I have now described, in a roughly chronological order, the different kinds of government which successively appeared in the Greek states from their infancy to their overthrow by Macedonia. I proceed to give clearer ideas both of the principles on which those governments were constructed and of the full meaning of certain terms employed in the foregoing descriptions of them, by stating the classification of polities which Aristotle gives us in his treatise on Politics. The time at which this work was written cannot be precisely determined, but part of it was certainly composed after, and other parts probably before, the battle of Chæroneia[225]. [225] The latest event referred to in the treatise is the murder of king Philip in 336 B.C. Aristotle died in 322 B.C. Aristotle observed all the governments that he knew, and as the result of his observation divided polities (that is to say, forms of government, or principles on which governments were constructed or might be constructed) into two classes, the right or normal polities in which government was carried on for the good of the whole community, and the perverted or abnormal polities in which it was conducted by the governors for their own private interest. Further, since he observed that in all the polities power was lodged in the hands either of one person, or of a few, or of the citizens in general, he subdivided each of his two classes into three species according as power belonged to one person, or to few, or to many. Among the normal polities the first species was characterized by the rule of one man for the good of all, and was known as βασιλεία or kingship: in the second the few best men ruled for the good of all, and it was known as ἀριστοκρατία or the rule of the best: the third, where a large number of citizens ruled for the good of all, deserved in a special and honourable sense the name of πολιτεία (Polity, or the rule of πολῖται--a Commonwealth), which was more loosely applied to all constitutions. Among the perverted polities the first species was tyranny, or the rule of one man for his private interest; the second oligarchy, or the selfish rule of the few (who in practice were always identical with the rich); and the third democracy, the rule of the many (or rather of the poor, since the poor are always the most numerous) for the selfish interest of their class[226]. [226] The classification is set forth in the _Politics_ III. 6, 7. Welldon, pp. 116-120. In III. 6. 1 Aristotle defines a polity as "an ordering or arrangement of a state in respect of its offices generally and especially of the supreme office." The character of the several species of polity is better understood from the observation of concrete instances than from mere definition.