Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy by J M Moore

Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy by J M Moore

Three treatises survive from classical Greece under the loose title Politeiai (Constitutions) which are unique in character and indispensable to any student of the period. The longest and most important is Aristotle's "Constitution of Athens" which is both a history of Athenian constitutional development and a survey of the constitutional machinery of Aristotle's own day. The second, by Xenophon, is an account of the Spartan social and educational system, and the third, also attributed to Xenophon, The "Constitution of the Athenians", though probably by an earlier author, is the first example in history of political pamphleteering. Dr. Moore has newly translated all three of these documents and an additional fragment "The Boeotian Constitution" written in the fourth century B.C. and the only surviving account of a genuinely oligarchic regime of the period.To these much needed, scholarly translations Dr. Moore has added brilliant introductions and commentaries which evaluate the documents, illumine their significance, and provide the background information which the writers assumed their readers to possess. In bringing together, translating, and annotating these constitutional documents from ancient Greece, Dr. Moore has produced an authoritative work of the highest scholarship which will place all students of constitutional history and of the Ancient World in his debt.

ARISTOTLE was born in the northern Greek town of Stagira in 384 B.C.E., where his father was the personal physician to the great-grandfather of Alexander the Great. At the age of eighteen Aristotle entered Plato's Academy and soon became recognized as its most important student. He remained under Plato's tutelage for nearly twenty years.

After his teacher's death in 347 B.C.E., Aristotle cultivated associations with other Academy students throughout Greece and Asia Minor. Then in 342 B.C.E., Aristotle was asked by King Philip II of Macedonia to become the tutor for his young son Alexander, who was later to become the conqueror of much of the known world at that time. The young prince remained under Aristotle's supervision until 336 B.C.E., when he acceded to the throne after his father's death. Two years later Aristotle returned to Athens and founded his own school, which he called the Lyceum. This intellectual center flourished during the years when Alexander the Great ruled Greece as part of his large empire. But upon Alexander's death in 323 B.C.E., Aristotle was charged with impiety by Athenians who resented his associations with the Macedonian conqueror. Rather than risk the same fate as Plato's mentor, Socrates, Aristotle fled to the city of Chalcis, where he died in 322 B.C.E.

Aristotle's interests, like those of Plato, were diverse and his writing cast its shadow on many fields, including logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and the sciences. Among his most well-known works are: The Categories, The Prior and Posterior Analytics, The Physics, The Meta-physics, De Anima, The Nicomachean Ethics, and The Politics.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780520029095
ISBN 10	0520029097
Title	Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy
Author	J M Moore
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University of California Press
Year published	1975-02-21
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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