Book 2: Chapter 2, Comparative Constitutions Summary and Analysis

This chapter is composed of the entire second half of Book II. The author describes several constitutions in the context of his world.

Aristotle refers to efforts to devise model constitutions for utopian states. The greatest number of people used in the exercises as shown in Aristotle's book is 10,000. For current readers, this is a large village or small town. Therefore there are many political organizational challenges today that no one in Aristotle's era ever faced, due to their smaller population concentrations. Some of these difficulties may have been addressed by the Romans during their Empire.

The Constitutions surveyed are those of Hippodamus, the Spartan Constitution, and those of the Isle of Crete and the people of Carthage. Within this context, Aristotle explains bare essentials of politics. There are categories of members of the populace...