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ARISTOTLE’S DEFINITION OF OLIGARCHY AND OLIGARCHIC REGIMES IN ATHENS, 5th – 4th CENTURIES B.C.
 
PIIS032103910024392-4-1
DOI10.31857/S032103910024392-4
Publication type Article
Status Approved
Authors
Igor Surikov 
Occupation: chief researcher
Affiliation:
Institute of World History, RAS
Russian State University for Humanities
Address: Moscow, Leninskiy prosp. 32a, Moscow, Russia, 119334
Abstract

Aristotle’s Politics contains a non-traditional and even unexpected definition of oligarchy that pictures it, unlike the conventional interpretation (which proceeded from the transparent etymology of the term itself), not as the “rule of the few but as the “rule of the wealthy”. Accordingly, one of the main signs of oligarchies for the philosopher is a property qualification. The article analyzes how political practice of the Athenian oligarchs correlated with these theoretical theses. It appears that the two stages of the oligarchic movement in Athens (late 5th century B.C. and late 4th century B.C.) differ essentially exactly in this relation. In the first case, the question of a qualification was not ever raised, and an absolutely different principle was applied: creation of a citizen body restricted by a number limit (5000 in 411 B.C., 3000 in 404 B.C.). As to the second case, they used the idea of qualification in its full sense (2000 drachmas in 322 B.C., 1000 drachmas in 317 B.C.).  So oligarchic regimes of the first period are nearer to the traditional definition of oligarchy, while oligarchic regimes of the second period are nearer to Aristotle’s one (and they were created under indubitable ideological influence of the Peripatetic school).

KeywordsAristotle, Athens, oligarchy, democracy, citizenship, Politics, Athenaion Politeia, coups d’état, property qualification, number limit, the Four Hundred, the Thirty, Demetrius Phalereus
AcknowledgmentGrant of Russian Scientific Foundation 23-28-00024
Received12.02.2023
Number of characters54340
100 rub.
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