The Mixed Constitution

And it seems an impossibility for a city governed not by the aristocracy but by the base to have well-ordered government, and similarly also for a city that has not a well-ordered government to be gov

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This then is one mode of combining the two. Another is to take the middle course between the regulations of each: for example, democracies permit membership of the assembly on no property-qualificatio

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for there is no fear of the rich ever coming to terms with the poor against this numerous middle class; for neither class will ever wish to be subject to the other, and if they look for another consti

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Not alone for these reasons did the Romans greatly miss him, but also because by combining monarchy with democracy he preserved their freedom for them and at the same time established order and securi

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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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The Roman Constitution I have given an account of the constitution of Lycurgus, I will now endeavour to describe that of Rome at the period of their disastrous defeat at Cannae. I am fully conscious t

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The People After this one would naturally be inclined to ask what part is left for the people in the constitution, when the Senate has these various functions, especially the control of the receipts a

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Division of Political Power At Rome Such, then, is the distribution of power between the several parts of the state. I must now show how each of these several parts can, when they choose, oppose or su

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Interdependency Brings Strength The result of this power of the several estates for mutual help or harm is a union sufficiently firm for all emergencies, and a constitution than which it is impossible

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Classification of Constitutions Of the Greek republics, which have again and again risen to greatness and fallen into insignificance, it is not difficult to speak, whether we recount their past histor

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since where some own a very great deal of property and others none there comes about either an extreme democracy or an unmixed oligarchy, or a tyranny may result from both of the two extremes, for tyr

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In Plato’s Laws on the other hand it is stated that the best constitution must consist of a combination of democracy and tyranny, which one might refuse to count as constitutional governments at all,

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for some men being in distress because of the war put forward a claim to carry out a re-division of the land of the country). Also if a man is great and capable of being yet greater, he stirs up facti

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Ath.indeed, it would be wrong to say that Greece defended herself, for had not the bondage that threatened her been warded off by the concerted policy of the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, practically

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Ath. The selection of officials that is thus made will form a mean between a monarchic constitution and a democratic; and midway between these our constitution should always stand. For slaves will nev

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And he had it in mind to put a curb upon unmixed democracy in Syracuse, regarding it as not a civil polity, but rather, in the words of Plato, a bazaar of polities; also to establish and set in order

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Among the many innovations which Lycurgus made, the first and most important was his institution of a senate, or Council of Elders, which, as Plato says, by being blended with the feverish government

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