BOOK V - CHAPTER III

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_ What influence ill-treatment and profit have for this purpose, and how
they may be the causes of sedition, is almost self-evident; for when
the magistrates are haughty and endeavour to make greater profits than
their office gives them, they not only occasion seditions amongst each
other, but against the state also who gave them their power; and this
their avarice has two objects, either private property or the property
of the state. What influence honours have, and how they may occasion
sedition, is evident enough; for those who are themselves unhonoured
while they see others honoured, will be ready for any disturbance: and
these things are done unjustly when any one is either honoured or
discarded contrary to their deserts, justly when they are according to
them. Excessive honours are also a cause of sedition when one person
or more are greater than the state and the power of the government can
permit; for then a monarchy or a dynasty is usually established: on
which account the ostracism was introduced in some places, as at Argos
and Athens: though it is better to guard against such excesses in the
founding of a state, than when they have been permitted to take place,
to correct them afterward. Those who have been guilty of crimes will
be the cause of sedition, through fear of punishment; as will those
also who expect an injury, that they may prevent it; as was the case
at Rhodes, when the nobles conspired against the people on account of
the decrees they expected would pass against them. Contempt also is a
cause of sedition and conspiracies; as in oligarchies, where there are
many who have no share in the administration. The rich also even in
democracies, despising the disorder and anarchy which will arise, hope
to better themselves by the same means which happened at Thebes after
the battle of Oenophyta, where, in consequence of bad administration,
the democracy was destroyed; as it was at Megara, where the power of
the people was lost through anarchy and disorder; the same thing
happened at Syracuse before the tyranny of Gelon; and at Rhodes there
was the same sedition before the popular government was overthrown.
Revolutions in state will also arise from a disproportionate increase;
for as the body consists of many parts, it ought to increase
proportion-ably to preserve its symmetry, which would otherwise be
destroyed; as if the foot was to be four cubits long, and the rest of
the body but two palms; it might otherwise [1303a] be changed into an
animal of a different form, if it increase beyond proportion not only
in quantity, but also in disposition of parts; so also a city consists
of parts, some of which may often increase without notice, as the
number of poor in democracies and free states. They will also
sometimes happen by accident, as at Tarentum, a little after the
Median war, where so many of the nobles were killed in a battle by the
lapygi, that from a free state the government was turned into a
democracy; and at Argos, where so many of the citizens were killed by
Cleomenes the Spartan, that they were obliged to admit several
husbandmen to the freedom of the state: and at Athens, through the
unfortunate event of the infantry battles, the number of the nobles
was reduced by the soldiers being chosen from the list of citizens in
the Lacedaemonian wars. Revolutions also sometimes take place in a
democracy, though seldomer; for where the rich grow numerous or
properties increase, they become oligarchies or dynasties. Governments
also sometimes alter without seditions by a combination of the meaner
people; as at Hersea: for which purpose they changed the mode of
election from votes to lots, and thus got themselves chosen: and by
negligence, as when the citizens admit those who are not friends to
the constitution into the chief offices of the state, which happened
at Orus, when the oligarchy of the archons was put an end to at the
election of Heracleodorus, who changed that form of government into a
democratic free state. By little and little, I mean by this, that very
often great alterations silently take place in the form of government
from people's overlooking small matters; as at Ambracia, where the
census was originally small, but at last became nothing at all, as if
a little and nothing at all were nearly or entirely alike. That state
also is liable to seditions which is composed of different nations,
till their differences are blended together and undistinguishable; for
as a city cannot be composed of every multitude, so neither can it in
every given time; for which reason all those republics which have
hitherto been originally composed of different people or afterwards
admitted their neighbours to the freedom of their city, have been most
liable to revolutions; as when the Achaeans joined with the
Traezenians in founding Sybaris; for soon after, growing more powerful
than the Traezenians, they expelled them from the city; from whence
came the proverb of Sybarite wickedness: and again, disputes from a
like cause happened at Thurium between the Sybarites and those who had
joined with them in building the city; for they assuming upon these,
on account of the country being their own, were driven out. And at
Byzantium the new citizens, being detected in plots against the state,
were driven out of the city by force of arms. The Antisseans also,
having taken in those who were banished from Chios, afterwards did the
same thing; and also the Zancleans, after having taken in the people
of Samos. The Appolloniats, in the Euxine Sea, having admitted their
sojourners to the freedom of their city, were troubled with seditions:
and the Syracusians, after the expulsion of their tyrants, having
enrolled [1303b] strangers and mercenaries amongst their citizens,
quarrelled with each other and came to an open rupture: and the people
of Amphipolis, having taken in a colony of Chalcidians, were the
greater part of them driven out of the city by them. Many persons
occasion seditions in oligarchies because they think themselves
ill-used in not sharing the honours of the state with their equals, as
I have already mentioned; but in democracies the principal people do
the same because they have not more than an equal share with others
who are not equal to them. The situation of the place will also
sometimes occasion disturbances in the state when the ground is not
well adapted for one city; as at Clazomene, where the people who lived
in that part of the town called Chytrum quarrelled with them who lived
in the island, and the Colophonians with the Notians. At Athens too
the disposition of the citizens is not the same, for those who live in
the Piraeus are more attached to a popular government than those who
live in the city properly so called; for as the interposition of a
rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to
fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of
seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from
the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between
poverty and riches, and so on in order, one cause having more
influence than another; one of which that I last mentioned. _

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