in democracies of this kind everyone lives as he likes, “for whatever end he craves,” as Euripides says. But this is bad. One should not think that living in accordance with the constitution is slavery; it is one’s preservation.

These, then, broadly speaking, are the causes from which constitutions change and are destroyed, and the means through which they are preserved and endure.

The two kinds of monarchy originate from directly opposite sources. Kingship arose to protect the decent against the people, and a king is appointed from among the decent on the basis of superiority in excellence, or in the actions that come from excellence, or on the basis of the superiority of a family of that kind. The tyrant, by contrast, is set up from the people and the multitude against the notables, so that the people may suffer no wrong from them. This is clear from what has happened: nearly all tyrants, one might say, began as demagogues, who won people’s trust by slandering the notables.

Some tyrannies were established in this way when cities had already grown large. Others, earlier, arose from kings who overstepped ancestral custom and reached for a more despotic rule; others from men elected to the sovereign offices (for in the old days peoples appointed their magistrates and sacred envoys for long terms); and others from oligarchies that chose a single man as sovereign over the greatest offices.

In all these ways it was easy to succeed, if only they wanted to, because they already had power—some the power of kingly rule, others that of high office. Thus Pheidon at Argos and other tyrants established themselves where there was already a kingship; the tyrants in Ionia and Phalaris rose from high offices; and Panaetius at Leontini, Cypselus at Corinth, Pisistratus at Athens, Dionysius at Syracuse and others rose in the same way from demagoguery. As we said, then, kingship is ranked with aristocracy. For it is based on merit—either individual excellence or family, or benefactions, or these together with power.

For all who obtained this honor had benefited, or were able to benefit, their cities or peoples: some by saving them from enslavement in war, like Codrus; others by setting them free, like Cyrus; or by founding a city or acquiring territory, like the kings of the Spartans, the Macedonians and the Molossians. The king aims to be a guardian, so that 1311a those who own property suffer no injustice and the people suffer no abuse. Tyranny, as has often been said, looks to nothing common except for the sake of its own private benefit. The tyrant’s aim is pleasure, the king’s the fine. That is why, among the advantages they seek, money belongs to the tyrant, while what brings honor belongs rather to the king; and a king’s guard is made up of citizens, a tyrant’s of foreigners.note

For example, the attack on the Pisistratids came about because they insulted Harmodius’ sister and treated Harmodius with contempt (Harmodius acted because of his sister, and Aristogeiton because of Harmodius). There was a plot against Periander, the tyrant of Ambracia, because while drinking with 1311b his beloved he asked the boy whether he was pregnant by him yet. Pausanias’ attack on Philip came about because Philip allowed him to be outraged by Attalus and his circle; Derdas’ attack on Amyntas the Little because Amyntas boasted of having enjoyed Derdas in his youth; and the eunuch’s attack on Evagoras of Cyprus: he killed him, feeling outraged, because Evagoras’ son had taken his wife away from him. Many attacks have also happened because certain monarchs have sexually disgraced others.note

An example is Crataeus’ attack on Archelaus. He had always resented the relationship, so that even a smaller pretext would have been enough—or perhaps it was because Archelaus had promised him one of his daughters and gave him neither, but instead, hard pressed by his war against Sirras and Arrabaeus, gave the elder to the king of Elimeia and the younger to his son Amyntas, thinking that this would make Amyntas least likely to quarrel with his son by Cleopatra. But the start of the estrangement, at any rate, was his resentment at providing sexual favors. Hellanocrates of Larisa joined in the attack for the same reason: Archelaus had enjoyed his youth but had not restored him from exile as he promised, so Hellanocrates thought the relationship had come about through outrage and not through erotic desire.note

Python and Heraclides of Aenus killed Cotys to avenge their father, and Adamas revolted from Cotys because Cotys had had him castrated as a boy, and he felt outraged.note

Fear works in the same way; it was one of the causes, in monarchies as in constitutions. For example, Artapanes attacked Xerxes because he feared the accusation over Darius: he had hanged Darius without Xerxes’ order, thinking Xerxes would forgive him, since he had been at dinner and would not remember. Other attacks come from 1312a contempt, as when someone saw Sardanapallus carding wool with the women (if what the storytellers say is true—and if not of him, it could well be true of someone else); and Dion attacked Dionysius the Younger out of contempt, seeing that the citizens felt the same way and that Dionysius himself was always drunk. Even some of a monarch’s friends attack him out of contempt: because they are trusted, they despise him, thinking they will not be found out.note

Those who think they can seize power also attack, in a way, out of contempt: because they have power and, because of it, despise the danger, they readily make the attempt. So it is with generals against their monarchs—Cyrus, for example, against Astyages, whose way of life and power he despised because Astyages’ power had grown idle while he himself lived in luxury; and Seuthes the Thracian against Amadocus, whose general he was. Others attack for more than one of these reasons, for instance both from contempt and for gain, as Mithridates did against Ariobarzanes. Those who make the attempt mainly for this reason are men bold by nature who hold military honors under the monarchs; for courage that has power is boldness, and it is because of both that they make their attacks, expecting to win easily.

They must follow Dion’s way of thinking, but it is not easy for many to have it. Dion marched against Dionysius with a few men, saying that this was how he felt: however far he managed to advance, it would be enough for him to have taken that much part in the undertaking; if, for instance, he should die as soon as he set foot on land, that death would be a fine one for him.note

There are two causes, above all, for which people attack tyrannies: hatred and contempt. One of these, hatred, is always present for tyrants; but many overthrows come from their being held in contempt. Here is evidence: most of those who won their rule also kept it, whereas those who inherited it lose it almost at once, one might say, every one of them. Living a life of enjoyment, they become easy to despise and give their attackers many opportunities. Anger too should be counted as a part of hatred, since in a way it is the cause of the same actions.

It is often even more effective than hatred, since angry people attack more intensely, because the passion does not use reasoning. (People are especially apt to follow their anger because of outrage; this was the cause of the overthrow of the Pisistratids’ tyranny and of many others.) Hatred, however, reasons more; for anger comes with pain, which makes it hard to reason, while enmity comes without pain.

So for this reason people do not willingly submit; and if someone rules by deceit or force, that is at once thought to be tyranny. In hereditary kingships one must also count as a cause of destruction, besides those mentioned, the fact that many of the kings become contemptible, and that, though they possess not tyrannical power but only kingly honor, they commit outrages. Overthrow then used to be easy: once the subjects are unwilling, the king will at once no longer be king, whereas a tyrant is a tyrant even over the unwilling. Monarchies, then, are destroyed through these causes and others like them.

This, they say, was his reply when his wife asked whether he was not ashamed to hand the kingship down to his sons smaller than he had received it from his father: “Not at all,” he said, “for I am handing it down longer-lasting.”

and all the other Persian and non-Greek practices of this kind, which are tyrannical (for they all have the same effect); and trying to let nothing the subjects happen to say or do go unnoticed, but keeping spies, like the women called “informers” at Syracuse, and the eavesdroppers whom Hiero used to send wherever there was a meeting or gathering (for people speak less freely when they fear such men, and if they do speak freely, they are less likely to escape notice); and setting people against one another with slander and making them clash—friends with friends, the people with the notables, and the rich among themselves.

It is also tyrannical to make the subjects poor, so that no guard can be maintained and they are so busy with their daily needs that they have no leisure to plot. Examples of this are the pyramids of Egypt, the dedications of the Cypselids, the building of the temple of Olympian Zeus by the Pisistratids, and the works of Polycrates at Samos (all these have the same effect, keeping the subjects busy and poor); and the levying of taxes, as at Syracuse, where under Dionysius the citizens ended up paying in their entire property within five years. The tyrant is also a warmonger, so that people will be kept busy and constantly in need of a leader. And whereas a kingship is preserved by its friends, it is characteristic of a tyrant to distrust his friends most of all, on the grounds that everyone wants to overthrow him, but these above all are able to.

And the base are useful for base purposes: “nail drives out nail,” as the proverb says. It is also tyrannical to take no pleasure in anyone dignified or free-spirited. The tyrant claims that he alone is such, and anyone who displays a rival dignity and free spirit takes away the tyranny’s superiority and its despotic character; so tyrants hate such people as subverting their rule. It is also tyrannical to have foreigners rather than citizens as dinner companions and daily associates, since the citizens are enemies while the foreigners make no rival claim. These and similar practices are tyrannical and preserve the rule, but there is no depravity they fall short of. All of them, one might say, fall under three headings.

For tyranny aims at three things. First, that its subjects think small (for a small-minded person would plot against no one). Second, that they distrust one another (for a tyranny is not overthrown until some people trust one another; that is also why tyrants make war on the decent as harmful to their rule, not only because they refuse to be ruled despotically, but also because they are loyal both to one another and to others, and do not inform on each other or on others). Third, that they are powerless to act (for no one attempts the impossible, so no one tries to overthrow a tyranny either without having power).

