ABSTRACT
Plato spoke for the view that society may be an object of rational study, and may be influenced by intelligent leadership. And Aristotle spoke for the view that society is defined by the relationship among free, morally equal members of society, that it must be governed by law, and that the government must be based on free discussion, not on power alone. As an ideal these viewpoints were to live on, even after the Greek city-states were assimilated into the Hellenistic empire, although after this assimilation it became even more difficult to realize these ideals. Aristotle and Plato understood that the type of politics they espoused presupposed a relatively small society. Aristotle thought that the city-state, the polis, had to have a reasonable size: not so small that it is dependent on others, and not so large that its inhabitants do not know one another and that discussion becomes difficult in large assemblies. As we know, Plato claimed (in The Laws) that the city-state should have 5,040 citizens (households). Plato and Aristotle both thought that this city-state should be an independent unit. But the individual Greek city-states were dependent on each other and on the world around them. And towards the end of the fourth century BC we have the formation of a new state: the Hellenistic empire. This transition from city-state to empire entailed changes on both the institutional and the intellectual levels.
