16. Athemistos: see n. 11.

17. I.e. without a state. It is such a person’s pugnacity that Aristotle seems to regard as marking him out as in some sense non-human; cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1177b9.

18. A slightly comic sentence; but obviously it is the notion of the state as an association that Aristotle has in mind. On this sentence see R. G. Mulgan, ‘Aristotle’s doctrine that man is a political animal’, Hermes, 102 (1974), pp. 438–45, and cf. Aristotle, History of Animals 487b33–488a13.

19. Aisthēsis.

20. Literally ‘destroyed’, ‘ruined’ (by the dismemberment apparently envisaged in the preceding sentence).