User:WHEELER/Classical definition of republic

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A Classical Republic, (Greek: πολιτεια; Latin: respublica) is a "mixed constitutional government". This definition of the form of a republic existed from Classical Antiquity to the French Revolutionary period. Since that time, the term republic has been confused with the term democracy.

A republic, in the classical form, is a type of government that is made up of a mixture of elements from three other types of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. There is the Spartan model, which is a tripartite form of government which is a combination of kings, gerousia (aristocracy) and the assembly of all the males (democratic body). There is the Roman model that has a civilian head, and an aristocratic body which is the Senate and smaller assemblies representing the citizens. These republics were marked by a bicameral legislative body (the upper house being aristocratic) and by a written constitution that marks out the duties and responsibilities of the different bodies.

The classical republic or 'mixed government' is a product of the cultural mindset of the Indo-European races of trifunctionality¹ and by and large, generated by citizen/soldier/farmer societies. It was first developed by the Doric Greeks on the island of Crete. ¹¹ It is a by-product of the special Doric Cretan mentality of syncretism (which "Crete" forms the central portion of the word).⁶² "What the Dorians endeavoured to obtain in a state was good order, or cosmos, the regular combination of different elements." ⁵⁸

Because of the character of the Anglo-Saxons,¹ Britain in the 13th century naturally evolved into the structure of a classical republic mirroring the Spartan model. ² The old English word "Commonwealth" is same as the Latin word Res publica. ⁵⁷ The Founding Fathers of the United States modelled America along the same lines as her mother country, Britain, and the Roman Republic with her civilian head. Since the 1920's, there have been no governments that are 'mixed'.

[edit] What is a state

The Greeks defined differing governments by their dominant factor. Aristotle writes: "Now a constitution (Politeia) is the ordering of a state (Poleos) in respect of its various magistracies, and especially the magistracy that is supreme over all matters. For the government is everywhere supreme over the state and the constitution is the government. ³ Our customary designation for a monarchy that aims at the common advantage is 'kingship'; for a government of more than one yet only a few 'aristocracy', ...while when the multitude govern the state with a view to the common advantage, it is called by the name common to all the forms of constitution, 'constitutional government'. ⁴ Where a government has only a king, the dominant factor, it is called a monarchy. Where a government has only a few nobles ruling, the dominant factor, it is called an aristocracy." Where the people are the dominant factor it is called a democracy.

The Greek word for State is "Poleos". It denotes "society" in general. Aristotle writes "A collection of persons all alike does not constitute a state". ⁵ This Greek word, "Politeia" is then named for every government that includes numerous classes of people as citizens and a written law, a constitution, that defines and delegates rights and responsibilities of those classes. A republic is one that does not have a dominant factor".

Hence, the phrase "democratic republic" is an oxymoron. A democracy is when the people are dominant and a republic is mixed government wherein there is no dominant element. Therefore to say a "democratic republic" is an oxymoron. The confusion lies in that the word "republic" is synonymous with "constitution". For that reason, it is better to say "constitutional democracy" other than "democratic republic".

[edit] The Greek aspect

"Politea" is a Greek word used by Aristotle in his book, Politics, to describe a republican form of government.

Aristotle records that "some people assert that the best constitution must be a combination of all the forms of constitution, therefore praise the constitution of Sparta." ⁶ He further argues that the better the constitution is mixed, the more permanent it is. ⁷ The definition he gives for this kind of government is a "politean"; the form intermediate between them which is termed a republic, (mesi de touton in kalousi politeian) for the government is constituted from the class that bears arms. ⁸ Again, Aristotle states that constitutional government is, to put it simply, a mixture of oligarchy and democracy. ⁹

Polybius (as also Plato and Aristotle) distinguishes three types of governments: "kingship, aristocracy, democracy". Furthermore, like Aristotle, he goes on to state that the best constitution is that "which partakes of all these three elements". ¹⁰ "The first to construct a constitution--that of Sparta--on this principle", Lycurgus, with some inspiration from his fellow Doric brothers in Crete and the support of Delphi (which was staffed by Cretan priests)¹¹ created a government that combined an hereditary kingship with body of advisors from the aristocracy and another that represented the rest of the people (the democracy), all being checks and balances on each other.

