[
1290a]
[1]
and indeed any
other similar distinction that in the discussion of aristocracy has been stated
to constitute a part of the state (for there we distinguished how many
necessary parts there are of which every state must consist); for
sometimes all of these parts participate in the constitution and sometimes a
smaller or a larger number of them. It is clear therefore that there must necessarily be several forms of
constitution differing in kind from one another, inasmuch as these parts differ
in kind among themselves. For a constitution means the arrangement of the
magistracies, and this all people plan out either according to the power of
those who share political rights, or according to some common equality between
them, I mean for example between the poor or between the rich, or some equality
common to them both.
1 It follows therefore that there are as many forms
of constitution as there are modes of arrangement according to the superiorities
and the differences of the sections. But the forms mostly are thought to be two—just as in the case of
the winds we speak of some as north and some as south and regard the rest as
deviations from these,
2 so also of
constitutions there are held to be two forms, democracy and oligarchy; for men
reckon aristocracy as a kind of oligarchy because it is oligarchy of a sort, and
what is called constitutional government as democracy, just as in the case of
the winds they reckon the west wind as a kind of north wind and the east wind as
a kind of south wind.
[20]
And the case is
similar with musical modes, as some people say: for there too they posit two
kinds, the Dorian mode and the Phrygian, and call the other scales some of them
Dorian and the others Phrygian. For
the most part therefore they are accustomed to think in this way about the
constitutions; but it is truer and better to class them as we did, and assuming
that there are two well-constructed forms, or else one, to say that the others
are deviations, some from the well-blended constitution and the others from the
best one, the more tense and masterful constitutions being oligarchic and the
relaxed and soft ones demotic.
But it is not right to define democracy, as
some people are in the custom of doing now, merely as the constitution in which
the multitude is sovereign (for even in oligarchies and everywhere the
majority is sovereign) nor oligarchy as the constitution in which a few
are sovereign over the government. For if the whole number were thirteen
hundred, and a thousand of these were rich and did not give the three hundred
poor a share in the government although they were free-born and like themselves
in all other respects, no one would say that this people was governed
democratically; and similarly also if there were few poor, but these more
powerful than the rich who were more numerous, no one would call such a
government a democracy either, if the other citizens being rich had no share in
the honors. Rather therefore ought
we to say that it is a democracy