44
:evos, when the inhabitants of a country are not yet distributed in
villages ’ ; or 2) of the ~o’XIS, ‘ when they are no longer dispersed in
vi!!ages.’ According to I), the Arcadians are placed below,
according to 2), above the ordinary condition of village commu-
nities.
I) Taking the first rendering, we may compare Plato’s Sympo-
sium, 193 A, wvi 6i 6th njv CiSrxiav 6lYKiUerpfY hb TO; Bco5 Ka&imp
’ApKhGfs hb Aa~f8arpov~ov. But Arcadia was also the most back-
ward state in Hellas, the type of primitive simplicity. Hence,
without referring to the dispersion of the blantineans by the Lace-
daemonians (Xen. Hell. v. 2. 6) it is possible that Aristotle is
speaking, not of their actual, but of their primitive and traditional
state. 2) On the other hand he may be using the Arcadians as an
example, not of the FOvos but of the BO%IE, and contrasting their
condition, when centralized in RIegalopolis by Epaminondas, with
the ruder life of earlier times. They would certainly have furnished
the latest illustration of a OvvoiKiuw. We may paraphrase ‘ When
they are not scattered in villages, but, like the Arcadians, have a
central city.’
It may be argued on the other side that Aristotle would not
have used the Arcadians who were the most backward of Hellenes,
as the type of a civilized, but of a semi-barbarous, nation.
To hristotle the %os is a lower stage than the a&s. He had
no idea of a nation in the higher sense; nor did he see how ill
adapted the Greek so’X\rs was to the larger order of the world,
which was springing up around him, or how completely it had
outlived its objects.A RISTO TLE ’S POLITICS.
8.3. 25 sv 62 aai yrviuear, afL +i~.
The state like the nation is not a mere aggregate, but has an
organic unity of higher and lower elements.
a 4. 81hp rb ‘loov rb b~rir~ir~v&s UB[CI r& so’Xrts, &m<p iv Tois 4dLKOtP
ci!pvrat ~ppcircpov.
Euclid in his 6th Book uses dv7rs~nov6ivar to express the relation
of reciprocal proportion. Probably the ethical significance of the
term among the Pythagoreans was derived from its mathematical
I1-II