These, then, are the three aims to which the policies of tyrants reduce. All tyrannical measures could be traced back to these principles: some aim at keeping people from trusting one another, some at keeping them powerless, some at making them think small.

First, he should seem to 1314b take care of public funds, not spending them on gifts of the kind that anger the masses, when money is taken from them as they work and toil in hardship and then handed out lavishly to courtesans, foreigners and craftsmen. He should also render accounts of what he receives and spends, as some tyrants have already done (for by governing in this way he would seem to be a household manager and not a tyrant; and he need not fear ever running short of money while he is master of the city. Indeed, for tyrants who go abroad, away from home, this is actually more advantageous than leaving behind money they have amassed, since those guarding it would be less likely to make an attempt on power; and to tyrants who travel abroad, the guards are more to be feared than the citizens, since the citizens travel with him while the guards stay behind). Next, he should be seen to collect taxes and public services for the sake of administration, and in case he should ever need them in time of war; and in general he should present himself as guardian and treasurer of funds that are common, not his own. He should appear not harsh but dignified, and moreover such that those who meet him feel not fear but rather respect. This, however, is not easy to achieve if he is easy to despise; so even if he takes no care of the other excellences, he must take care of military excellence and create a reputation of that kind for himself.

Further, not only must he himself be seen to commit no outrage against any of his subjects, young man or young woman, but neither must anyone else around him; and the women of his household should behave in the same way toward other women, since many tyrannies have been lost through outrages committed by women. As for bodily pleasures, he should do the opposite of what some tyrants do now (for they not only indulge in them from dawn onward and continuously for days on end, but also want others to see them doing it, so that they will admire them as happy and blessed). Rather, he should above all be moderate in such things, or if not, at least avoid being seen by others; for it is not the sober man who is easy to attack or despise, but the drunk, and not the wakeful man, but the sleeper. He must do the opposite of nearly all the things mentioned earlier: he should build up and adorn the city as if he were its steward and not a tyrant. Further, he should always be seen to be exceptionally earnest about the gods; for people are less afraid of suffering anything unlawful from such men 1315a if they think their ruler god-fearing and mindful of the gods, and they plot against him less, thinking he has even the gods as allies. But he must appear so without foolishness. He should honor those who prove good at something in such a way that they would think they could never be more honored by citizens living under their own laws; and he should award such honors himself, but inflict punishments through other officials and courts.

A safeguard common to every monarchy is to make no single man great, but, if anyone, several (for they will keep watch on one another); and if it is necessary to make someone great, at least not someone of bold character (for such a character is the readiest to make an attempt in every sort of action); and if it seems right to strip someone of his power, to do it gradually, and not take away all his authority at once. Further, he should refrain from every kind of outrage, and above all from two: physical punishment, and sexual outrage against the young. He should take this precaution especially with the ambitious; for while lovers of money take slights to their property hard, it is slights to their honor that the ambitious and decent people take hard.

Therefore he should either not treat such people in this way at all, or be seen to inflict punishment like a father and not out of contempt, and to have relations with the young out of erotic love and not because of his power; and in general he should buy off apparent dishonors with greater honors. Of those who make attempts on his life, the most dangerous, and those who need to be guarded against most, are those who do not care about saving their own lives once they have killed him. That is why he must be most on guard against those who think that they themselves, or those they care about, have been outraged. For those who act from anger do not spare themselves, as Heraclitus too said, claiming that anger is hard to fight, for it buys what it wants at the price of the soul.

For as a result of these things, not only will his rule necessarily be finer and more enviable, because he rules better people who have not been humbled and does not go on being hated and feared, but his rule will also be longer-lasting; and further, he himself will be disposed in character either finely toward excellence, or half-good—not wicked but half-wicked.

Second is the tyranny of the Cypselids at Corinth, which lasted seventy-three years and six months: Cypselus was tyrant for thirty years, Periander for forty-four, and Psammetichus son of Gordias for three. The causes were the same in this case too: Cypselus was a popular leader and throughout his rule went without a bodyguard, while Periander, though tyrannical, was a warrior. Third is that of the Pisistratids at Athens. It was not continuous, for Pisistratus was driven into exile twice while tyrant, so that in thirty-three years he was tyrant for seventeen, and his sons for eighteen, so that the total came to thirty-five years. Of the rest, there is the tyranny of Hiero and Gelon at Syracuse.note

It too did not last many years, only eighteen in all: Gelon was tyrant for seven years and died in the eighth, Hiero reigned ten, and Thrasybulus was driven out in the eleventh month. Most tyrannies have all been very short-lived indeed.

He says the cause is that nothing stays the same, but everything changes in a certain cycle, and that the origin lies in those numbers whose “base of four to three, joined with five, yields two harmonies”—meaning when the number of this figure becomes solid—on the grounds that nature sometimes produces people who are bad and beyond the reach of education. In saying this much he is perhaps not wrong (for there may be some people whom it is impossible to educate and make into excellent men). But why would this be a change peculiar to what he calls the best constitution, rather than to all the others and to everything that comes into being? And do even things that did not begin to come into being at the same time change at the same time, because of the time through which, he says, everything changes? If something came into being the day before the turning point, for instance, does it change at the same time?note

Besides, for what reason does it change from this constitution into the Spartan one? For all constitutions change more often into their opposite than into the one next to them. The same argument applies to the other changes too. He says the Spartan constitution changes into oligarchy, oligarchy into democracy, and democracy into tyranny. Yet changes also go the other way, for example from democracy into oligarchy, and more often than into monarchy.

And constitutions change from oligarchy into tyranny, as did most of the ancient ones in Sicily, roughly speaking: at Leontini into the tyranny of Panaetius, at Gela into that of Cleander, at Rhegium into that of Anaxilaus, and similarly in many other cities. It is also strange to think that change into oligarchy happens because those 1316b in office are money-lovers and money-makers, and not because those who far exceed others in property think it unjust for those who own nothing to have an equal share in the city with those who own property. In many oligarchies, moreover, making money is not permitted; there are laws that prevent it. At Carthage, on the other hand, which is governed democratically, they do make money, and they have not yet changed their constitution.

But this is false. When some of the leaders lose their property, they stir up innovations; but when others do, nothing terrible happens, and even then the change is no more into democracy than into any other constitution. Further, people form factions and change constitutions if they do not share in honors, or if they are wronged or outraged, even if they have not squandered their property through being free to do whatever they like—the cause of which, he says, is too much freedom. And although there are several kinds of oligarchy and democracy, Socrates discusses their changes as though there were only one of each.

I mean the combinations that ought to be examined but have not been examined so far: for example, if the deliberative body and the election of officials are organized oligarchically, but the courts aristocratically; or if these and the deliberative body are organized oligarchically, but elections aristocratically; or if in some other way not all the elements proper to the constitution are put together.

There are two reasons why there are several democracies. The first is the one mentioned before: peoples differ. For there is a farming population, and a population of vulgar craftsmen and of laborers; and when the first is added to the second, and the third in turn to both, the democracy differs not only in becoming better or worse but in not being the same democracy. The second reason is the one we are now discussing. The features that go with democracies and are thought proper to this constitution make democracies different when they are combined: one will have fewer of them, another more, another all. It is useful to know each of them, both for setting up whichever of them one happens to want and for reforming them.

Those who set up constitutions try to gather together all the features proper to the basic principle, but they go wrong in doing so, as was said earlier in the discussion of the destruction and preservation of constitutions. Let us now discuss the claims of democracies, their characters, and what they aim at.

This, then, is one mark of freedom, which all democrats lay down as the defining principle of the constitution. Another is living as one likes. For this, they say, is the function of freedom, since not living as one likes is the mark of a slave. This is the second defining principle of democracy. From it has come the demand not to be ruled—preferably by no one, or, failing that, only in turn; and in this way it contributes to freedom based on equality.

for where there is, even this office is stripped of its power, since a people well supplied with pay draws all decisions to itself, as was said earlier in the inquiry before this one); next, pay for public service—ideally for everyone, in the assembly, the courts and the offices, or failing that, for the offices, the courts, the council and the sovereign assemblies, or for those offices whose holders must take their meals together.

Further, since oligarchy is defined by birth, wealth and education, the democratic features are thought to be their opposites: low birth, poverty and vulgar occupations. Further, as regards offices, none should be held for life, 1318a and if any has survived from some ancient change of constitution, its power should at least be curtailed, and it should be filled by lot instead of by election. These, then, are the features common to democracies. From the kind of justice agreed to be democratic—that is, everyone having equality according to number—comes what is thought to be democracy and rule by the people in the fullest sense. For equality means that the poor rule no more than the well-off and are not alone sovereign, but all are sovereign equally, according to number; for in this way people would think that both equality and freedom belong to the constitution.

