[
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
Clazomenae
3 the people near Chytrum are in feud with the inhabitants of
the island, and the Colophonians and the Notians
4; 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 arose
6 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 ratio
7 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 Hestiaea
8 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;