Aristotle's Politeiai and Its Connection with the Nomina barbarika

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Gertrud DIETZE-MAGER

Abstract

The Politeiai and the Nomima barbarika are both fragmentary works by Aristotle (the Dikaiomata - for which a separate article is being prepared - being a third fragmentary work). They are collections of constitutions of mainly Hellenic poleis - and interestingly of Hellenic ethne - on the one hand, and of barbaric customs on the other. While from the Politeiai hundreds of fragments have come to us via the works of later authors, we only have a handful of fragments from the Nomima barbarika . The information about the total number of Politeiai in the collection varies greatly from source to source, going from 158 to 250. This has not been explained yet. The reason might be that at some stage the Politeiai and the Nomima barbarika were mixed up. There are indications that at one point in time and fairly soon after Aristotle’ s death a joint list of Politeiai and Nomima barbarika circulated, while at the same time both also existed as separate collections. This leads to the Politeiai being sometimes counted together with the Nomima barbarika which resulted in a higher number. The article reflects on the possible structure of the respective Politeiai and on their content as compared to the Nomima barbarika.  

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DIETZE-MAGER, G. (2017). Aristotle’s Politeiai and Its Connection with the Nomina barbarika. Mediterranea, International Journal on the Transfer of Knowledge, 2, 35–72. https://doi.org/10.21071/mijtk.v0i2.6715
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