At Megara the fall of the democracy was due
to a defeat occasioned by disorder and anarchy. And at Syracuse the
democracy aroused contempt before the tyranny of Gelo arose; at
Rhodes, before the insurrection.
Political revolutions also spring from a disproportionate increase
in any part of the state. For as a body is made up of many members,
and every member ought to grow in proportion, that symmetry may be
preserved; but loses its nature if the foot be four cubits long and
the rest of the body two spans; and, should the abnormal increase be
one of quality as well as of quantity, may even take the form of
another animal: even so a state has many parts, of which some one
may often grow imperceptibly; for example, the number of poor in
democracies and in constitutional states. And this disproportion may
sometimes happen by an accident, as at Tarentum, from a defeat in
which many of the notables were slain in a battle with the Iapygians
just after the Persian War, the constitutional government in
consequence becoming a democracy; or as was the case at Argos, where
the Argives, after their army had been cut to pieces on the seventh
day of the month by Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, were compelled to
admit to citizen some of their Perioeci; and at Athens, when, after
frequent defeats of their infantry at the time of the Peloponnesian
War, the notables were reduced in number, because the soldiers had
to be taken from the roll of citizens.
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