Both views involve inequality and injustice. If it is whatever the few decide, that is tyranny (for if one man has more than the other well-off people, then by oligarchic justice it is just for him alone to rule). If it is whatever the numerical majority decides, they will do injustice by confiscating the property of the rich minority, as was said before.

If the two sides come out equal, this must be regarded as a difficulty shared with the present situation, when the assembly or the court is split down the middle; 1318b one must either draw lots or do something else of the kind. As for equality and justice, even if it is very hard to find the truth about them, it is still easier to hit on it than to persuade those who have the power to take more than their share. For it is always the weaker who seek equality and justice, while the stronger give them no thought.

Here is evidence: they used to put up with the old tyrannies, and they put up with oligarchies, as long as no one prevents them from working or takes anything away from them; for some of them quickly grow rich, and the others at least are not poor. Further, being sovereign over elections and audits makes up for any lack, if they have any ambition. Among some peoples, even if they do not share in electing officials—certain men chosen in turn from all do that, as at Mantinea—as long as they are sovereign over deliberation, the many are satisfied. And this too should be regarded as a form of democracy, as it once was at Mantinea.

That is why it is beneficial for the democracy just mentioned, and customary in it, for everyone to elect officials, audit them and sit on juries, but for the greatest offices to be held by men who are elected and meet a property qualification, the greater offices requiring greater qualifications; or else for no office to depend on property, but for those who are capable to hold them. People governed in this way are bound to be governed well (for the offices will always be in the hands of the best, with the people willing and not envious of the decent), and this arrangement is bound to satisfy the decent and notable; for they will not be ruled by others who are worse, and they will rule justly because others are sovereign over their audits. For to be answerable to others, and not be permitted to do whatever one thinks fit, is beneficial; the license to do whatever one wants cannot guard against the baseness in 1319a every human being.

So the result is necessarily what is most beneficial in constitutions: the decent rule without going wrong, and the multitude loses nothing.

Where the land happens to be so situated that the countryside lies far from the city, it is easy to create both a good democracy and a polity; for the multitude is forced to make its homes out in the fields, so that even if there is a market crowd, one should not hold assemblies in democracies without the multitude from the countryside. How the best and first democracy should be set up, then, has been said; it is also clear how the others should be. One should deviate step by step, 1319b always excluding the worse multitude. The last democracy, because everyone takes part in it, is not something every city can bear, nor can it easily endure unless its laws and customs are well arranged. (What destroys both this and the other constitutions has been said before, for the most part.)

To establish this kind of democracy and make the people strong, its leaders usually add as many people as possible, and make citizens not only of the legitimate but also of the illegitimate and of those with a citizen on either side—I mean father or mother; for all this is especially congenial to a people of this kind. Demagogues usually go about things this way. But one should add people only up to the point where the multitude outnumbers the notables and the middle class, and not go beyond it; for when they exceed this, they make the constitution more disorderly and provoke the notables still more to find democracy hard to bear—which is what caused the civil strife at Cyrene. A little badness is overlooked, but when it becomes large, it is more in plain view.note

Further, measures of the kind that Cleisthenes used at Athens when he wanted to strengthen the democracy, and that those who established the democracy at Cyrene used, are useful for a democracy of this sort. More new tribes and brotherhoods should be created, private religious rites should be combined into a few public ones, and every device should be contrived to mix everyone together with everyone else as much as possible and break up their previous associations. Further, the measures of tyrants all seem democratic too—I mean, for example, lack of control over slaves (which may be beneficial up to a point), and over women and children, and letting everyone live as he likes. For a constitution of this kind will have plenty of support, since for most people it is more pleasant to live without discipline than moderately.note

That is why those who care about the constitution must counteract this by making it law that nothing confiscated from the condemned is to become public property and go to the treasury, but is to be consecrated to the gods. Wrongdoers will be no less careful, since they will be punished just the same, while the crowd will be less inclined to condemn defendants, since it stands to gain nothing. Further, public lawsuits should always be kept as few as possible, by deterring those who bring charges recklessly with heavy penalties; for they usually prosecute not ordinary people but the notables. In this constitution too, ideally all the citizens should be well disposed to it, or failing that, they should at least not regard those in power as their enemies.

But the truly democratic statesman must see to it that the multitude is not too poor, since that is what makes a democracy bad. So one must contrive to bring about lasting prosperity. And since this benefits the well-off too, what comes in from the revenues should be gathered together and distributed to the poor in lump sums—ideally, if one can collect that much, enough to buy a small plot of land, or failing that, to give them a start in trade or 1320b farming. If this is not possible for everyone, the distribution should be made in turn by tribes or some other division; meanwhile the well-off should contribute pay for the necessary meetings, and be released from useless public services. By governing in some such way, the Carthaginians have kept the people friendly; for they are always sending some of the people out to the dependent towns and so making them well-off.

It is also the mark of gracious and sensible notables to divide up the poor among themselves and set them to work by giving them a start. It is good, too, to imitate the practice of the Tarentines. By making their property common to the poor for their use, they keep the multitude well disposed. Further, they made all their offices double, some elected and some chosen by lot: by lot so that the people may share in them, by election so that the city may be better governed. This can also be done by dividing the same office between some who are chosen by lot and some who are elected. How democracies should be set up, then, has been said.note

The oligarchy opposite to the last democracy, the most dynastic and tyrannical of oligarchies, needs guarding all the more, the worse it is. Bodies in good condition for health, and ships well fitted out with crews for sailing, can tolerate more mistakes without being destroyed by them, while sickly bodies, and ships whose timbers have come loose and which have bad crews, cannot bear even small mistakes; in the same way the worst constitutions need the most 1321a guarding. Democracies, in general, are preserved by a large population (for this stands opposed to justice based on merit); an oligarchy, clearly, must win its preservation from the opposite, good order.

It is in this way that the people get the better of the well-off in civil conflicts: being light-armed, they fight easily against cavalry and heavy infantry.

It is also fitting for them, on entering office, to offer magnificent sacrifices and to build some public work, so that the people, sharing in the feasts and seeing the city adorned with dedications and buildings, are glad to see the constitution endure. It will also turn out that the notables have memorials of their expenditure. But those involved in oligarchies nowadays don’t do this; they do the opposite, since they seek profit no less than honor. That is why one may well say 1321b that these are democracies in miniature. So let this be our account of how democracies and oligarchies should be established.

Another concern, connected with this one and close to it, is the supervision of public and private property in the town, so that there is good order; the preservation and repair of buildings and roads that are falling into ruin; and of the boundaries between people’s properties, so that there are no disputes; and all the other concerns of a similar kind. Most people call this sort of office the city-wardenship. It has several divisions, and in more populous cities different officials are appointed to different parts of it—for instance, wall-builders, supervisors of springs, and harbor guards. Another office is both necessary and closely similar to this one: it deals with the same matters, but for the countryside and the areas outside the town. Some call these officials country-wardens, others forest-wardens.

These, then, are three offices concerned with these matters. Another is the office to which the public revenues are delivered; its holders keep them and distribute them to each branch of administration. These officials are called receivers and treasurers. Another office is the one with which private contracts and the verdicts of the courts must be registered; with these same officials the filing of lawsuits and their introduction into court must also take place. In some places this office too is divided among several people, while elsewhere a single office has authority over all these matters. Its holders are called sacred recorders, overseers, recorders, and other names close to these.

It is better, therefore, that this should not be a single office, but that different people, drawn from different courts, should carry it out; and one should try to divide up the posting of those registered as debtors in the same way. Further, some penalties should be exacted by the other offices as well, and those imposed by outgoing officials should rather be exacted by the new ones; and where sitting officials have imposed a penalty, one office should condemn and a different one exact—for instance, the city-wardens should exact the penalties imposed by the market-wardens, and other officials those imposed by the city-wardens. For the less hatred attaches to those who exact penalties, the more fully the penalties will be carried out. When the same people both condemn and exact, the hatred is doubled; and when the same people do so in every case, it makes them enemies of everyone. In many places, too, the office that guards prisoners is kept separate from the one that exacts penalties—at Athens, for example, the office of the so-called Eleven. So it is better to separate this office too, and to look for some clever device in its case as well.note

For it is no less necessary than the one just mentioned, but it happens that decent people especially avoid this office, while it is not safe to put bad people in charge of it, since they themselves need guarding more than they are able to guard others. So there should not be one office assigned to guarding prisoners, nor the same one continuously. Instead, different people should take charge of it in turn—drawn from the young men, where there is an organization of ephebes or garrison troops, and from the officials.note

Further, if there are cavalry, light-armed troops, archers, or a navy, an office is sometimes set up over each of these too. These are called the admiralty, the cavalry command, and the infantry command, and, in turn, the subordinate commands of trierarchs, company captains, and tribal cavalry commanders, with all their subdivisions. But the whole of this is one kind of thing: the supervision of military affairs.