Polybius concludes by saying: "The result of this combination has been that the Lacedaemonians retained their freedom for the longest period of any people." ¹² and "...for securing unity among the citizens, for safeguarding the Laconian territory and preserving the liberty of Sparta inviolate, the legislation and provisions of Lycurgus were so excellent that I am forced to regard his wisdom as something superhuman." ¹³ His writings had a great influence upon Cicero, Charles de Montesquieu and the Founding Fathers of the United States. ³²

Plutarch records; "Amongst the many changes and alterations which Lycurgus made, the first and of greatest importance was the establishment of the senate, which having a power equal to the king's in matters of great consequence, and as Plato expresses it, allaying and qualifying the fiery genius of the royal office, gave steadiness and safety to the commonwealth. For the state, which before had no firm basis to stand upon, but leaned one while towards an absolute monarchy, when the kings had the upper hand, and another while towards a pure democracy, when the people had the better, found in this establishment of the senate a central weight, like ballast in a ship, which always kept things in a just equilibrium; the twenty-eight always adhering to the kings so far as to resist democracy, and on the other hand, supporting the people against the establishment of absolute monarchy." ⁵⁶

[edit] The Spartan Republic

Plato in The Laws records how the Cretans and the Spartans could not classify their own form of government:

Megillus the Spartan: Why sir, when I consider our Lacedaemonian constitution, I really cannot tell you offhand which would be the proper name for it. It actually seems to have its resemblances to an autocracy--in fact, the power of our ephors is astonishingly autocratic--and yet at times I think it looks like the most democratic of all societies. Again, it would be sheer paradox to deny that it is an aristocracy, while yet again a feature of it is a life monarchy, asserted by all mankind, as well as ourselves, to be the very oldest of such institutions.

Clinias the Cretan: I find myself in the same perplexity as you, Megillus. I am quite at a loss to identify our Cnossian constitution confidently with any of them.

The Athenian (Plato): That, my friends, is because you enjoy real constitutions, whereas the types we have specified are not constitutions, but settlements enslaved to the domination of some component section, each taking its designation from the dominant factor. ¹⁵

What is described above is the character of mixed government. Cicero labeled Sparta a Republic, i.e. respublica Lacedaemoniorum because it was mixta. ³⁹

Sparta is the site where in the first time in recorded Greek political life and in Western culture that a body of councillors took initiative and responsibility for presenting proposals and resolutions to an assembly. This occurred in the eighth or seventh century B.C. ¹⁶

Duties and responsibilities in the Spartan Republic are outlined in short verses called Rhetra (the constitution). These Rhetra are attributed to Lycurgus, the lawgiver of the Lacedaemonians. The Spartan society consisted of two kings from two different royal families called the Agiads and the Eurypontids. There also existed from former times a royal council called the Gerousia. Members of the Gerousia were appointed for life from the head of the aristocratic families. The council was made of 28 aristocratic members with two kings sitting in making a total of thirty. Upon this basis did Lycurgus add the Rhetra circa 776 B.C. At some time, an oligarchic body with members elected from the citizen body for one year was introduced called the Ephors. It was the Ephors who presided over an assembly of all the Spartan citizens called Spartiates which could only shout approval or disapproval of measures presented by the two bodies, the Gerousia and the Ephors. The whole legislative process required two legislative bodies and the whole body of citizens to affirm it. Furthermore, the Lycurgan constitution spelled out that if the demos passed crooked rhetra the gerousia and the kings were to veto them.

[edit] The Athenian Polity

In 594 B.C., Solon an inductee of the Seven Sages of Greece, was an admirer of Sparta and an adherent of Doric philosophy. He tried to copy the same principles and apply them to the Athenian polity. He divided the citizens into four classes, which had assemblies according to their assesment amount. This he called "Five-hundred-measure men". He instituted a leadership of Nine Archons. In between these two bodies, he created a senate house called the Council of the Aeropagus to have the "duty of guarding the laws". ⁴⁴ His reforms did not last his lifetime.

