See the
table
of contents for "Democracy in the Politics of Aristotle"
The links from each passage are to the full text of the Politics in both
an on-line Greek text and an accompanying English translation maintained on the
World Wide Web by the
Perseus
Project at Tufts University. Passages are cited, following the most
precise standard form of reference to the Politics, as a four-digit
number followed by the letter "a" or "b" (that is, 1253a, 1274b, and so on) to
indicate a particular section of the work. The precise location of the cited
passage within a section is indicated by the line numbers that follow the
citation of the section. (This reference system is derived from the Greek
edition of the Politics published by Immanuel Bekker in Berlin in 1831.)
Two crucial warnings
- Each section (e.g., 1253a, 1274b, etc.) is presented as continuous
text. The line numbers following the section designation are indicated in the
on-line Greek text in multiples of five, while the corresponding line numbers
in the accompanying English translation appear every twenty lines in brackets,
but the line divisions as represented in your Web browser may not correspond
exactly to this numeration.
- Since, for technical reasons, the links must go to the first line of a
section and therefore usually not to the first line of the cited reference
itself, the particular lines referred to may appear rather far down from the
beginning of the section. In some cases, the particular lines may be far
enough from the beginning of the section that they will not be on the screen
when the section is first displayed, and it will then be necessary to scroll
until they appear. Please be sure to note the precise line number within the
section to which you are linking before following that link so that you can
locate that line by scrolling.
The first three groups of excerpted passages provide context for the remaining
groups. The first of the three concerns elements of the definition of the
ancient Greek city-state (polis) in the Politics because
Aristotle's discussion of democracy pertains to this type of political state.
The next group concerns the definition of the citizen because it took citizens
to constitute a system of government in the city-state, of which democracy was
one. The third concerns the definition of different systems of government in
the city-state, especially the notion that democracy is, in Aristotle's view, a
"diverging" system of government. The remaining groups of passages concern
democracy itself. In the paraphrases of the passages, square brackets [ ]
indicate editorial additions to the ancient text.
The text of the Politics is conventionally divided into eight "Books,"
whose proper order is disputed. These book divisions do not appear in the
continuous text to which the passages are linked. For those who wish to
correlate the passages cited below to the book in which they appear, the
following list indicates the division of sections in the books as traditionally
numbered. Since the links go to the beginnings of sections, they will not go
to the part of the section at which a particular book begins. For example,
Book 4 begins at 1288b10, but the link goes to the beginning of 1288b, from
which point it is necessary to scroll forward to reach line 10.
Book 1 =
1252a1
to 1260b24
Book 2 =
1260b27
to 1274b28
Book 3 =
1274b32
to 1288b6
Book 4 =
1288b10
to 1301a15
Book 5 =
1301a19
to 1316b27
Book 6 =
1316b31
to 1323a10
Book 7 =
1323a14
to 1337a7
Book 8 =
1337a11
to 1342b34
See the
table
of contents for "Democracy in the Politics of Aristotle"
Author:
Thomas
R. Martin, Holy Cross Classics Dept.
Contributors:
Neel
Smith, Holy Cross Classics Dept.; Jennifer F.Stuart, Holy Cross
'95