The Cycle of Constitutions
Every good government rots into its evil twin, then into the next regime — and round the wheel turns again.
Anacyclosis is the theory that political systems spin through a fixed cycle: kingship decays into tyranny, which yields to aristocracy, which curdles into oligarchy, which gives way to democracy, which collapses into mob rule (ochlocracy) — and then the wheel starts over. The idea is seeded in Herodotus' 'Constitutional Debate' (5th c. BCE), but the Greek historian Polybius (2nd c. BCE) built it into a full doctrine to explain the rise of Rome. Rome, he argued, escaped the wheel by blending all three good forms into a single mixed constitution.
How it traveled
- RepublicAthens · -375explains
- Res Publica AtheniensiumChalcis · -325explains
- PoliticsChalcis · -322explains
- HistoriesMegalopolis · -118explains
- De RepublicaFormiae · -54explains
- Historia RomanaRomeexplains
- Contra Celsum—explains
Key passages(20)
The subject of revolutions is discussed by Socrates in the Republic, but is not discussed well. For his account of revolution in the constitution that is the best one and the first does not apply to i
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The Rotation of Polities I will illustrate the truth of what I say. We cannot hold every absolute government to be a kingship, but only that which is accepted voluntarily, and is directed by an appeal
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How Democracy Arises and Degenerates For no sooner had the knowledge of the jealousy and hatred existing in the citizens against them emboldened some one to oppose the government by word or deed, than
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Res Publica Atheniensium · Aristotle
The majority, is it not obvious? But it will be said that they will split up into factions, whereas with a single ruler this cannot happen. But against this must perhaps be set the fact that they are
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Lycurgus For the present I will make a brief reference to the legislation of Lycurgus: for such a discussion is not at all alien to my subject. That statesman was fully aware that all those changes wh
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Carthage Compared with Rome Now the Carthaginian constitution seems to me originally to have been well contrived in these most distinctively important particulars. For they had kings, and the Gerusia
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Conclusion: Dangers Ahead for Rome That to all things, then, which exist there is ordained decay and change I think requires no further arguments to show: for the inexorable course of nature is suffic
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Degeneration of Constitutions But as soon as the people got leaders, they cooperated with them against the dynasty for the reasons I have mentioned; and then kingship and despotism were alike entirely
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When a change of constitution takes place, Kingship passes into Tyranny, because Tyranny is the bad form of monarchy, so that a bad king becomes a tyrant. Aristocracy passes into Oligarchy owing to ba
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one of which often grows without its being noticed, as for example the number of the poor in democracies and constitutional states. And sometimes this is also brought about by accidental occurrences,
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for instance the rich and the people, and there is no middle class or only an extremely small one; for if either of the two sections becomes much the superior, the remainder is not willing to risk an
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