Ancient History Sourcebook:



Rise of Democracy-Primary Source Reading

This document is the first PRIMARY SOURCE you will read in this class. A primary source is something that was written during a historical time period by a person that lived there. Primary sources can give us insight into what people thought and believed during a given time period. A primary source can be any number of things. For example, a collection of text messages you sent last year will give you insight into how you thought as a 9th grader, or even how 9th graders think in general. Yes – that is a primary source too!

The following document is a PRIMARY SOURCE written by the Greek philosopher Aristotle: these are all excerpts from his work called Politics. Because it is written in language that is a couple thousand years old, it will be harder to understand than a text message from last year. That is why you are going to engage with the text in the following way:

1. As you read, WRITE on the right hand side what you think Aristotle is saying in your own words. Doing this every couple of paragraphs will help you understand what Aristotle is saying about the Polis and how it should be run.

2. UNDERLINE passages you feel illustrate best what Aristotle is trying to say about his society.

|Text: underline passages you think are most important to understanding what Aristotle thinks about |Each couple paragraphs explain what Aristotle is |

|government and democracy. |saying in a summary sentence. |

|The Polis as the highest good | |

|Every State is a community of some kind, and every community | |

|is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order | |

|to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some | |

|good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, | |

|aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good…. | |

| | |

|He who thus considers things in their first growth and origin, whether a | |

|state or anything else, will obtain the clearest view of them. In the first | |

|place there must be a union of those who cannot exist without each othernamely, of male and female, that| |

|the race may continue (and this is a union which is formed, not of deliberate purpose, but because, in | |

|common withother animals and with plants, mankind have a natural desire to leavebehind them an image of | |

|themselves), and of natural ruler and subject, that both may be preserved... | |

| | |

|When we come to the final and perfect association, formed from a number of villages, we have already | |

|reached the polis—an association, which may be said to have reached the height of full self-sufficiency…| |

| | |

|…Or rather we may say that while it grows for the sake of mere life… it exists… for the sake of a good | |

|life (and is therefore fully self-sufficient). | |

| | |

|Because it is the completion of associations existing by nature, every polis exists by nature, having | |

|itself the same quality as the earlier associations from which it grew. It is the end or consummation | |

|to which those associations move, and the ’nature’ of things consists in their end or consummation. | |

| | |

|From these considerations it is evident that the polis belongs to the class of things that exist by | |

|nature, and that man is by nature an animal intended to live in a polis. He who is without a polis, by | |

|reason of his own nature and not of some accident, is either a beast, or a god… | |

| | |

|But a city ought to be composed, as far as possible, of equals and similars; and these are generally the| |

|middle classes. Wherefore the city that is composed of middle-class citizens is necessarily best | |

|constituted... And this is the class of citizens which is most secure in a state, for they do not, like | |

|the poor, covet their neighbors' goods; nor do others covet theirs, as the poor covet the goods of the | |

|rich; and as they neither plot against others, nor are themselves plotted against, they pass through | |

|life safely. | |

|Thus it is manifest that the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class... Great| |

|then is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for | |

|where some possess much, and the others nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure | |

|oligarchy; or a tyranny may grow out of either extreme… and where the middle class is large, there are | |

|least likely to be factions and dissensions... | |

|And democracies are safer and more permanent than oligarchies, because they have a middle class that is | |

|more numerous and has a greater share in the government... | |

To discuss:

1. According to Aristotle, why are democracies better than other forms of government?

2. What might someone who lives in Sparta reply to Aristotle's claims?

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