But however true the maxim may be of the modern
nation state, it was not true of the much smaller and more
self-conscious Greek city. When Aristotle talks of the legislator, he
is not talking in the air. Students of the Academy had been actually
called on to give new constitutions to Greek states. For the Greeks
the constitution was not merely as it is so often with us, a matter of
political machinery. It was regarded as a way of life. Further, the
constitution within the framework of which the ordinary process of
administration and passing of decrees went on, was always regarded as
the work of a special man or body of men, the lawgivers. If we study
Greek history, we find that the position of the legislator corresponds
to that assigned to him by Plato and Aristotle. All Greek states,
except those perversions which Aristotle criticises as being "above
law," worked under rigid constitutions, and the constitution was only
changed when the whole people gave a commission to a lawgiver to draw
up a new one. Such was the position of the AEsumnetes, whom Aristotle
describes in Book III. chap, xiv., in earlier times, and of the pupils
of the Academy in the fourth century. The lawgiver was not an ordinary
politician. He was a state doctor, called in to prescribe for an
ailing constitution. So Herodotus recounts that when the people of
Cyrene asked the oracle of Delphi to help them in their dissensions,
the oracle told them to go to Mantinea, and the Mantineans lent them
Demonax, who acted as a "setter straight" and drew up a new
constitution for Cyrene.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25