No abstract

Zusammenfassung An keiner Stelle in seinen Schriften diskutiert Aristoteles das athenische Liturgiesystem, sondern setzt bei seinen wenigen Informationen dazu dessen Kenntnis voraus. An seiner Kritik der athenischen Liturgien im 4. Jahrhundert als ungerechter Belastung der Reichen läßt er allerdings keinen Zweifel. Welches sind die Gründe für seine Ablehnung, und wie sollten die Liturgien Aristoteles zufolge besser organisiert sein? Wir vergleichen Aristoteles’ Aussagen und Bewertung des Liturgiesystems mit Informationen aus externen Quellen und kommen zu dem Schluß, daß viele seiner Vorstellungen in der Verfassung des Demetrios von Phaleron verwirklicht worden sind. Unsere Diskussion beleuchtet die Entwicklung von der privat finanzierten Liturgie zum öffentlichen Amt sowie die problematische Frage, wie in einer Demokratie die nötigen Eigenmittel zur Erledigung der Aufgaben generiert werden konnten, die zuvor von Liturgen ausgeführt wurden, eine Entwicklung, die zu den von Euergeten finanzierten Amtsliturgien in der hellenistischen Zeit führte.

The article discusses the discrepancy between Aristotle’s representation of the Athenian politeia and the information contained in external sources. First we examine his statement that the demagogues manipulate the size and structure of the citizen body by admitting persons of doubtful background in order to broaden their power base. The external sources show no such practice in Athens in the 5th nor in the 4th century: they prove that the three mass citizenship grants in Athenian history were not due to demagogic manipulation but to situations of need, and that on top citizenship criteria became increasingly strict. Next his picture of the 4th century Areopagus as an institution stripped of political and constitutional powers is critically assessed against external sources which show that Aristotle’s description does not match the facts. The article finally tries to clarify why Aristotle chose to never mention the Athenian nomothesia in his writings. It concludes that not only the way in which he presents information about the Athenian state, but also, and more importantly, his decision to exclude information from his narrative are influenced by his conservative views and seem to be guided by his wish to paint a dark picture of the contemporary Athenian politeia.

The Politeiai are one of Aristotle’s historical works. Several hundreds of fragments have come down to us. While Aristotle’s Nomima barbarika recorded the customs of the barbaric ethne, the Politeiai are generally considered to be a collection of polisconstitutions. A closer look reveals, however, that alongside a majority of Greek poleis Aristotle also included several ethne in his Politeiai, namely those in the North(west) of the Greek mainland and on the Peleponnesus. This article tries to shed light on Aristotle’s reasons for selecting these ethne. On the basis of key passages in the Politics, the author argues that their presence in the Politeiai indicates that Aristotle considered them as Hellenic, and, although inferior in status to the polis, capable of having a politeia. In Aristotle’s time, nearly all of the ethne known to have been included in the Politeiai had formed koina. While Aristotle did not explicitly discuss the federal state, he acknowledged its existence both in the Politics and the Politeiai, obviously inspired by the political reality of his time in which the koina played an increasingly prominent role, illustrated by their presence as members in Hellenic treaties alongside the poleis.

No abstract