CHAPTER XII
Some of those persons who have written upon government had never any
share in public affairs, but always led a private life. Everything
worthy of notice in their works we have already spoke to. Others were
legislators, some in their own cities, others were employed in
regulating the governments of foreign states. Some of them only
composed a body of laws; others formed the constitution also, as
Lycurgus; and Solon, who did both. The Lacedaemonians have been
already mentioned. Some persons think that Solon was an excellent
legislator, who could dissolve a pure oligarchy, and save the people
from that slavery which hung over them, and establish the ancient
democratic form of government in his country; wherein every part of it
was so framed as to be well adapted to the whole. In the senate of
Areopagus an oligarchy was preserved; by the manner of electing their
[1274a] magistrates, an aristocracy; and in their courts of justice, a
democracy.
Solon seems not to have altered the established form of government,
either with respect to the senate or the mode of electing their
magistrates; but to have raised the people to great consideration in
the state by allotting the supreme judicial department to them; and
for this some persons blame him, as having done what would soon
overturn that balance of power he intended to establish; for by trying
all causes whatsoever before the people, who were chosen by lot to
determine them, it was necessary to flatter a tyrannical populace who
had got this power; which contributed to bring the government to that
pure democracy it now is.
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