Note 115 — Chapter I · Introduction

Pol. IV. (VII.), 1326a. The Politics was based on a series of studies of particular constitutions one of which, the Constitution of Athens, was recovered from an Egyptian rubbish heap some thirty years ago. When Aristotle says that a city of artizans cannot attain to greatness we may feel fairly sure that artizans had played no prominent part in any of the Greek cities since the Persian wars. For the period before that his information must have been less reliable.