Aristotle now gives some practical advice on how a polity may be established by ‘mixing’ oligarchy and democracy. We may either (a) adopt the law of both, or (b) take neither’s law as it stands, but effect a compromise, or (c) take parts of the law of each. Elucidation of (a) comes in the second paragraph of IV xiii.
Once again we see the perennial fascination of the Spartan constitution: cf. II ix and Plato, Laws 682e ff. and 712d ff.
1294a30 Our next task is to continue on from what has been said and describe how what we call polity develops in relation to democracy and oligarchy, and what has to be done in order to establish it. The definitive features of democracy and oligarchy will emerge at the same time; for we have to grasp the differences between these two, and then take as it were a ‘tally’ from each of them to put together.
1294a35 Now one may mix or combine in one or other of three definitive ways. The first is to take the legislation of both. For example, in the matter of judging, in oligarchies they impose a fine on the wealthy for non-attendance as jurymen in the law-courts, and they do not pay the poor for their attendance; in democracies no fines for non-attendance are imposed on the wealthy, and the poor receive pay for their services. Both these together constitute something in common and midway between them, and would therefore, as a mixture of the two, be characteristic of a polity. Thai is one way of joining the two. A second way is to take something intermediate between the two sets of provisions. Thus for membership of the assembly in democracies there is no property-qualification (or only a very small one), whereas in oligarchies the property-assessment is high. Here something common is provided by neither, but by an assessment fixed midway between. The third method is from two sets of regulations to take one part from the oligarchical law, the other part from the democratic. For example, the filling of offices: to do this by lot is regarded as democratic, by selection oligarchic; a property-qualification is oligarchic, its absence democratic. Take therefore one from each, the oligarchical election of officials and the democratic freedom from property-qualification, and the result is both polity-like and aristocratic. So much for the method of mixing.
1294b14 A definitive feature of the well-mixed democracy and oligarchy is that it is possible to describe the same constitution either as democracy or as oligarchy. It is clearly the very excellence of the blending that creates this impression in those who thus describe it. A middle position has the same characteristic: each of the two extremes appears in it. This is exactly what happens in the case of the constitution of the Lacedaemonians. Many people try to describe it as a democracy, because the system has a number of democratic features: first the rearing of the children, under which the sons of the rich are reared in the same way as the sons of the poor and receive an education which the sons of the poor could also receive; then similarly in the next age group, and when they are grown up, the arrangements for feeding in the communal messes are the same for all, for thus there is no outward mark of distinction between rich and poor; and the rich wear clothing which any poor man could get for himself. There is also the fact that the people choose the members of the Council of Elders and share in the Ephorate, the two most important offices in the state. Others call it an oligarchy because of its many oligarchical features: the absence of the use of the lot, all officials being elected; the power of few to pronounce binding sentence of death or exile, and many other similar points. A constitution which is a really well-made combination of oligarchy and democracy ought to look like both and like neither.
1294b36 It should be kept stable by means of itself and not through outside agencies. It is not doing that when the number of those who wish it to continue make a majority (a condition which can equally arise in a bad constitution), but only when no section whatever of the state would even wish to have a different constitution. We have now mentioned the way in which polity ought to be established, and likewise the so-called aristocracies.