The Athenian Constitution

This short treatise traces how the government of Athens developed, from the early kings and archons through the reforms of Draco, Solon, Cleisthenes and Pericles to the full democracy of the fourth century BC, and then describes how that democracy worked: how citizens were registered, how officials were chosen by lot, how the council and the law courts operated, and how jurors were paid.

Long known only from quotations, the work was recovered from papyrus rolls found in Egypt and published in 1891 by Frederic Kenyon of the British Museum, whose translation this is, to the excitement of scholars everywhere. It is thought to have been written by Aristotle or one of his students around 330 BC, as one of 158 studies of the constitutions of Greek states. Read Aristotle's Politics.

Aristotle (384–322 BC), the son of a doctor from Stagira in northern Greece, studied at Plato's Academy for twenty years, tutored the young Alexander the Great and then founded his own school in Athens, the Lyceum, where he is said to have taught while walking.

He wrote on almost everything: logic, physics, biology, ethics, politics, rhetoric and poetry, and his works became the foundation of learning for two thousand years. In the Arabic tradition he was called the First Teacher, and the great commentaries of Ibn Rushd carried his thought back to medieval Europe.