These, then, are roughly the political offices. Another kind of supervision concerns the gods: for instance, priests, and supervisors of matters concerning the temples—the preservation of existing buildings and the restoration of those falling into ruin—and of everything else assigned to the gods. In some places this supervision is a single office, as in small cities; in others there are many, separate from the priesthood—for instance, supervisors of sacrifices, temple guardians, and treasurers of sacred funds. Connected with this is the office set apart for all the public sacrifices that the law does not assign to the priests, but whose honor derives from the common hearth of the city. Some call these officials archons, others kings, others prytaneis.note

Some of these offices are plainly not democratic—for instance, the supervision of women and of children; for the poor have no choice but to use their wives and children as attendants, since they have no slaves. Of the three offices under which some cities choose their sovereign officials—guardians of the law, preliminary councilors, and a council—the guardians of the law are an aristocratic feature, the preliminary councilors oligarchic, and a council democratic. So much, then, for a sketch covering practically all the offices.

No one would call a person blessed who has no share of courage, moderation, justice, or practical wisdom, but is afraid of the flies buzzing past him, stops at nothing, however extreme, when he wants something to eat or drink, ruins his dearest friends for the sake of a quarter-obol, and is just as senseless and deluded in his thinking as a child or someone out of his mind. But while everyone would agree with these claims once they are stated, people differ about the amount and the degrees of superiority. They think it enough to have any amount of excellence at all, but they pursue wealth, property, power, reputation, and all such things to an unlimited excess.

We, however, will tell them that it is easy to become convinced about these matters from the facts as well, when we see that people do not acquire and keep the excellences by means of external goods, but external goods by means of the excellences; 1323b and that living happily—whether for human beings it consists in enjoyment, or in excellence, or in both—belongs more to those who are cultivated to an exceptional degree in character and thought but moderate in their acquisition of external goods, than to those who possess more of those goods than is useful but are deficient in these. Not only that: the matter is also easy to see if one considers it by argument.

For external goods have a limit, like any tool (and everything useful is useful for something), and an excess of them must either harm their possessors or be of no benefit to them; whereas each of the goods of the soul is the more useful the more it exceeds—if one should apply to these goods not only the word “fine” but also “useful.” And in general it is clear that we will say that the best condition of each thing stands to that of another in accordance with the same superiority that the things themselves, whose conditions we say these are, have over each other. So if the soul is more precious than both property and the body, both without qualification and for us, the best condition of each must stand in the same proportion as they do.

Further, it is for the sake of the soul that these things are by nature choiceworthy, and that everyone of good sense ought to choose them—not the soul for their sake.

It is impossible for those who do not do fine things to do well; and there is no fine deed, either of a man or of a city, without excellence and practical wisdom. The courage, justice, and practical wisdom of a city have the same power and form as the qualities by sharing in which each human being is called just, practically wise, and moderate. But let this much serve as a preface to our discussion. It is impossible not to touch on these matters, yet it is not possible to go through all the arguments proper to them—that is a task for another occasion. For now let us take this much as our basis: that the best life, both for each individual separately and for cities in common, is the life of excellence equipped 1324a with enough resources to take part in the actions that accord with excellence. As for those who dispute this, we must set them aside for the present inquiry and consider them later, if anyone happens to be unpersuaded by what has been said.

But there are now two questions that need investigation. One is which life is more choiceworthy: the life of taking part in politics along with others and sharing in a city, or rather the life of a foreigner, released from the political community. The other is which constitution and what arrangement of the city we should regard as best—whether sharing in a city is choiceworthy for everyone, or not for some but for most. Since it is the task of political thought and study to consider this second question, and not what is choiceworthy for each individual, and this is the inquiry we have now chosen, the first question would be a side issue, while the second is the task of this inquiry.

That the best constitution must be the arrangement under which anyone at all would do best and live blessedly is evident. But even among those who agree that the life accompanied by excellence is most choiceworthy, there is dispute whether the political and practical life is choiceworthy, or rather the life released from all external things—a life of contemplation, say, which some claim is the only life for a philosopher. For these are roughly the two lives that the people most ambitious for excellence, in earlier times and now, appear to choose: I mean the political life and the philosophical. And it makes no small difference which way the truth lies; for the person of good sense must direct himself toward the better goal—each individual human being, and the constitution in common.

Some think that ruling over one’s neighbors, if it is done in the manner of a master, involves injustice of the gravest kind, and if it is done politically, involves no injustice but does get in the way of one’s own well-being. Others hold views that are, so to speak, the opposite of these: they think that the practical and political life is the only life for a man, since the actions that express each excellence are no more open to private individuals 1324b than to those who engage in public affairs and politics. Some, then, take this view; others say that only the despotic and tyrannical form of constitution is happy. And among some peoples this is actually the defining aim of the constitution and the laws: that they may rule as masters over their neighbors.

That is why, although most customary laws among most peoples lie about in a jumble, so to speak, still, where laws do look to a single thing, they all aim at domination—as in Sparta and Crete, where both the education and the bulk of the laws are organized, more or less, for war. Further, among all the nations that are able to aggrandize themselves, this sort of power is held in honor—for instance, among the Scythians, Persians, Thracians, and Celts.

Among some there are even laws that spur people on to this kind of excellence. At Carthage, they say, men receive an ornament of rings for each campaign they have served on; and there was once a law in Macedonia that a man who had not killed an enemy had to wear a halter in place of a belt. Among the Scythians, a man who had not killed an enemy was not allowed to drink from the cup passed around at a certain festival; and among the Iberians, a warlike people, they fix as many spikes around a man’s tomb as the number of enemies he has killed. And there are many other such practices among other peoples, some established by laws, others by custom.

But most people seem to think that mastery is statesmanship, and they are not ashamed to practice toward others what each of them says is neither just nor advantageous for themselves. Among themselves they seek just rule, but where others are concerned they care nothing for what is just. But this is absurd, unless by nature some things are fit to be mastered and others are not. So if that is how things stand, one should not try to master everyone, but only those fit to be mastered—just as one should not hunt human beings for a feast or a sacrifice, but only what is fit to be hunted for that purpose; and what is fit to be hunted is any wild animal that is edible.

And yet a single city could also be happy 1325a on its own—one that is, obviously, well governed—if it is possible for a city to be settled somewhere by itself and to live under excellent laws. The structure of its constitution will not be directed toward war or toward dominating enemies, since we are to suppose there is nothing of that kind. It is clear, then, that all concerns with war should be regarded as fine, but not as the highest end of all; they are for the sake of that end. It is the work of the excellent lawgiver to consider how a city, a people, and every other community will share in the good life and in the happiness open to them. Some of the laws laid down will differ, however; and it also belongs to legislative science to see, if there are neighbors, what sorts of practices should be cultivated toward what sorts of people, or how to adopt the appropriate practices toward each.

But this question—what end the best constitution should aim at—may well receive its proper consideration later.

But it is not correct to think that all rule is the rule of a master. Rule over free people differs from rule over slaves no less than the naturally free differs from the natural slave; these matters were adequately distinguished in our first discussions. And it is not true to praise inaction above action; for happiness is action, and the actions of just and moderate people have as their end the achievement of many fine things.

For among those who are similar, the fine and the just consist in taking turns, since that is what is equal and similar; and to give what is unequal to equals and what is dissimilar to similars is contrary to nature, and nothing contrary to nature is fine. That is why, if there is someone else who is superior in excellence and in the capacity to carry out the best actions, it is fine to follow him and just to obey him. But he must have not only excellence but also the capacity that will make him effective in action. If these things are well said, and happiness is to be regarded as doing well, then the practical life would be the best life both for every city in common and for each individual.

But the practical life need not be directed toward others, as some think, nor are only those thoughts practical that are pursued for the sake of the results of acting. Much more practical are the kinds of contemplation and thinking that are complete in themselves and pursued for their own sake. For doing well is the end, and so it too is a kind of action; and those whom we say act in the most authoritative sense, even in the case of external actions, are the master builders who direct them by their thinking. Nor, again, need cities that are situated on their own and have chosen to live that way be inactive, since activity can take place among their parts: the parts of a city have many kinds of community with one another. The same holds for any single human being too. Otherwise god and the whole universe could hardly be in a fine condition, since they have no external actions besides their own proper ones.

It is evident, then, that the best life must be the same both for each human being and for cities and human beings in common.

