The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

chief political offices.
    Another set of officers is concerned with the maintenance of
religion priests and guardians see to the preservation and repair
of the temples of the Gods and to other matters of religion. One
office of this sort may be enough in small places, but in larger
ones there are a great many besides the priesthood; for example,
superintendents of public worship, guardians of shrines, treasurers
of the sacred revenues. Nearly connected with these there are also
the officers appointed for the performance of the public
sacrifices, except any which the law assigns to the priests; such
sacrifices derive their dignity from the public hearth of the city.
They are sometimes called archons, sometimes kings, and sometimes
prytanes.
    These, then, are the necessary offices, which may be summed up
as follows: offices concerned with matters of religion, with war,
with the revenue and expenditure, with the market, with the city,
with the harbors, with the country; also with the courts of law,
with the records of contracts, with execution of sentences, with
custody of prisoners, with audits and scrutinies and accounts of
magistrates; lastly, there are those which preside over the public
deliberations of the state. There are likewise magistracies
characteristic of states which are peaceful and prosperous, and at
the same time have a regard to good order: such as the offices of
guardians of women, guardians of the law, guardians of children,
and directors of gymnastics; also superintendents of gymnastic and
Dionysiac contests, and of other similar spectacles. Some of these
are clearly not democratic offices; for example, the guardianships
of women and children—the poor, not having any slaves, must employ
both their women and children as servants.
    Once more: there are three offices according to whose directions
the highest magistrates are chosen in certain states—guardians of
the law, probuli, councillors—of these, the guardians of the law
are an aristocratical, the probuli an oligarchical, the council a
democratical institution. Enough of the different kinds of
offices.

Politics, Book VII
    Translated by Benjamin Jowett
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I
    He who would duly inquire about the best form of a state ought
first to determine which is the most eligible life; while this
remains uncertain the best form of the state must also be
uncertain; for, in the natural order of things, those may be
expected to lead the best life who are governed in the best manner
of which their circumstances admit. We ought therefore to
ascertain, first of all, which is the most generally eligible life,
and then whether the same life is or is not best for the state and
for individuals.
    Assuming that enough has been already said in discussions
outside the school concerning the best life, we will now only
repeat what is contained in them. Certainly no one will dispute the
propriety of that partition of goods which separates them into
three classes, viz., external goods, goods of the body, and goods
of the soul, or deny that the happy man must have all three. For no
one would maintain that he is happy who has not in him a particle
of courage or temperance or justice or prudence, who is afraid of
every insect which flutters past him, and will commit any crime,
however great, in order to gratify his lust of meat or drink, who
will sacrifice his dearest friend for the sake of half-a-farthing,
and is as feeble and false in mind as a child or a madman. These
propositions are almost universally acknowledged as soon as they
are uttered, but men differ about the degree or relative
superiority of this or that good. Some think that a very moderate
amount of virtue is enough, but set no limit to their desires of
wealth, property, power, reputation, and the like. To whom we reply
by an appeal to facts, which easily prove that mankind do not
acquire or preserve virtue by the help of external goods, but
external goods by the help of virtue, and that happiness, whether
consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with
those who are most highly cultivated in their mind and in their
character, and have only a moderate share of external goods, than
among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are
deficient in higher qualities; and this is not only matter of
experience, but, if reflected upon, will easily appear to be in
accordance with reason. For, whereas external goods have a limit,
like any other instrument,