The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

should not appoint the same
person to be a flute-player and a shoemaker. Hence, where the state
is large, it is more in accordance both with constitutional and
with democratic principles that the offices of state should be
distributed among many persons. For, as I said, this arrangement is
fairer to all, and any action familiarized by repetition is better
and sooner performed. We have a proof in military and naval
matters; the duties of command and of obedience in both these
services extend to all.
    The government of the Carthaginians is oligarchical, but they
successfully escape the evils of oligarchy by enriching one portion
of the people after another by sending them to their colonies. This
is their panacea and the means by which they give stability to the
state. Accident favors them, but the legislator should be able to
provide against revolution without trusting to accidents. As things
are, if any misfortune occurred, and the bulk of the subjects
revolted, there would be no way of restoring peace by legal
methods.
    Such is the character of the Lacedaemonian, Cretan, and
Carthaginian constitutions, which are justly celebrated.
XII
    Of those who have treated of governments, some have never taken
any part at all in public affairs, but have passed their lives in a
private station; about most of them, what was worth telling has
been already told. Others have been lawgivers, either in their own
or in foreign cities, whose affairs they have administered; and of
these some have only made laws, others have framed constitutions;
for example, Lycurgus and Solon did both. Of the Lacedaemonian
constitution I have already spoken. As to Solon, he is thought by
some to have been a good legislator, who put an end to the
exclusiveness of the oligarchy, emancipated the people, established
the ancient Athenian democracy, and harmonized the different
elements of the state. According to their view, the council of
Areopagus was an oligarchical element, the elected magistracy,
aristocratical, and the courts of law, democratical. The truth
seems to be that the council and the elected magistracy existed
before the time of Solon, and were retained by him, but that he
formed the courts of law out of an the citizens, thus creating the
democracy, which is the very reason why he is sometimes blamed. For
in giving the supreme power to the law courts, which are elected by
lot, he is thought to have destroyed the non-democratic element.
When the law courts grew powerful, to please the people who were
now playing the tyrant the old constitution was changed into the
existing democracy. Ephialtes and Pericles curtailed the power of
the Areopagus; Pericles also instituted the payment of the juries,
and thus every demagogue in turn increased the power of the
democracy until it became what we now see. All this is true; it
seems, however, to be the result of circumstances, and not to have
been intended by Solon. For the people, having been instrumental in
gaining the empire of the sea in the Persian War, began to get a
notion of itself, and followed worthless demagogues, whom the
better class opposed. Solon, himself, appears to have given the
Athenians only that power of electing to offices and calling to
account the magistrates which was absolutely necessary; for without
it they would have been in a state of slavery and enmity to the
government. All the magistrates he appointed from the notables and
the men of wealth, that is to say, from the pentacosio-medimni, or
from the class called zeugitae, or from a third class of so-called
knights or cavalry. The fourth class were laborers who had no share
in any magistracy.
    Mere legislators were Zaleucus, who gave laws to the
Epizephyrian Locrians, and Charondas, who legislated for his own
city of Catana, and for the other Chalcidian cities in Italy and
Sicily. Some people attempt to make out that Onomacritus was the
first person who had any special skill in legislation, and that he,
although a Locrian by birth, was trained in Crete, where he lived
in the exercise of his prophetic art; that Thales was his
companion, and that Lycurgus and Zaleucus were disciples of Thales,
as Charondas was of Zaleucus. But their account is quite
inconsistent with chronology.
    There was also Philolaus, the Corinthian, who gave laws to the
Thebans. This Philolaus was one of the family of the Bacchiadae,
and a lover of Diocles, the Olympic victor, who left Corinth in
horror of the incestuous passion which his mother Halcyone