The Composition of Aristotle's Constitution of Athens and the So-Called Dracontian Constitution

Abstract

Tn 1950 E. Kapp and I published a commentary on Aristotle's Constitution of Athens.I In the Preface of this book we pointed out that we intended to confine ourselves to a critical interpretation of Aristotle's work and that, therefore, we had refrained... from discussing any modern attempts to replace Aristotle's account by a better reconstruction of the historical development, except a few cases where questions of interpretation were involved. In spite of this definition of our intentions some eminent historians among our critics2 have blamed us for not having done on several occasions what we did not intend to do and could not have done systematically as long as the book was to be published the series for which we wrote it. For even as it is, our commentary exceeds by far length and attention to details and specific problems any other commentary published the series so far. It would hardly be worth while to mention this if it were not for the fact that, at least on one occasion, this misconception concerning the purpose of our book caused our critics to misunderstand what we said about a rather important special problem. In what is usually counted as the fourth chapter of the extant part of his work Aristotle says that in the archonship of Aristaichmos Draco enacted his laws, and then describes a political order that, because of this connection, is usually called the Draconian, or more correctly the Dracontian, constitution. Less than two years after the papyrus containing the greater part of Aristotle's treatise had been published for the first tinme, E. Meyer, an addition to an earlier article then republished the first volume of his Forschungen zur alten Geschichte,3 showed conclusively that a great many of the provisions of the constitution described the fourth chapter of Aristotle's treatise could not possibly be historical the form which they were given by Aristotle, and drew from this the conclusion that Aristotle had been deceived by some apocryphal treatise (sich durch ein apokryphes Produkt hatte tauschen lassen). The first part of Meyer's results has since been accepted by the overwhelming majority of competent scholars, and, fact, there can hardly be any doubt as to the validity of his arguments. Many of his successors, how-