ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Imperial-period constitutional theory - ideas about the possible range of different constitutional forms and their relative merits and problems. It presents the ideas of the structure and components of the good community. In some doctrinal perspectives, the issue of good, bad and possible constitutions, and of the mechanisms of government, had no importance at all. For Platonists, Stoics, and their fellow travellers, the highest form of government - the only one conceivable as the ideal for the largest political units - is generally agreed to be monarchy. Greek philosophical theory is co-opted by Philo to show that the quest for ideal kingship is not to be pursued among Emperors or within the Roman political system. The political sights of the individual from one of the provinces of the Empire could be set either at the local or at the Imperial level.