Still, even if one should judge by looking to the number, one should not go by any chance multitude (for cities must perhaps contain a large number of slaves, resident foreigners, and visitors), but only by those who are a part of the city—the proper parts of which a city is composed. A preponderance of these in number is a sign of a large city; but a city from which many vulgar craftsmen go out to war, but few hoplites, cannot be large. For a large city and a populous one are not the same.

Hence the finest city must be the one that combines size with the limit just mentioned. For beauty usually lies in number and magnitude; but there is also a measure of size for a city, as for everything else—animals, plants, tools. None of these will have its proper capacity if it is either too small or excessively large; sometimes it will be wholly deprived of its nature, sometimes it will be in poor condition. A ship a span long, for instance, will not be a ship at all, nor will one two stades long; and when it reaches a certain size, sometimes 1326b its smallness will make it sail badly, sometimes its excessive size. Similarly, a city made up of too few people is not self-sufficient (whereas a city is something self-sufficient), while one made up of far too many is self-sufficient in necessities, like a nation, but is not a city, since it is not easy for it to have a constitution. Who will be general of an excessively large multitude? Or who will be its herald, unless he has the voice of Stentor?note

So the first city must be one made up of a population large enough to be the smallest number self-sufficient for living well in a political community. It is possible for a city that exceeds this in number to be a greater city, but, as we said, this is not unlimited. What the limit of the excess is can easily be seen from the facts. The actions of a city are those of the rulers and those of the ruled, and the work of a ruler is to give orders and to judge. To judge about matters of justice and to distribute offices according to merit, the citizens must know one another and what sort of people they are; where this does not happen, things are bound to go badly with offices and judgments. It is unjust to improvise about either—which is plainly what happens in an excessively large population.

Further, it is easy for foreigners and resident aliens to share in the constitution, since it is not hard to escape notice when the population is so excessively large. It is clear, then, that the best limit for a city is this: the largest population, for self-sufficiency of life, that can be taken in at a single view. Let this be our account of the size of a city.

The configuration of the territory is not hard to state (though on some points one must also take the advice of those experienced in generalship): it should be difficult for enemies to invade and easy for the inhabitants to march out of. 1327a Further, just as we said that the population should be easy to take in at a glance, so should the territory; and a territory easy to take in at a glance is one that is easy to defend. As for the site of the city, if it is to be as we would pray for, it should be well situated with regard both to the sea and to the territory. One criterion is the one already mentioned: the city should be accessible from every part of the territory for sending out help. The other is that the crops produced should be easy to transport to it, as well as timber, and any other such material for working that the territory may happen to have.

Also, importing what they happen not to have at home, and exporting the surplus of what they produce, are among the necessities. For a city should be a trading city for its own benefit, not for others’. Those who make themselves a market for everyone do so for the sake of revenue; but a city that ought not to share in that kind of profiteering ought not to have that sort of trading post either.

We see even now that many territories and cities have ports and harbors conveniently situated in relation to the city, so that they neither form part of the same town nor are too far away, but are commanded by walls and other such fortifications. It is evident, then, that if some good comes from communication through them, the city will have it, and if something harmful, it is easy to guard against it by laws stating and defining who must and who must not mix with one another.

We see this even now in some cases—for instance, the city of the Heracleots: they man many triremes, though the city they possess is more modest in size than others.note

The Greek nations also differ from one another in the same way: some have a one-sided nature, while others are well blended with respect to both these capacities. It is evident, then, that those who are going to be easily guided toward excellence by the lawgiver should be both intelligent and spirited by nature. Some say that the guardians should be affectionate toward those they know and fierce toward strangers; but it is spirit that produces affection, since it is the capacity 1328a of the soul by which we love. A sign of this: spirit is roused more against intimates and friends than against strangers when it thinks itself slighted. That is why Archilochus, fittingly, when reproaching his friends, addresses his own spirit: “For it’s by your friends that you are choked.”note

But when one thing is for the sake of something and the other is that for the sake of which, they have nothing in common, except that the one produces and the other receives. I mean, for instance, any tool, and the craftsmen, in relation to the work produced: there is nothing that comes to be in common between a house and a builder; rather, the builders’ craft is for the sake of the house. So cities need property, but property is no part of the city—though many parts of property are living things. The city is a community of similar people, for the sake of the best life possible.

Since happiness is the best thing, and it is an activity and a complete exercise of excellence, and it has turned out that some people can share in it while others can do so only a little or not at all, this is clearly the reason why there come to be different kinds and varieties of cities and a plurality of constitutions. For each people pursues happiness in a different way and by 1328b different means, and so they make their ways of life and their constitutions different. We must also consider how many there are of these things without which a city could not exist; for what we call the parts of a city would be among them, which is why they must be present. We must therefore take stock of the number of functions, since from these it will become clear.

First, there must be food; next, crafts (for life needs many tools); third, arms (for those who share in the community must have arms among themselves too, both to maintain rule, because of those who disobey, and against those from outside who try to do them wrong); further, a certain abundance of money, so that they have it both for their own needs and for the needs of war; fifth—and first—the care of the divine, which they call priesthood; and sixth in number, and most necessary of all, judgment about what is advantageous and what is just in people’s dealings with one another.

These, then, are the functions that practically every city needs (for a city is not just any multitude but one self-sufficient for life, as we say, and if any of these happens to be lacking, it is impossible for this community to be self-sufficient without qualification). So a city must be organized in accordance with these functions. There must therefore be a multitude of farmers to provide the food, and craftsmen, and the fighting element, and the well-off, and priests, and judges of what is necessary and advantageous.

We are investigating the best constitution, and this is the one under which the city would be happiest; and it was said earlier that happiness cannot exist without excellence. It is evident from this that in the city governed most finely—the one that possesses men who are just without qualification, not just relative to some presupposition—the citizens should not live the life of vulgar craftsmen or of traders (such a life is ignoble and opposed to excellence). Nor should those who are going 1329a to be citizens be farmers (for leisure is needed both for the development of excellence and for political activities).

It remains, then, to assign this constitution to the same people for both functions, but not at the same time. Rather, just as by nature strength is found in younger people and practical wisdom in older ones, it seems both advantageous and just to distribute the functions between them in this way, since this division accords with merit. Moreover, the property too must belong to these people. For the citizens must be well off, and these are the citizens. The vulgar class has no share in the city, nor does any other class that is not a producer of excellence. This is clear from our presupposition: happiness must go together with excellence, and one should call a city happy not by looking at some part of it but at all its citizens.

It is also evident that the property must belong to them, if the farmers must be slaves or non-Greek perioikoi. Of the groups we listed, what remains is the class of priests. Their place too is evident. Neither a farmer nor a vulgar craftsman should be appointed priest, since it is fitting for the gods to be honored by citizens. And since the citizen body has been divided into two parts, namely the armed and the deliberative, and it is fitting that those who have retired because of their age should render worship to the gods and find their rest in their service, it is to these that the priesthoods should be assigned.

The learned among the inhabitants there say that a certain Italus became king of Oenotria, and that from him they changed their name and were called Itali instead of Oenotrians, and that this promontory of Europe took the name Italy—the part lying between the Scylletic and Lametic gulfs, which are half a day’s journey apart. This Italus, they say, turned the Oenotrians from nomads into farmers, gave them various laws, and was the first to establish common meals. That is why even now some of his descendants still use common meals and some of his laws. The region toward Tyrrhenia was inhabited by the Opici, who both formerly and now bear the name Ausonians; the region toward Iapygia and the Ionian Sea, the so-called Siritis, by the Chones, who were also Oenotrians by descent.note

The institution of common meals, then, originated there first, while the division of the citizen body by classes came from Egypt; for the reign of Sesostris long predates that of Minos. We should suppose, roughly, that other things too have been discovered many times over in the long course of time—or rather countless times. For it is likely that need itself teaches what is necessary, and that once this is in place, things contributing to refinement and abundance should reasonably develop. So we must suppose that the same holds for constitutional arrangements too. That all these things are ancient is shown by the case of Egypt: the Egyptians are reputed to be the most ancient people, yet they have always had laws and a political order. So we should make adequate use of what has been discovered, and try to seek out what has been neglected.

Further, expenses relating to the gods are common to the whole city. So the territory must be divided into two parts, one public and the other private, and each of these divided in two again. Of the public land, one part should go to the service of the gods and the other to the expense of the common meals; of the private land, one part should be near the frontier and the other near the city, so that, with two lots assigned to each person, everyone shares in both locations. That way there is equality and justice, and greater unanimity about wars with neighbors. For where things are not arranged this way, some make light of hostility with the neighboring peoples, while others worry about it too much and beyond what is fine.

