The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

are exciting and emotional. Poetry
proves this, for Bacchic frenzy and all similar emotions are most
suitably expressed by the flute, and are better set to the Phrygian
than to any other mode. The dithyramb, for example, is acknowledged
to be Phrygian, a fact of which the connoisseurs of music offer
many proofs, saying, among other things, that Philoxenus, having
attempted to compose his Mysians as a dithyramb in the Dorian mode,
found it impossible, and fell back by the very nature of things
into the more appropriate Phrygian. All men agree that the Dorian
music is the gravest and manliest. And whereas we say that the
extremes should be avoided and the mean followed, and whereas the
Dorian is a mean between the other modes, it is evident that our
youth should be taught the Dorian music.
    Two principles have to be kept in view, what is possible, what
is becoming: at these every man ought to aim. But even these are
relative to age; the old, who have lost their powers, cannot very
well sing the high-strung modes, and nature herself seems to
suggest that their songs should be of the more relaxed kind.
Wherefore the musicians likewise blame Socrates, and with justice,
for rejecting the relaxed modes in education under the idea that
they are intoxicating, not in the ordinary sense of intoxication
(for wine rather tends to excite men), but because they have no
strength in them. And so, with a view also to the time of life when
men begin to grow old, they ought to practice the gentler modes and
melodies as well as the others, and, further, any mode, such as the
Lydian above all others appears to be, which is suited to children
of tender age, and possesses the elements both of order and of
education. Thus it is clear that education should be based upon
three principles—the mean, the possible, the becoming, these
three.

The Athenian Constitution
    Translated by Sir Frederic G. Kenyon
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1
    … [They were tried] by a court empanelled from among the noble
families, and sworn upon the sacrifices. The part of accuser was
taken by Myron. They were found guilty of the sacrilege, and their
bodies were cast out of their graves and their race banished for
evermore. In view of this expiation, Epimenides the Cretan
performed a purification of the city.
2
    After this event there was contention for a long time between
the upper classes and the populace. Not only was the constitution
at this time oligarchical in every respect, but the poorer classes,
men, women, and children, were the serfs of the rich. They were
known as Pelatae and also as Hectemori, because they cultivated the
lands of the rich at the rent thus indicated. The whole country was
in the hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay
their rent they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their
children with them. All loans secured upon the debtor’s person, a
custom which prevailed until the time of Solon, who was the first
to appear as the champion of the people. But the hardest and
bitterest part of the constitution in the eyes of the masses was
their state of serfdom. Not but what they were also discontented
with every other feature of their lot; for, to speak generally,
they had no part nor share in anything.
3
    Now the ancient constitution, as it existed before the time of
Draco, was organized as follows. The magistrates were elected
according to qualifications of birth and wealth. At first they
governed for life, but subsequently for terms of ten years. The
first magistrates, both in date and in importance, were the King,
the Polemarch, and the Archon. The earliest of these offices was
that of the King, which existed from ancestral antiquity. To this
was added, secondly, the office of Polemarch, on account of some of
the kings proving feeble in war; for it was on this account that
Ion was invited to accept the post on an occasion of pressing need.
The last of the three offices was that of the Archon, which most
authorities state to have come into existence in the time of Medon.
Others assign it to the time of Acastus, and adduce as proof the
fact that the nine Archons swear to execute their oaths ‘as in the
days of Acastus,’ which seems to suggest that it was in his time
that the descendants of Codrus retired from the kingship in return
for the prerogatives conferred upon the Archon. Whichever way it
may be, the difference in date is small; but that it was the last
of these magistracies to be created is shown by the fact that