.VOTES, BOOK IV. 13. 171
;*i r;” 8iKaasjv Kara+f;youurv’ Tb 6’ id Tb arxaorju iiuac i;rTU ;or’rv c‘*i
rb ~iKarov* 6 yhp Gixaurjs &derai tGac otv Giraiov Fp+vxov* ~ni (7roiui
aixnm$v piUOV, Kai KaXOCULV &lo1 /LfUl8bVS, hS, iliV TO; pcUOV T;XOfTt, TO;
Grn&m r<v[dpfvOl*
dudyKq yhp xpdvy, nor2 (K TGV +ru%fv dyadiv riXt$s uvp&ua K~K~’v* ai 12. 6.
y;,p n~covc[iai ri)v nAovuiwv dnoXA;ovui p2XXov T+ rroXrrciav f ai ro; 6,jpov.
nnstotle gives no reason for this statement. He may have
thought that the designs of an oligarchy are more deeply laid and
corrupting, while the fickleness of the multitude is in some degree
R corrective to itself. The oligarchies of Hellas were certainly
worse than the democracies : the greatest dishonesty of which the
.4thenians were guilty in the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. iv. 23) is
far less hateful than the perfidy of the Spartans narrated Id. iv. 80.
The cruelty of the four hundred or of the thirty tyrants strikingly
contrasts on both occasions with the moderation of the democracy
uhich overthrew them.
It is a curious question, which we have not the means of answer- 13.
ing, whether all these artifices (uo+iuparu) are historical facts or
only inventions of Aristotle, by which he imagines that the democracy
or oligarchy might weaken the opposite party. Some of them,
such as the pay to the people, we know to have been used at
Athens: but there is no historical proof, except \$hat may be
gathered from this passage, that the richer members of an oligarchi-
cal community were ever compelled under a penalty to take part
In the assembly, or in the law courts. Cp. infra p. I 78 note : also
C. 15. $ 14-18.
Tois p2v pcydXqv, rois 82 pr~piv, Cump iv ro;s XapdvSou udpocs.
Yet the penalty must have been relatively as well as absolutely
greater or smaller, or the rich would have had no more reason for
6% than the poor for abstaining. The meaning is not that
Charondas inflicted a larger fine on the rich and a proportionally
small one on the poor for absence from the assembly ; but generally
that he adapted his fines to the circumstances of offenders.I*q VBPG TIS a~roir p+ +aipjrar p7eiv rjs ohuias.
;~;XOUUL yhp oi r{qrcs Ka‘c p4 pcrixovrcs r~v rrpGu jarxiav +v, ih 13. 8.
I,
The connexion is as follows: ‘ The qualification must be such