That is why in some places there is a law that those whose land borders on neighboring peoples may not take part in deliberation about wars against them, on the grounds that their private interest would keep them from deliberating well. The territory, then, must be divided in this way for the reasons stated. Those who are to farm it should ideally, if we are to have what we would pray for, be slaves—not all of the same stock, and not spirited (that way they would be useful for work and safe from attempting revolution); and second best, non-Greek perioikoi similar in nature to those just described. Of these, those on private land should belong privately to the owners of the estates, and those on public land should be public. How slaves should be treated, and why it is better for all slaves to have their freedom held out as a reward, we will say later.

For military activities, it should be easy for the inhabitants to march out of but hard for their opponents to approach and to surround. It should ideally have its own plentiful supply of water and springs; but failing that, a way has been found: constructing large and plentiful cisterns for rainwater, so that water never runs short when the inhabitants are cut off from the countryside by war. And since one must take thought for the health of the inhabitants, and this depends, first, on the place being well situated in a healthy spot and facing a healthy direction, and second, on using healthy water, this too must be attended to seriously. For the things we use most and most often for the body contribute most to health; and water and air have this sort of effect.

That is why in cities with good sense, if not all water is equally good and there is no abundance of such springs, drinking water should be kept separate from water for other uses.

For to demand that cities not be surrounded by walls is like wanting the territory to be easy to invade and removing its mountainous areas—or, similarly, like not putting walls around private houses, on the grounds that their inhabitants will become cowardly. Nor should we overlook this: those who have walls around their city can treat their cities in both ways, as walled and as unwalled, whereas those who have none cannot. If so, not only should walls be built, but care should also be taken that they be a fitting ornament for the city and suited to military needs, both the others and those newly devised.

For just as attackers take care to find ways of gaining the advantage, so too some means have been discovered, and others the defenders must seek out and think up; for people do not even attempt to attack those who are well prepared in the first place.

Below this place it is fitting to lay out a marketplace of the kind they have in Thessaly, which they call the “free” marketplace. This is one that must be kept clear of all goods for sale, and no vulgar craftsman, farmer, or anyone else of that sort may enter it unless summoned by the officials. The place would be pleasant if the gymnasia of the older men were located there too. For this ornament too should be divided by ages: some officials should spend their time among the younger men, while the older men spend theirs among the officials. For the presence of officials before people’s eyes, above all, instills true respect and the fear befitting free 1331b people.

The marketplace for goods should be different from this one and separate, in a location convenient for collecting everything sent from the sea and from the countryside.

The same arrangement should also be imitated in the countryside. There too the officials whom some call forest-wardens and others country-wardens must have guardhouses and common meals for defense, and there should also be temples distributed throughout the countryside, some to gods and some to heroes. But it is idle to spend time now going into precise detail and discussing such matters. It is not hard to think of such things, but rather to carry them out: talking about them is a matter of prayer, but their coming about is a matter of fortune. So let us leave any further discussion of such matters aside for now.

sometimes doctors do not judge well what a healthy body should be like, nor do they hit on the means productive of the goal they have set themselves. In the arts and sciences both must be mastered: the end and the actions leading to the end.) Now it is evident that everyone aims at living well and at happiness; but some have the opportunity for them and others do not, owing to fortune or nature (for living finely also requires some 1332a equipment—less for those in a better condition, more for those in a worse); while others, though they have the opportunity, go about seeking happiness wrongly from the start.

Since our purpose is to see the best constitution, and this is the one under which a city would be best governed, and a city would be best governed under the constitution under which it can be happiest, clearly we must not overlook what happiness is.

The excellent man would deal finely with poverty, disease, and other bad fortune; but blessedness lies in their opposites. (This too was defined in our ethical discussions: the excellent person is the sort for whom, because of his excellence, the things that are good without qualification are good; and clearly his uses of them must also be excellent and fine without qualification.) That is why people think that external goods are the causes of happiness—as if one were to credit a brilliant and fine performance on the kithara to the instrument rather than to the skill.

For first one must be born—as a human being, say, and not some other animal; and then with a certain sort of body and soul. But with some qualities it is no use 1332b being born, since habits change them: there are some that are by nature capable of going either way, and through habits they are turned toward the worse or the better. The other animals live mostly by nature, and some a little by habits too; but a human being lives also by reason, since he alone has reason. So these three must be in harmony with one another. For people do many things contrary to their habits and nature because of reason, if they are persuaded that some other way is better. What sort of nature those who are to be easily shaped by the lawgiver should have, we have determined earlier; the rest is now the work of education. For people learn some things by habituation and others by listening.

Now if one group differed from the others as much as we believe gods and heroes differ from human beings—having, first of all, a great superiority in body, and then in soul—so that the superiority of the rulers was indisputable and evident to the ruled, it would clearly be better for the same people always to rule and the others always to be ruled, once and for all. But since this is not easy to find, and there are no kings so different from their subjects as Scylax says there are among the Indians, it is evident that for many reasons everyone must share alike in ruling and being ruled in turn. For equality means the same for those who are similar, and it is hard for a constitution established contrary to justice to last.note

For all those in the countryside side with the ruled in wanting revolution, and for those within the governing body to be so numerous as to be stronger than all of these is an impossibility. And yet that rulers must differ from the ruled is beyond dispute. How this is to happen, then, and how they are to share in rule, is something the lawgiver must consider. We have spoken of it before. Nature has supplied the distinction by making what is the same in kind partly younger and partly older; it is fitting for the younger to be ruled and the older to rule. No one resents being ruled on account of age, or thinks himself better than his rulers, especially when he is going to get back his contribution in turn once he reaches the proper age.

That is why many tasks thought to be menial can be fine for free young people to perform: actions in themselves do not differ so much in being fine or not fine as in their end and in what they are done for.) Since we say that the excellence of a citizen and ruler is the same as that of the best man, and that the same person must first be ruled and later rule, the lawgiver would have to work out how men become good, through what practices, and what the end of the best life is.

We will say that actions correspond to these parts, and that the actions of the part that is naturally better must be more choiceworthy for those who are able to attain either all of them or two. For to each person that is always most choiceworthy which is the highest it is possible for him to attain. All of life, too, is divided into work and leisure, and into war and peace; and of the things we do, some aim at what is necessary and useful, others at what is fine. Here the same preference must hold as for the parts of the soul and their actions: war for the sake of peace, work for the sake of leisure, and necessary and useful things for the sake of fine ones. The statesman, then, must legislate with an eye to all of these, both to the parts of the soul and to their actions, but more to the better things and to the ends.

The same holds for ways of life and for choices of what to do. One must be able to work and to wage war, 1333b but still more to live in peace and at leisure; and to do what is necessary and useful, but still more what is fine. So it is with these aims in view that people must be educated, both while they are still children and at the other ages that need education.

Just as most people envy mastery over many, because it supplies good fortune in abundance, so Thibron evidently admires the Spartan lawgiver, as does each of the others who write about their constitution, because training for danger enabled them to rule over many. Yet clearly, now that the Spartans no longer hold their empire, they are not happy, nor was their lawgiver good. And it is ridiculous that, though they have kept to his laws and nothing prevents them from using those laws, they have lost the fine life. Nor do these writers have the right idea about the kind of rule the lawgiver should be seen to honor: rule over free people is finer than rule like a master’s, and more bound up with excellence.note

Further, a city should not be thought happy, nor its lawgiver praised, because he trained it to conquer so as to rule its neighbors; for this does great harm. Clearly it implies that any citizen who is able to should also try to achieve this very thing—to be able to rule his own city. That is exactly what the Spartans accused King Pausanias of, even though he held so great an honor.note

Like iron, they lose their temper when they are at peace. The lawgiver is to blame, for not educating them to be able to use leisure.

Courage and endurance, then, are needed for work, philosophy for leisure, and moderation and justice at both times, but more for those who are at peace and at leisure. For war compels people to be just and moderate, whereas the enjoyment of good fortune and leisure in peacetime tends rather to make them arrogant. Much justice and much moderation, then, are needed by those who seem to be faring best and who enjoy everything thought blessed—if there are any such people, as the poets say, in the Islands of the Blessed. These above all will need philosophy, moderation and justice, the more so as they live at leisure amid an abundance of such goods. It is clear, then, why the city that is to be happy and excellent must share in these excellences.note

For if it is shameful to be unable to use good things, it is still more shameful to be unable to use them at leisure—to appear good when at work and at war, but servile when at peace and at leisure. So excellence should not be cultivated in the way the Spartan city cultivates it. It is not in this that the Spartans differ from others, 1334b in not regarding the same things as the greatest goods, but in thinking these are to be won through one particular excellence. But since these goods, and the enjoyment of them, are greater than the enjoyment of the excellences … [gap in the text] … and that excellence is to be pursued for its own sake is clear from this. How and by what means it will come about—that is what we must now consider.note

This much at least is clear. First, as in other things, coming into being starts from a beginning, and the end that comes from a certain beginning is itself directed to another end; and reason and intellect are the end of our nature, so that the process of coming into being and the training of habits must be arranged with a view to these. Second, just as soul and body are two, so we see that the soul too has two parts, the non-rational and that which has reason, and that their states are two in number, desire and intellect. And just as the body is prior in coming into being to the soul, so the non-rational part is prior to the part that has reason. This too is evident: spirit and wish, and appetite as well, are present in children right from birth, whereas reasoning and intellect naturally arise in them as they grow.

