TY - JOUR

T1 - Draco’s Constitution and Political Ideas of Athenian Oligarchs

AU - Verlinsky, Alexander

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © St. Petersburg State University, 2021

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - In the article which serves as a sequel to an earlier one the author argues that Draco’s constitution (DC) in Arist. AP 4 does not derive from an oligarchic political pamphlet in which it served as a prototype of a constitution to be implemented in Athens as the majority of scholars believe. The preponderance of scholars believe, relying on the alleged similarity of DC to the project of the ‘Constitution of Five Thousands’ (AP 30) in 411 BC, that DC emerged in the same ‘moderate’ oligarchic circles as a project of the same kind. Others propose later dates for its appearance but almost unanimously ascribe to oligarchic moderates who pleaded for a ‘hoplite constitution.’ The author argues contra that although DC is not reliable as a historical document, it differs considerably from the known political projects of oligarchs. Its distinguishing features make it anachronistic for conditions of 5th–4th centuries BC, but they are much more at home in the last decades of 7th BC. It is likely that Aristotle found this fictional account in one of the historical sources he used in the AP in which it was fabricated to fill a gap in the lacunose history of the early Athenian constitution and it may have been meant to diminish tendentiously Solon’s contribution, representing the latter as modifying the already existing state order.

AB - In the article which serves as a sequel to an earlier one the author argues that Draco’s constitution (DC) in Arist. AP 4 does not derive from an oligarchic political pamphlet in which it served as a prototype of a constitution to be implemented in Athens as the majority of scholars believe. The preponderance of scholars believe, relying on the alleged similarity of DC to the project of the ‘Constitution of Five Thousands’ (AP 30) in 411 BC, that DC emerged in the same ‘moderate’ oligarchic circles as a project of the same kind. Others propose later dates for its appearance but almost unanimously ascribe to oligarchic moderates who pleaded for a ‘hoplite constitution.’ The author argues contra that although DC is not reliable as a historical document, it differs considerably from the known political projects of oligarchs. Its distinguishing features make it anachronistic for conditions of 5th–4th centuries BC, but they are much more at home in the last decades of 7th BC. It is likely that Aristotle found this fictional account in one of the historical sources he used in the AP in which it was fabricated to fill a gap in the lacunose history of the early Athenian constitution and it may have been meant to diminish tendentiously Solon’s contribution, representing the latter as modifying the already existing state order.

KW - Aristotle

KW - Draco’s constitution

KW - historical sources of Arist. AP

KW - political ideas of Athenian oligarchs

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85127553421&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.21638/spbu20.2021.202

DO - 10.21638/spbu20.2021.202

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85127553421

VL - 16

SP - 186

EP - 206

JO - Philologia Classica

JF - Philologia Classica

SN - 0202-2532

IS - 2

ER -