Aristotle now reverts to the three relationships he had enumerated at the beginning of I iii: master/slave, husband/wife, parent/child. (I iii–vii had discussed the first; viii–xi was devoted to chrēmatistikē in its various senses.) The burden of this chapter is to suggest that a husband is to his wife as a statesman-ruler is to his fellow-citizens, and that a father is to his child as a king to his subjects. It is, as he uneasily recognizes, a point against the first parallel that citizens usually rule turn and turn about (cf. III vi). The chapter is rather sketchy and contains a number of unargued assumptions (e.g. that the male is by nature more fitted to rule than the female); it is perhaps best taken rapidly as an introduction to the next, which is the last in Book I.
1259a37 There are, as we saw,1 three parts of household-management, one being the rule of a master, which has already been dealt with, next the rule of a father, and a third which arises out of the marriage relationship. This is included because rule is exercised over wife and children – over both of them as free persons, but in other respects differently: over a wife, rule is as by a statesman; over children, as by a king. For the male is more fitted to rule than the female, unless conditions are quite contrary to nature; and the elder and fully grown is more fitted than the younger and undeveloped. It is true that in most cases of rule by statesmen2 there is an interchange of the role of ruler and ruled, which aims to preserve natural equality and non-differentiation; nevertheless, so long as one is ruling and the other is being ruled, the ruler seeks to mark distinctions in outward dignity, in style of address, and in honours paid. (Witness what Amasis said about his foot-basin.)3 As between male and female this kind of relationship is permanent. Rule over children is royal, for the begetter is ruler by virtue both of affection and of age, and this type of rule is royal. Homer therefore was right in calling Zeus ‘father of gods and men’,4 as he was king over them all. For a king ought to have a natural superiority, but to be no different in birth; and this is just the condition of elder in relation to younger and of father to son.