[edit] Greek character and mentality

(leave open for future development)

[edit] The Roman aspect

[edit] Cicero

The American constitution was influenced by Cicero. Cicero also terms the republic as a "mixed form of constitution". Michael Grant explicates the significance of Cicero: "This 'mixed' constitution, previously admired by the historian Polybius (to whom Cicero's debts were extensive), reappeared again and again in early discussions of the constitution of the United States of America, figuring prominently, for example, in John Adams Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States (1787). ¹⁷ Cicero was familiar with Dicaearchus of Messana who wrote a treatise on the mixed constitution of Sparta, the Tripoliticus. ¹⁸ Dicaerchus "was greatly admired by Cicero".

Cicero provides the knowledge train of this history of tri-political government:

"This type of discussion, which I am undertaking, derives most of its material from that other philosophical school, of which Plato, was the leader. The men who came after him, Aristotle and Heraclides of Pontus, another follower of Plato, threw light on the whole topic of national constitutions through the inquiries they conducted. Moreover, as you know, Theophrastus, Aristotle's disciple specialized in this type of investigation; and another of Aristotle's pupils, Dicaearchus, was active in the same field of study." ¹⁹

The modality of mixed government is explained by Cicero: "When however, instead, a group of men seize the state by exploiting their wealth or noble birth or some other resource, that is a political upheaval, though they call themselves conservatives. If, on the other hand, the people gain the supremacy, and the whole government is conducted according to their wishes, a state of affairs has arisen which is hailed as liberty, but is, in fact, chaos. But when there is a situation of mutual fear, with one person or on class fearing another, then because nobody has sufficient confidence in his won strength a kind of bargain is struck between the ordinary people and the men who are powerful." The result, in that case, is the mixed constitution which Scipio recommends. (It is footnoted as monarchy, oligarchy and democracy.) Which means that weakness, not nature or good intention, is the mother of justice." ²⁰

It is Cicero that popularized the idea of 'mixed' government and gave it wide currency, influencing many during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In De republica, he has Scipio observe that the common forms of government regularly degenerate and to avoid these cyclical movements, a fourth type of government is needed; one that is composed of all three. "He makes Laelius say that the compound form is best, in that it embodies the caritas of the king, the consilium of the aristocracy, and the libertas of the popular regime." ⁵⁹

[edit] The Roman republic

In 454 B.C., the Roman Senate sent a commission of three men to Greece to study and report on the legislation of Solon, Lycurgus, and other Greek constitutions. Upon its return to Rome, they choose ten men, called the Decemviri, to run Rome while they worked to formulate a new code for Rome. This code was adopted from the teachings of Solon and given the title "The Twelve Tables" which became the written constitution of the Roman Republic. ⁴³

A further connection between Rome and Sparta is that Plutarch records "...that many Laconian laws and customs appear amongst the Roman institutions" because of Numa Pompilius, a Sabine. The Sabines who lived in close proximity to the early Romans and who, in different periods intermarried with them, "declared themselves to be a colony of the Lacedæmonians". ⁵²

The Roman Republic was formed basically on a tri-partite form. There were two consuls who were equal in authority and who were elected for a year, the Roman Senate which was a broad based oligarchy of about fifty aristocratic families and the citizens who were organized into Roman assemblies (comitia) which were further delineated into curia, tribes and centuries.

The Senate would pass resolutions and magistrates would present them before their respective assemblies. The citizens would either approve or disapprove the resolutions. The consuls would then carry out the decree.

The Roman Republic was a by product of Romanitas.

[edit] Renaissance

In the 13th century, the city-state of Venice underwent many governmental changes in order to construct a classical republic. It restricted the power of the Doge, created a senate to represent the aristocratic families and a greater Council, upper middle class, which was their democratic body. ⁶⁰

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote "For this is the best form of polity, being partly kingdom, since there is one at the head of all; partly aristocracy, in so far as a number of persons are set in authority; partly democracy, that is, government by the people, in so far as the rulers can be chosen from the people, and the people have the right to choose their rulers." ⁶⁰ St. Thomas claimed that this form of government was in practice among the Hebrews:

"For Moses and his successors governed the people in such a way that each of them was rule over all, so that there was a kind of kingdom. Moreover, seventy-two men were chosen, who were the elders in virtue...so that there was an element of aristocracy. But it was a democratical government in so far as the rulers were chosen from all the people." ⁶⁰