That is why care of the body must come first, before care of the soul, and next care of desire; but care of desire is for the sake of intellect, and care of the body for the sake of the soul.

and then he should look to the succession of children. Children should not lag too far behind their fathers in age (for then the old get no benefit from their children’s gratitude, nor the children from their 1335a fathers’ help), nor be too close to them in age (this causes much difficulty: there is less respect between people who are nearly contemporaries, and the closeness in age leads to complaints in the running of the household); and further, to return to where we began this digression, he should see that the bodies of the children born accord with his wishes.

Further, young women suffer more in childbirth and more of them die. That is why some say the oracle was given to the people of Troezen for this very reason—that many were dying because girls were married too young—and that it had nothing to do with harvesting crops. Moreover, it also helps toward moderation to give daughters in marriage when they are older; for women who have sexual intercourse young are thought to be more licentious.note

The bodies of males too are thought to be harmed in their growth if they have intercourse while their seed is still growing; for this too has a fixed time, after which it no longer increases, or only a little. So it is fitting for women to marry at about eighteen and men at thirty-seven or a little before. At such ages their union will take place when their bodies are in their prime, and they will reach the end of childbearing together at the right time. Moreover, the children will succeed their parents at the beginning of their own prime, if they are born promptly as one would expect, when the parents’ vigor has already declined toward the age of seventy.

The athlete’s condition is not useful for a citizen’s fitness, nor for health and procreation, and neither is a condition that needs too much tending and is too unfit for exertion; what is useful is the one in between. The condition should be exercised, then, but by exertions that are not violent, and not directed to one thing only, like the athlete’s condition, but to the activities of free people. And this should apply alike to men and to women.

Since the age at which man and woman should begin their union has been determined, let us also determine how long they should serve the city by having children. The offspring of older parents, like those of too young ones, turn out imperfect in body and in mind, and those of the aged are weak. So the limit should be set by the prime of the mind. In most people this comes, as some of the poets who measure life in periods of seven years have said, at around the age of fifty. So when they are four or five years past this age they should be released from producing children openly; for the rest of their lives they should be seen to have intercourse only for the sake of health or for some other such reason.note

As for relations with another woman or another man, let it be regarded as simply dishonorable to be seen engaging in them at all, in any way, so long as one is a husband and is called one. If anyone is found doing such a thing during the time for having children, 1336a let him be punished with a loss of civic honor suited to the offense.

That is why many non-Greeks have the custom of dipping newborns in a cold river, or, as the Celts do, of dressing them in only a light covering. For whatever children can be habituated to, it is better to habituate them to it from the very start, but to do so gradually; and because of its warmth, children’s constitution is naturally suited to training against cold.

Those who in the Laws forbid children’s straining and crying are wrong to prohibit them; these help growth, since they are in a way exercise for the body. For holding the breath gives strength to those who are exerting themselves, and this is just what happens with children when they strain.note

Since we are banishing the speaking of anything of this kind, clearly we are also banishing the viewing of indecent pictures or stories. So let the officials take care that no statue or painting represents such actions, except in the worship of certain gods to whom the law grants even ribaldry. For these gods, the law allows those who have reached the suitable age to pay honor on behalf of themselves, their children and their wives. The young should not be allowed to watch iambic lampoons or comedy until they reach the age at which they may now take part in reclining at meals and drinking, by which time their education will have made them wholly immune to the harm that comes from such things.note

There are two ages by which education must be divided: from seven to puberty, and then again from puberty to twenty-one. Those who divide ages into periods of seven years are for the most part not 1337a wrong, but one should follow nature’s own division; for every craft and all education aim to fill in what nature leaves lacking. First, then, we must consider whether there should be some regulation concerning children; next, whether it is better for their supervision to be public or private (as happens even now in most cities); and third, what sort of supervision it should be.

Further, for every capacity and craft there are things in which people must be educated and habituated beforehand for their respective work; so clearly this holds for the actions of excellence too. And since the whole city has a single end, it is evident that education must be one and the same for all, and that its supervision must be public and not private, in the way each person now looks after his own children privately and teaches them whatever private lessons he sees fit. Training in what is common should itself be common. At the same time, no citizen should think he belongs to himself; rather, all belong to the city, since each is a part of the city, and the care of each part naturally looks to the care of the whole.

One might praise the Spartans in this respect: they take the greatest pains over their children, and do so in common.

That the necessary ones among useful things should be taught is not unclear; but clearly not all of them, since the tasks of free people and those of the unfree are distinct, and one should take part only in such useful things as will not make the participant vulgar. A task, craft or study should be regarded as vulgar if it renders the body or the mind of free people useless for the practice and activities of excellence. That is why we call vulgar the crafts that put the body in a worse condition, and also wage-earning work; for they leave the mind without leisure and degraded. Even among the sciences worthy of free people, it is not unworthy of a free person to take part in some of them up to a point, but to apply oneself to them too assiduously, to reach precision, is liable to the harms just mentioned.

It also makes a great difference for what purpose one does or learns something. To do it for one’s own sake, or for one’s friends, or for the sake of excellence is not unworthy of a free person; but someone doing the very same thing for others would often seem to be acting like a hired laborer or a slave.

If that is impossible, and play should rather be used during work (for someone who toils needs rest, and play is for the sake of rest, while working involves toil and strain), then we should bring in play, carefully watching for the right times to use it, applying it as a kind of medicine. For such movement of the soul is relaxation, 1338a and because of its pleasure it is rest. But leisure seems to contain in itself pleasure, happiness and the blessed life. This belongs not to those who are working but to those at leisure: one who works does so for the sake of some end he does not yet have, whereas happiness is an end, and everyone thinks it comes not with pain but with pleasure.

People no longer agree, however, that this pleasure is the same; each sets it according to himself and his own state of character, and the best person sets the best pleasure, the one that arises from the finest things. So it is clear that there are some things one must learn and be educated in for the cultivated pastime of leisure, and that these subjects and these studies are for their own sake, whereas those for work are studied as necessary and for the sake of other things.

That is why our predecessors gave music a place in education not as something necessary (it has nothing of that kind), nor as useful (as reading and writing are useful for making money, managing a household, learning and many political activities, and drawing too is thought useful for judging the works of craftsmen better), nor again, like gymnastics, for health and strength (for we see neither of these resulting from music). It remains, then, that it is for the cultivated pastime of leisure, which is evidently what they introduce it for. They place it in what they consider the pastime of free people. That is why Homer wrote, “But the one it is right to invite to the rich feast,” and, after naming certain others first, “who invite the singer,” he says, “who will delight all.”note

And elsewhere Odysseus says that this is the best pastime, when people are enjoying themselves and “the banqueters throughout the hall listen to the singer, / sitting in their rows.”

Further, children should be taught some of the useful subjects not only because they are useful, like learning to read and write, but also because many other studies become possible through them. So too with drawing: not so that they won’t go wrong in their private purchases and won’t be cheated in the buying 1338b and selling of goods, but rather because it makes them observant of the beauty of bodies. To look everywhere for what is useful is least suited to the great-souled and the free. Since it is evident that education must come through habits before reason, and must concern the body before the mind, it is clear from this that children must be handed over to gymnastics and to the trainer: the first produces a certain condition of the body, the second its performance.

There are many peoples that are quite ready to kill and to eat human flesh, such as the Achaeans and Heniochi around the Black Sea, and some of the peoples of the mainland, some as much as these and some more so; they are given to banditry, but have no share in courage. Again, we know that the Spartans themselves, so long as they alone persisted in hard training, were superior to others, but now they fall behind others in both athletic and military contests. They did not excel because they trained their young in this way, but only because they trained against people who did not train.note

So it is the fine, not the brutish, that should play the leading part. No wolf or any other wild animal would face a fine danger; a good man would. Those who let their children go too far in these exercises, and leave them untutored in the necessary things, make them truly vulgar, rendering them useful to statesmanship for one task only, and even for that, as the argument shows, worse than others. One should judge the Spartans not by their former achievements but by their present ones; for now they have rivals in education, whereas before they had none.

