Aristotle, Politics

[1303b] [1] conferred citizenship on their foreign troops and mercenaries and then faction set in and they came to battle; and the Amphipolitans having received settlers from Chalcis were most of them driven out by them.¹

（And in oligarchies civil strife is raised by the many, on the ground that they are treated unjustly because they are not admitted to an equal share although they are equal, as has been said before, but in democracies it begins with the notables, because they have an equal share although they are not equal.）²

Also states sometimes enter on faction for geographical reasons, when the nature of the country is not suited for there being a single city, as for example at Clazomenae³ the people near Chytrum are in feud with the inhabitants of the island, and the Colophonians and the Notians⁴; and at Athens the population is not uniformly democratic in spirit, but the inhabitants of Piraeus are more so than those of the city. For just as in wars the fording of watercourses, even quite small ones, causes the formations to lose contact, so every difference seems to cause division. Thus perhaps the greatest division is that between virtue and vice, next that between wealth and poverty, and so with other differences in varying degree, one of which is the one mentioned.⁵

Factions arise therefore not about but out of small matters; but they are carried on about great matters. And even the small ones grow extremely violent when they spring up among men of the ruling class, [20] as happened for example at Syracuse in ancient times. For the constitution underwent a revolution as a result of a quarrel that arose⁶ between two young men, who belonged to the ruling class, about a love affair. While one of them was abroad the other who was his comrade won over the youth with whom he was in love, and the former in his anger against him retaliated by persuading his wife to come to him; owing to which they stirred up a party struggle among all the people in the state, enlisting them on their sides. On account of this it is necessary to guard against such affairs at their beginning, and to break up the factions of the leaders and powerful men; for the error occurs at the beginning, and the beginning as the proverb says is half of the whole, so that even a small mistake at the beginning stands in the same ratio⁷ to mistakes at the other stages. And in general the faction quarrels of the notables involve the whole state in the consequences, as happened at Hestiaea⁸ after the Persian wars, when two brothers quarrelled about the division of their patrimony; for the poorer of the two, on the ground that the other would not make a return of the estate and of the treasure that their father had found, got the common people on his side, and the other possessing much property was supported by the rich. And at Delphi the beginning of all the factions that occurred afterwards was when a quarrel arose out of a marriage;