[
1306b]
[1]
and those at
Thebes
did so against Archias; for their personal enemies stirred up party feeling
against them so as to get them bound in the pillory in the market-place.
Also many governments have been
put down by some of their members who had become resentful because the
oligarchies were too despotic; this is how the oligarchies fell at
Cnidus1 and at
Chios.
And revolutions also occur from an accident, both in what is called a
constitutional government and in those oligarchies in which membership of the
council and the law-courts and tenure of the other offices are based on a
property-qualification. For often the qualification first having been fixed to
suit the circumstances of the time, so that in an oligarchy a few may be members
and in a constitutional government the middle classes, when peace or some other
good fortune leads to a good harvest it comes about that the same properties
become worth many times as large an assessment, so that all the citizens share
in all the rights, the change sometimes taking place gradually and little by
little and not being noticed, but at other times more quickly.
Such then
are the causes that lead to revolutions and factions in oligarchies
(and generally, both democracies and oligarchies are sometimes altered
not into the opposite forms of constitution but into ones of the same class, for
instance
[20]
from legitimate
democracies and oligarchies into autocratic ones and from the latter into the
former).
In aristocracies factions arise in some cases because
few men share in the honors (which has also been said
2 to be the cause of
disturbances in oligarchies, because an aristocracy too is a sort of oligarchy,
for in both those who govern are few—although the reason for this is
not the same in both—since this does cause it to be thought that
aristocracy is a form of oligarchy). And this is most bound to come
about when there is a considerable number of people who are proud-spirited on
the ground of being equals in virtue (for example the clan called the
Maidens' Sons
3 at Sparta—for they were
descended from the Equals—whom the Spartans detected in a conspiracy
and sent away to colonize
Tarentum); or
when individuals although great men and inferior to nobody in virtue are treated
dishonorably by certain men in higher honor (for example Lysander by
the kings
4); or when a person of manly nature has no share in the
honors (for example Cinadon,
5
who got together the attack upon the Spartans in the reign of
Agesilaus). Faction in aristocracies also arises when some of the
well-born are too poor and others too rich (which happens especially
during wars, and this also occurred at
Sparta at the time of the Messenian War—as appears
from the poem of Tyrtaeus entitled
Law and Order;