NOTES, BOOK ff. 12. 101
,-&id rovri imr +YOU. 11. ‘5.
Though the government of the Carthaginians is in good repute
(5 I), Aristotle regards this reputation as not wholly deserved,
their stability being due to the power of sending out colonies
which their wealth gave them; but this is only a happy accident.
In a similar spirit he has remarked that the permanency of the
Cretan government is due to their insular position (c, 10. $ 15).I,
;D BV dmxh yiyrai Tis.
The later reflection on the accidental character of the stability
which he attributes to Carthage is not quite in harmony with the
statement of $ 2, in which he cites the lastingness of the government
as a proof of the goodness of the constitution.
Grote in his eleventh chapter (vol. iii. p. 167, ed. 1847) says 12.8-6.
that, according to Aristotle, Solon only gave the people the power
to elect their magistrates and hold them to accountability. What
is said in $9 2 and 3 he considers not to be the opinion of Aristotle
himself, but of those upon whom he is commenting. This is true
of$ 2 : but not of 5 3, which contains Aristotle’s criticism on the
opinion expressed in 9 2. Thus we have the authority of Aristotle
(at least of the writer of this chapter) for attributing the institution
of the 6i~~~njpi~ to Solon (cp. Schomann’s Athenian Constitution,
transl. by Bosanquet, pp. 36 ff.). The popular juries are said to
be a democratic institution (rdv 62 Gijpou Karavrijuai, rd G~hpia
XOI<UUS i~ sci~rov) ; but it is obvious that, so long as the jurors were
unpaid, the mass of the people could make no great use of their
privileges. The character of the democracy was therefore far from
being of an extreme kind ; cp. iv. 6. $5 5, 6 and 13. $$ 5, 6, vi. 2.
The sum of Aristotle’s (?)judgment upon Solon (0 3) is that he
did create the democracy by founding the dicasteries, but that he
Was not responsible for the extreme form of it which was after-
wards established by Ephialtes, Pericles, and their followers.99 67.ZKUOTOS T&V 8’)puyoySu. la. 4.
The writer of this passage clearly intended to class Pericles
among the demagogues. He judges him in the same depreciatory
spirit as Plat0 in the Gorgias, pp. 515, 516.