{Many Protestant preachers in the following centuries would conclude the same and also choose the period of the Judges for this concept.⁷² A Protestant preacher, referencing the text of Deuteronomy {17.18-20} writes, "God gave to Moses for His people as their form of civil government a constitutional republic, a set of rules (laws) which no one, not even a majority of the people or a future king and his government, were to be above." ⁶¹)

St.Robert Bellarmine argued for mixed government "Because of the corruption of human nature we judge a monarchy blended from aristocracy and democracy better at this time." ³⁶

[edit] The British Commonwealth

Since the 9th century A.D., the earlist recorded evidence shows that English society was divided into three groups, orders, and/or estates: these were the oratores, those who pray; bellatores, those who fight; and laboratores, those who work. This tripartite community of priests, warriors and toilers naturally evolved into a mixed government in Britain, The British Commonwealth.⁷¹

There is no single document that forms the government but with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, England began her way in constitutional government. Binding down the King to obey a written law, the Magna Carta laid the groundwork for the House of Lords. In 1295, a Model Parliament was instituted made up of representatives of towns and villages. This first parliament was a combination of the three estates of Britain; the lords spiritual (bishops), the lords temporal, and the commons. The king was not considered an "estate"; he was above the three. In 1297, the parliament was split into two different houses, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. 1297 is the date of the beginning of mixed government in England.

Up to this time, England really had no political terminology. It was Greek scholars among the English that transported classical political terminology into the body politic. In the Tudor reign, John Aylmer saw the resemblance between his form of government and Sparta. Though he was on the fringe of English political thought, his insight would influence greatly future English political thought. In 1604, William Stoughton revived the theory of mixed government in his work As assertion for true and Christian church-policie and formed the basis of the Whig theory of mixed government. ³³

In 1648, radical Protestant anticlericalism spilled over into the political realm. Civil war broke out and Oliver Cromwell ended "mixed" government by abolishing the monarchy and the House of Lords. Though they called their government a "Commonwealth", by classical terminology, it was a democracy which soon devolved into the dictatorship of Cromwell.

After the defeat of Cromwell's son, a restoration took place returning England to her original design of mixed government; three estates governed under a king. Sir John Spelman's description of British government, as an example, would become the received version of the ancient consitution for the next two hundred years:

"The high court of Parliament therefore resembling a chair of three feet, the two houses make but two of the three, which without the third is lame and useless (as to making the law) but with the third become a firm and useful seat, and makes that sacred tripos from whence the civil oracles of our law are delivered." ⁷⁰

(For more information, see: History of the British constitution)

[edit] The American Republic

The history of mixed government in America goes back to the chief founders of New England. The early Massachusetts government was predominantly aristocratic. John Cotton and John Winthrop had an aversion to democracy. The Puritan preachers strongly believed that Scriptures only approved monarchy and aristocracy. "At best, Winthrop and his friends believed in what they called 'a mixt aristocracy'". ²⁴ (See section below on "Occurrences of the word".)

When the Articles of Confederation failed, a constitutional convention was convened to bring about a better form of federal government on 25 May 1787. Well schooled in the Classics, the convention members had a deep distrust of democracy. Governor Robert Morris of Pennsylvania believed that the Senate should be an aristocratic body composed of rich men holding office for life. Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from Massachusetts, declared that he "abhorred" democracy as "the worst of all political evils". Edmund Randolph, the governor of Virginia, believed that Virginia's Senate was designed as check against the tendencies of democracy. John Dickinson, another delegate, strongly urged that the United States Senate would be structured as nearly as possible to the House of Lords. ²⁵ Finally, Alexander Hamilton wanted the American government to mirror the British government and also proposed that the Senate be styled along the same lines as the House of Lords. ²⁶

Woodrow Wilson, in Division and Reunion (pg 12), wrote that "The Federal government was not by intention a democratic government. In plan and in structure it had been meant to check the sweep and power of popular majorities..." ²⁷ Professor John D. Hicks in his book on The Federal Union said "Such statements could be multiplied almost at will." ²⁸

"All agreed that society was divided along class lines and the "'the most common and durable source of factions'" was "'the various and unequal distribution of property'", as Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10. The common philosophy accepted by most of the delegates was that of balanced government. They wanted to construct a national government in which no single interest would dominate the others. Since the men in Philadelphia represented groups alarmed by the tendencies of the agrarian interests to interfere with property, they were primarily concerned with balancing the government in the direction of protection for property and business." ¹⁴

(For more information, see: United States Constitutional Convention)

[edit] Threefold structure

The tri-political concept of government and the tripartite form of mixed government (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) can be seen in the United States Constitution.