It is clear that the young should not be educated for the sake of play (for they are not playing while they learn; learning comes with pain). Nor, again, is it fitting to assign cultivated pastime to children and to those of that age; for an end does not suit anything that is incomplete. But perhaps it might be thought that children’s serious effort is for the sake of their play once they have become men and are complete. But if that is so, why should they learn music themselves, rather than share in its pleasure and learning through others performing it, like the kings of the Persians and Medes? For those who have made this very thing their work and craft must perform it better than those who have practiced it only long enough to learn. And if they must labor at such things themselves, then they would also have to prepare their own fine dishes—which is absurd.

The same difficulty arises if music can make characters better: why must they learn it themselves, rather than 1339b enjoy it rightly and be able to judge it by listening to others, like the Spartans? For the Spartans, without learning it, are still able, so they say, to judge correctly which melodies are good and which are not. The same argument applies if music is to be used for well-being and for a pastime worthy of free people: why must they learn it themselves, rather than enjoy it when others perform? We can consider the conception we have of the gods: in the poets Zeus does not himself sing and play the lyre. On the contrary, we call such performers vulgar, and think performing is not for a man unless he is drunk or joking.

Play is for the sake of relaxation, and relaxation must be pleasant (for it is a kind of cure for the pain that comes from exertion); and cultivated pastime, it is agreed, must involve not only the fine but also pleasure (for happiness is made up of both). And we all say that music is among the most pleasant things, whether on its own or with singing (Musaeus, at any rate, says that “singing is sweetest for mortals”; that is why people reasonably bring it into their gatherings and pastimes, since it can cheer them). So from this too one might suppose that the young should be educated in it.note

For harmless pleasures are suited not only to the end but also to relaxation. And since people rarely attain the end, but often relax and use amusements not only for some further purpose but also for the pleasure, it would be useful to let them rest now and then in the pleasures that come from music.

Nevertheless we must ask whether this is not 1340a incidental, and whether the nature of music is more valuable than the use we have mentioned, so that one should not only share in the common pleasure it gives, which everyone perceives (for music has a natural pleasure, which is why its use is welcome to all ages and all characters), but also see whether it somehow bears on character and on the soul. This would be clear if we come to be of a certain character through it. That we do is evident from many other things, and not least from the melodies of Olympus; for these, as everyone agrees, make souls ecstatic, and ecstasy is an affection of the character of the soul.note

Moreover, everyone who listens to imitations comes to share the feelings they express, even apart from rhythms and melodies themselves.

Among the other objects of perception there happens to be no likeness of character—in objects of touch and taste, for example—though there is a faint one in objects of sight (for shapes are of this kind, but only to a small degree, and not everyone shares in this kind of perception; besides, these are not likenesses of character, but rather the shapes and colors that arise are signs of character, and these appear on the body in states of emotion. Still, insofar as there is a difference even in viewing these, the young should not look at the works of Pauson but at those of Polygnotus, or of any other painter or sculptor who portrays character); but in melodies themselves there are imitations of character (and this is evident:note

from the outset the natures of the modes differ, so that listeners are affected differently and do not respond in the same way to each of them. To some they respond in a more mournful 1340b and constrained way, such as the one called Mixolydian; to others with a softer frame of mind, such as the relaxed modes; to another in a moderate and settled way above all, as the Dorian alone of the modes seems to do; while the Phrygian makes people ecstatic.note

Those who have studied this kind of education philosophically say this well, for they draw the evidence for their arguments from the facts themselves.) The same holds for rhythms (some have a more steady character, others a more moving one, and of the latter some have more vulgar movements, others movements more worthy of free people). From all this it is clear that music can give the character of the soul a certain quality; and if it can do this, clearly the young must be directed to it and educated in it. Instruction in music suits a nature of that age: because of their age the young will not willingly put up with anything unsweetened, and music is by nature one of the sweetened things.

There also seems to be a kind of kinship between us and modes and rhythms; that is why many of the wise say that the soul is a harmony, others that it has a harmony.

That they should be taught music in such a way as to take part in performance, then, is clear from these considerations. It is not hard to determine what is and is not fitting for different ages, and to answer those who say that the pursuit is vulgar.

First, since one should take part in performing for the sake of judging, they should practice performing while young, and when they are older give up performing but be able to judge fine things and enjoy them rightly thanks to what they learned in youth. As for the criticism some make, that music makes people vulgar, it is not hard to answer by considering to what extent those being educated for political 1341a excellence should take part in performance, what melodies and what rhythms they should take part in, and further on what instruments they should do their learning—for this too is likely to make a difference. The answer to the criticism lies here; for nothing prevents certain kinds of music from producing the effect mentioned.

Clearly, then, learning music should neither hinder later activities nor make the body vulgar and useless for military and civic training, whether for use now or for use later.

Pipes should not be brought into education, nor any other professional instrument, such as the kithara or anything else like it, but only such instruments as will make them good listeners, whether in musical education or in the rest of their education. Besides, the pipe is not expressive of character but rather orgiastic, so it should be used on the kind of occasions where watching produces catharsis rather than learning. Let us add that it also happens to be opposed to education in that playing the pipe prevents the use of speech. That is why earlier generations rightly rejected its use by the young and the free, even though they had used it at first. For having more leisure because of their wealth, and being more high-minded about excellence, and being filled with pride because of their achievements both before and after the Persian Wars, they took up every kind of learning, not discriminating but seeking out everything.note

That is why they brought pipe-playing among their studies too. At Sparta a chorus-sponsor played the pipe for his chorus himself, and at Athens it became so much the local fashion that nearly the majority of free men took part in it; this is clear from the plaque Thrasippus dedicated when he sponsored the chorus of Ecphantides. Later it was rejected through experience itself, once people were better able to judge what leads to excellence and what does not. So likewise were many of the old instruments, such as the pektis and barbitos, and those that serve the pleasure of those who hear the players, the heptagon, the trigon and 1341b sambuca, and all that require manual dexterity. There is good sense too in the story the ancients tell about the pipes: they say that Athena invented the pipes and then threw them away.note

It is not a bad account to say that the goddess did this because she was annoyed at how playing disfigured her face. Still, it is more likely that it was because education in pipe-playing does nothing for the mind, while we attribute knowledge and craft to Athena.

Since we reject professional education in instruments and in performance (and by professional we mean the kind aimed at competitions; in this the performer takes part not for the sake of his own excellence but for the pleasure of his listeners, and a vulgar pleasure at that; that is why we judge the performance to be not for free people but more like hired labor. And the performers do in fact become vulgar, since the aim at which they direct their end is base: the spectator, being vulgar himself, tends to change the music, so that he gives a certain character both to the professionals who perform with him in view and to their bodies, through the movements they make),

For the emotion that affects some souls strongly exists in all, differing only in degree—pity and fear, for example, and ecstasy too. Some people are prone to be possessed by this agitation, and we see them, under the influence of sacred melodies, when they use melodies that stir the soul to frenzy, settling down as though they had received medical treatment and catharsis. The same must happen to those prone to pity or fear and to emotional people generally, and to others to the extent that each is subject to such emotions; all undergo a kind of catharsis and are relieved with pleasure.

Similarly, melodies of action too provide people with harmless delight. That is why those who perform theatrical music in competition should be assigned such modes and such melodies. But since spectators are of two kinds, one free and educated, the other coarse, made up of vulgar craftsmen, hired laborers and the like, contests and spectacles must also be provided for the latter, for their relaxation. Just as their souls are distorted from their natural state, so too there are deviant modes, and melodies that are high-strung and over-colored; and each person takes pleasure in what is naturally akin to him. So performers competing before a spectator of this kind must be allowed to use this kind of music. But for education, as has been said, the melodies of character and the corresponding modes should be used.

The Dorian is of this kind, as we said earlier; but we should also accept any other mode that those who share in philosophical study and in musical education approve for us. Socrates in the Republic is wrong to keep only the Phrygian along with the Dorian, especially since he rejected 1342b the pipe among instruments. For the Phrygian has the same power among the modes as the pipe among instruments: both are orgiastic and emotional. All Bacchic frenzy and every agitation of that kind is expressed above all by the pipes among instruments, and among the modes it finds its fitting expression in Phrygian melodies. Poetry shows this: the dithyramb, for example, is agreed by all to be Phrygian.note

Experts in this field cite many examples of this, among others that Philoxenus tried to compose his Mysians in the Dorian mode and could not, but was driven by the very nature of the thing back into the Phrygian, the mode appropriate to it. As for the Dorian, everyone agrees that it is the steadiest and has the most courageous character. Further, since we praise the mean between extremes and say it should be pursued, and the Dorian has this nature relative to the other modes, it is clear that Dorian melodies are more fitting for the education of the young.note

So with a view to the age to come, that of older people, one should also take up such modes and such melodies; and further, any mode that suits the age of children because it can combine orderliness with education, as the Lydian seems to do above all the modes. Clearly, then, these three standards should be set for education: the mean, the possible and the fitting.