The Athenian Constitution
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~25,500 words · 121 passages
Cite this work
- APAAristotle. (n.d.). The Athenian Constitution. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/the-athenian-constitution
- MLAAristotle. "The Athenian Constitution." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/the-athenian-constitution.
- ChicagoAristotle. The Athenian Constitution. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/the-athenian-constitution.
What it is about
The history and description of the Athenian regime, lost for centuries and recovered from an Egyptian papyrus in 1879.
Context and history
The text was published in 1891 and remains one of the finds that have most changed what we know of the ancient world: the first part tells how the constitution of Athens changed from the earliest times to the restored democracy, through Draco, Solon, Peisistratus and Cleisthenes; the second describes how the system worked in the fourth century, magistracy by magistracy, with the lotteries, the pay and the courts. Without this text, much of what is said about Athenian democracy could not be said. It belonged to a collection of a hundred and fifty-eight city constitutions gathered in Aristotle's school; it is the only one to have survived. Scholars dispute whether he wrote it himself or a pupil did, and the question is still open.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
...[They were tried] by a court empanelled from among the noble families, and sworn upon the sacrifices. The part of accuser was taken by Myron. They were found guilty of the sacrilege, and their bodies were cast out of their graves and their race banished for evermore. In view of this expiation, Epimenides the Cretan performed a purification of the city. Part 2 After this event there was contention for a long time between the upper classes and the populace. Not only was the constitution at this time oligarchical in every respect, but the poorer classes, men, women, and children, were the serfs of the rich. They were known as Pelatae and also as Hectemori, because they cultivated the lands of the rich at the rent thus indicated. The whole country was in the hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their rent they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their children with them. All loans secured upon the debtor's person, a custom which prevailed until the time of Solon, who was the first to appear as the champion of the people. But the hardest and bitterest part of the constitution in the eyes of the masses was their state of serfdom. Not but what they were also discontented with every other feature of their lot; for, to speak generally, they had no part nor share in anything. Part 3 Now the ancient constitution, as it existed before the time of Draco, was organized as follows. The magistrates were elected according to qualifications of birth and wealth. At first they governed for life, but subsequently for terms of ten years. The first magistrates, both in date and in importance, were the King, the Polemarch, and the Archon. The earliest of these offices was that of the King, which existed from ancestral antiquity. To this was added, secondly, the office of Polemarch, on account of some of the kings proving feeble in war; for it w