The Presidency is the element of the monarchical office. The United States Senate is the representation of the aristocracy. ⁴² The House of Representatives is the element of democracy, representing the people. The Senate was originally intended to be the representative body of the aristocracy and the landed gentry, as well as a representation of state's interests, as a corporate entity, in the Federal Government. Madison said, "The Senate, on the other hand, will derive its powers from the States, as political and coequal societies; and these will be represented on the principle of equality in the Senate, as they now are in the existing Congress." ²⁹ Senators were appointed by their respective State legislatures and were not voted on by the people. The Senate was originally designed to check the House of Representatives and the Presidential office and be the "guardian of the constitution".

This is the original principle of a bicameral legislative house; i.e. the senate and the representatives. In Article III, sec 4, it states, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government..." This means that all the state governments must have a bicameral house with the upper house being the seat of the aristocracy, not elected by the people.

[edit] Destruction of the upper house

Republics are converted to democracies by reformers and leaders who modify the constitution whereby the powers of the upper house, i.e. the Senate, are restricted and demoted.

Aristotle remarks that around 480 B.C., the Athenian polity was by slow stages growing into a democracy and about 462 B.C., the senate, the Council of the Areopagites, was stripped of its powers and the constitution relaxed turning the polity into a democracy.⁴⁵

In modern times, "The abolition of the Senate, however, is a reform which American socialists demand in common with the Socialists of several countries. Thus we find the British Social Democratic Party, the Belgian Labor Party, the French Socialist Party and several other Socialist parties, demanding the abolition of the Senate, or, in England, the House of Lords". ⁴¹

In America, the XVII amendment in 1913 fundamentally changed the character of the American government. It starts by saying that "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof,..."

It demolished the fundamental "checks and balances" that mark a republican form of government. The people elect both the Senators and the Representatives. In classical terminology and definition, the U.S. form of government was changed from a republic to a democracy.

In Britain, the House of Lords was also nullified when the law was changed making it possible that the Parliament (the assembly of the people) could overrule any veto of the House of Lords. The monarchy and the House of Lords are empty figureheads devoid of any real power. In classical terminology, Britain today is a democracy for the common people are the dominant factor.

[edit] Shift in meaning

Sometime and somehow, the word, republic lost its classical meaning and took on simply the meaning of self government. The revolutionaries of the French Revolution seeking to become "citizens" and run their own lives, gave themselves the title "Republicans".

Hence, since the French Revolution was a democratic movement, the words "democracy" and "republic" came to be intertwined. Republicanism in the French revolutionary meaning meant self-government with a constitution. In most books this is described as a democratic republic. It can also be described as constitutional democracy. Madison, in the Federalist Paper #39, uses the term "Republican branch" for the "House of Commons". In the twentieth century the word became even broader, with the French calling their parliamentary governments "Republics"; with the Spanish leftists calling their government a "Republic"; also with various autocratic governments (which would have been identified as monarchies in previous centuries) calling themselves "republics". For example, Mussolini's short-lived fascist state in northern Italy, which existed between 1943 and 1945, was called the "Italian Social Republic" (previous to the allied overthrow of his first regime, Fascist Italy had been a monarchy under king Victor Emmanuel III). Hitler once referred to the Third Reich as a "republic of the people" (eine völkische Republik), while Goebbels called it a "republican Fuhrer-state". ³⁴ This because they thought themselves the full counterpart of the French Revolution and thus democratic. ⁶³ Many other non-democratic governments also referred to their states as "republics".

