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Wellsprings
politics

Oligarchy (Rule of the Few)

ὀλιγαρχία

When the rich rule for the rich: the constitution where wealth, not virtue or numbers, decides who holds the city.

Oligarchy is the rule of the wealthy few, governing in their own interest rather than the city's. Greek thinkers treated it as the corrupted shadow of aristocracy — the same small ruling body, but now defined by money instead of merit. Aristotle argued its true mark was wealth, not mere small numbers, while Plato pictured it as a city split into rich and poor, and Thucydides chronicled its violent reality in the Athenian coup of the Four Hundred. It stood as one pole of the perennial Greek struggle between the many poor and the propertied few.

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17 Greek sources

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