The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~20,400 words · 97 passages
Cite this work
- APAXenophon. (n.d.). The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/xenophon/the-polity-of-the-athenians-and-the-lacedaemonians
- MLAXenophon. "The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/xenophon/the-polity-of-the-athenians-and-the-lacedaemonians.
- ChicagoXenophon. The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/xenophon/the-polity-of-the-athenians-and-the-lacedaemonians.
What it is about
Two short texts on how Sparta and Athens were organised.
Context and history
The Spartan one is Xenophon's; the Athenian, traditionally ascribed to him, is by an unknown hand known as the Old Oligarch. That second is remarkable for attacking Athenian democracy while conceding that it works very well for its own ends — an opponent who actually argues.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
This was typed from Dakyns' series, "The Works of Xenophon," a four-volume set. The complete list of Xenophon's works (though there is doubt about some of these) is: Work Number of books The Anabasis 7 The Hellenica 7 The Cyropaedia 8 The Memorabilia 4 The Symposium 1 The Economist 1 On Horsemanship 1 The Sportsman 1 The Cavalry General 1 The Apology 1 On Revenues 1 The Hiero 1 The Agesilaus 1 The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians 2 Text in brackets "{}" is my transliteration of Greek text into English using an Oxford English Dictionary alphabet table. The diacritical marks have been lost. The Polity of the Lacedaemonians talks about the laws and institutions created by Lycurgus, which train and develop Spartan citizens from birth to old age. TH
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