[edit] Philosophy of mixed government

[edit] Occurrences of the word republic

Classical Antiquity

"The Hill quarter favoured democracy, the Plain, oligarchy, and those that lived by the Seaside stood for mixed sort of government, and so hindered either of the other parties from prevailing." ⁵¹

"...for he (Dion) designed to suppress the unlimited democratic government, which indeed is not a government, but, as Plato calls it, a market-place of governments, and to introduce and establish a mixed polity, on the Spartan and Cretan model, between a commonwealth and a monarchy, wherein an aristocratic body should preside, and determine all matters of greatest consequence;..." ⁵⁴

"For as it is the opinion of philosophers, that could you take away strife and opposition out of the universe, all the heavenly bodies would stand still, generation and motion would cease in the mutual concord and agreement of all things, so the Spartan legislator seems to have admitted ambition and emulation among the ingredients of his commonwealth, as the incentives of virtue, distinctly wishing that there should be some dispute and contention among his men of worth, and pronouncing the mere idle, uncontested, mutual compliance to unproved deserts to be but a false source of concord." ⁵⁵

Bible

"...remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth (Politeias) of Israel,..." New Testament, Eph., 2.12

"But our commonwealth (Politeuma) is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,..." New Testament, Phl., 3.20

Renaissance

Two principal causes, however, cemented this union: first, the inhabitants of Sparta were few in number...that by not permitting strangers to establish themselves in the republic, (refering to the xenelasia), they had neither oppurtunity of becoming corrupt..." ⁶⁶

Colonial American Literature and later

"Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Carthage were all republics; two of them, Athens and Carthage, of the commercial kind. ⁴⁷

"It was a fundamental maxim of the Lacedæmonian commonwealth that the post of admiral should not be conferred twice on the same person." ⁴⁸

"So far are the suggestions of Montesquieu from standing in opposition to a general Union of the States that he explicitly treats of a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC as the expedient for extending the sphere of popular government and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism". ⁴⁹

Apparently Americans outside of the convention shared the impression that they were getting a quasi monarchy. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it." ³⁵ (a reference to The Kyklos)

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands,..." Pledge of Allegiance of America

Modern scholarly works

"Polybius' theme is the imperium Romanum in expansion, and on it he sets the seal of Greek approval when he declares it to be the result, not of chance, but of manifest destiny working through the agency of her chosen people; adding, in characteristic fashion, that the success of the Romans is to be ascribed to the advantages of the 'mixed form' at the time fashionable in Greek political philosophy." ⁵⁰

"The histories of ancient Greece published at that period, though encapsulating a great deal of truthful historical data, were intended to provide an antidote to political liberalism, whilst pledging the encomium of the ‘harmonious’ British mixed constitution." ⁵³

"In a piece of high presbyterian cant that long was remembered, Cartwright wrote that the civil constitution ought to match the ecclesiastical, "even as the hangings to the house"...the architect had cribbed his plans from the decorator: he had built according to the classical-republican theory of mixed government." ⁶⁸

[edit] Occurrences of the word under the shift in meaning

"Outraged at the brutalities of the Republicans, aided by the Russians, in the Spanish Civil War, he (Jesuit Enrico Rosa) deplored the fact that hundreds of the clergy had been murdered; religious buildings had been burned; nuns raped; priests mutilated." ⁴⁶

[edit] Miscellanea

Prof. J. Salwyn Schapiro writes of one of the products of the French Revolution was that "it provided for a unicameral parliament, thereby eliminating the reactionary influence of an aristocratic upper house, as in England." ³⁷

Four states in the United States of America are not called states but commonwealths. They are Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Kentucky.

Plato titled his work, The Republic, "ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΑ" and the Romans translated this word as "Republic". This is not misleading. Not only is the proposed society structured in the Indo-European tripartite form of guardians (statesmen), warriors, and working men; but there are also many other similarities to the Lacedæmonian government. ⁶⁷
- The Indo-European trifunctionality is expressed in Greek educational philosophy which always considered forming the "whole man"; the tripartite form of man; the spiritual, the mental and the physical parts. In The Republic, Socrates brings this to play on the training of the philosopher. This is encapsulated in the last part of the Boy Scout Oath, "...to be physically fit, mentally awake, and morally straight".

A correlation to seeing mixed government as a ballast of a ship of Plutarch is Sir Thomas Aston defense of the lords-spiritual estate (c. 1641):

"The bishops, Aston claimed, have been the "ballast which have poised the barks of monarchy, to sail safely in the sea of the vulgar,...the medium 'twixt tyranny and anarchy". ⁶⁹

[edit] Related topics

[edit] References for classical republic definition

[edit] Bibliography for classical republic definition

[edit] External Links

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