Plato to Polybius on Constitutional Change

References

Ancient Primary Sources: Translations and Commentaries

Archytas (or ps.-Archytas), On Law and Justice, fr. 4(a), p. 34.15–27 Thesleff = Stob. 4.1.138, as translated in Phillip Sidney Horky and Monte Ransome Johnson, On Law and Justice: attributed to Archytas of Tarentum, in Early Greek Ethics, ed. David Conan Wolfsdorf, 455-490. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Aristotle, Politics: 

• Politics: A New Translation, trans. with introduction and notes by C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 2017.
• Politica, ed. Sir David Ross. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Plato, Republic:

• Plato, Laws, herein by Melissa Lane.
• Platonis, Nomoi, in Platonis, Opera, vol. V, ed. John Burnet. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2019 [first published 1907].
• Plato, Republic, rans. G.M.A. Grube, rev. C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1992.
• Platonis, Respublica, ed. S. R. Slings. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. 

Plutarch, Lycurgus: 

• Trans. Bernadotte Perrin, in Plutarch’s Lives, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948. 

Polybius, The Histories, volumes cited from the Loeb Classical Library: 

• Books 1-2, in Volume I, 2nd edn, translated by W. R. Paton, revised by F. W. Walbank, Christian Habicht. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2010.
• Books 3-4, in Volume II, 2nd edn, translated by W. R. Paton, revised by F. W. Walbank, Christian Habicht. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2010.
• Books 5-6, in Volume III, 2nd edn, translated by W. R. Paton, revised by F. W. Walbank, Christian Habicht. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2011.
• Walbank, F. W. A Historical Commentary on Polybius. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957-79.  

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War: 

• As translated in Connor, W.R., Thucydides. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013 [first published 1984].
• As translated in Hornblower, Simon, Thucydides. London: Duckworth, 1987. 

Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians [Spartans] (Lac.): 

• Trans E. C. Marchant / G.W. Bowersock in Xenophon, Hiero. Agesilaus. Constitution of the Lacedaemonians. Ways and Means. The Cavalry Commander. On the Art of Horsemanship. On Hunting. Constitution of the Athenians. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925. 

Modern Primary Sources and Secondary Sources

Adams, John. A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America [1787], in The Works of John Adams, vol. 4, edited by Charles Francis Adams. Boston: Little, Brown, 1850. 

Cartledge, Paul. ‘Not Just Voting, but Being Counted: The Cases of Ancient Greece’, in Cultures of Voting in Pre-Modern Europe, edited by Serena Ferente, Lovro Kunčević, and Miles Pattenden, 11-19. London: Routledge, 2018. 

Edelstein, Dan. The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025.

Flower, Michael A. Theopompus of Chios: History and Rhetoric in the Fourth Century B.C. New York and Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. 

Fritz, Kurt von. The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity; a Critical Analysis of Polybius’ Political Ideas. New York: Columbia University Press, 1954.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan, a critical edition, edited by Karl Schuhmann and G. A. J. Rogers. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006. 

Lane, Melissa. ‘Locating the Cities in the Republic 8-9 Dual Narratives: Historiographical Functions and Contexts’, in PLATON, RÉPUBLIQUE VIII-IX. NOUVELLES LECTURES = ENTRETIENS SUR L’ANTIQUITÉ CLASSIQUE vol. LXXI, ed. Vanessa Monteventi, 329-62, with discussion 363-73. Vandoeuvres, Geneva: Foundation Hardt, forthcoming 2026. 

Lintott, Andrew. The Constitution of the Roman Republic. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.

Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Discourses, trans. Leslie J. Walker, rev. Brian Richardson, edited with an introduction by Bernard Crick. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970. 

Manin, Bernard. Principles of Representative Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

McCormick, John. Machiavellian Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Millar, Fergus. The Roman Republic in Political Thought. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002.

Pettit, Philip. The State. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. 

Walbank, Frank. ‘A Greek Looks at Rome: Polybius VI Revisited’, Scripta Classica Israelica: Yearbook of the Israel Society for the Promotion of Classical Studies 17 (2020) 45–59.

Further Reading

Andrewes, A. ‘The Government of Classical Sparta’, in M. Whitby (ed.) Sparta, 49-68. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002. 

Atkins, Jed W., and Carl E. Young. ‘Polybius and the Compound Constitution’, in Reading Texts on Sovereignty: Textual Moments in the History of Political Thought, edited by Stella Achilleos and Antonis Balasopoulos, 25–32. London: Bloomsbury, 2021.

Balot, Ryan. ‘Polybius’ Advice to the Imperial Republic’, Political Theory 38 (2021): 483–509.

Flower, Harriet I., ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Flower, Michael A. ‘The Invention of Tradition in Classical and Hellenistic Sparta’, in Sparta: Beyond the Mirage, edited by Anton Powell and Stephen Hodkinson, 191-217. Swansea and London: The Classical Press of Wales and Duckworth, 2002.

Hodkinson, Stephen. Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta. Paperback edition. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2009. 

Lintott, Andrew. The Constitution of the Roman Republic. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.

Mackay, Christopher S. Ancient Rome: A Military and Political History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Manin, Bernard. The Principles of Representative Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Marincola, John, ed. A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography. Newark: John Wiley & Sons, 2008. 

Millar, Fergus. The Roman Republic in Political Thought. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2002. 

Rawson, Eleanor. The Spartan Tradition in European Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.

Richard, C.J. The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Walbank, F.W. ‘Polybius on the Roman constitution’, The Classical Quarterly 36 (1943): 73-89.

Walbank, F. W. Polybius, Rome, and the Hellenistic World: Essays and Reflections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 200