Aristotle, Politics

[1302b] [1] but because they see other men in some cases justly and in other cases unjustly getting a larger share of them. Other causes are insolence, fear, excessive predominance, contempt, disproportionate growth of power; and also other modes of cause¹ are election intrigue, carelessness, pettiness, dissimilarity. Among these motives the power possessed by insolence and gain, and their mode of operation, is almost obvious; for when the men in office show insolence and greed, people rise in revolt against one another and against the constitutions that afford the opportunity for such conduct; and greed sometimes preys on private property and sometimes on common funds. It is clear also what is the power of honor and how it can cause party faction; for men form factions both when they are themselves dishonored and when they see others honored; and the distribution of honors is unjust when persons are either honored or dishonored against their deserts, just when it is according to desert. Excessive predominance causes faction, when some individual or body of men is greater and more powerful than is suitable to the state and the power of the government; for such are the conditions that usually result in the rise of a monarchy or dynasty. Owing to this in some places they have the custom of temporary banishment,² as at Argos and Athens; yet it would be better to provide from the outset that there may be no persons in the state [20] so greatly predominant, than first to allow them to come into existence and afterwards to apply a remedy. Fear is the motive of faction with those who have inflicted wrong and are afraid of being punished, and also with those who are in danger of suffering a wrong and wish to act in time before the wrong is inflicted, as the notables at Rhodes banded together³ against the people because of the law-suits that were being brought against them. Contempt is a cause of faction and of actual attacks, upon the government, for instance in oligarchies when those who have no share in the government are more numerous （for they think themselves the stronger party）, and in democracies when the rich have begun to feel contempt for the disorder and anarchy that prevails, as for example at Thebes the democracy was destroyed owing to bad government after the battle of Oenophyta,⁴ and that of the Megarians was destroyed when they had been defeated owing to disorder and anarchy,⁵ and at Syracuse before the tyranny⁶ of Gelo, and at Rhodes⁷ the common people had fallen into contempt before the rising against them. Revolutions in the constitutions also take place on account of disproportionate growth; for just as the body⁸ is composed of parts, and needs to grow proportionately in order that its symmetry may remain, and if it does not it is spoiled, when the foot is four cubits long and the rest of the body two spans, and sometimes it might even change into the shape of another animal if it increased disproportionately not only in size but also in quality,⁹ so also a state is composed of parts,