(5) Oligarchy, or the rule of the few rich for the advantage of their own class, admits of several degrees and varieties. There is something of oligarchy wherever the enjoyment of public office is limited to those who have a certain amount of property: there is a larger element of oligarchy if the qualifying amount is fixed extremely high, or if the body of rulers fill up vacancies in their own number, or if offices descend from father to son: and the state is completely oligarchic if, besides all this, the law does not control the rulers but the rulers control the law[245]. We may detect a minute trace of oligarchy in Solon's constitution which excluded the poorest citizens from the archonship. Perfect oligarchies are exemplified in the Bacchiadæ of Corinth whose power was hereditary and set them above the law, so that they could order Labda's child to be killed, and in the Eupatridæ or hereditary nobles of Athens, whose oppressive rule necessitated Solon's reforms. Other instances of oligarchy are found in the exclusive rule of the patricians at Rome from 510 B.C. to 367 B.C., and in the monopoly of office which was enjoyed by the wealthiest class of the Romans between 150 B.C. and the time of Julius Cæsar. The most complete example of an oligarchy is found at Venice between 1310 and the fall of the republic in 1797. [245] Aristotle, _Politics_. Bekker IV. 5. 1-2 and IV. 6. 7-11. Welldon, pages 266-267, pages 271-272. (6) Tyranny, the rule of one man for his private interest, has been exemplified in the stories of the despots of Corinth and Athens. For other instances we must go to the great storehouse of illustrations of tyranny, the mediæval history of Italy where, besides the well known despots Eccelin da Romano, the Visconti, the Medici, and Cesar Borgia, there is such a host of minor tyrants that pages might be filled with a mere enumeration of their names. We are now in a position to make some general remarks on Aristotle's classification of polities--to see in some measure what it was, and what it was not.