Of the common people, some
are husbandmen, and some traders, and some artisans. There are also
among the notables differences of wealth and property- for example, in
the number of horses which they keep, for they cannot afford to keep
them unless they are rich. And therefore in old times the cities whose
strength lay in their cavalry were oligarchies, and they used
cavalry in wars against their neighbors; as was the practice of the
Eretrians and Chalcidians, and also of the Magnesians on the river
Maeander, and of other peoples in Asia. Besides differences of
wealth there are differences of rank and merit, and there are some
other elements which were mentioned by us when in treating of
aristocracy we enumerated the essentials of a state. Of these
elements, sometimes all, sometimes the lesser and sometimes the
greater number, have a share in the government. It is evident then
that there must be many forms of government, differing in kind,
since the parts of which they are composed differ from each other in
kind. For a constitution is an organization of offices, which all
the citizens distribute among themselves, according to the power which
different classes possess, for example the rich or the poor, or
according to some principle of equality which includes both. There
must therefore be as many forms of government as there are modes of
arranging the offices, according to the superiorities and
differences of the parts of the state.
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