ABSTRACT
Conflicts among aristocrats can divide major empires from each other, they can take place within empires, between or within factions and cliques or between and even within clans or families—nor are these different arenas of conflict clearly distinguishable from each other. The international wars of aristocratic empires are also difficult to distinguish from their domestic or civil wars with respect to the stakes of these conflicts. Although wars of conquest and liberation are a common and the most obvious form that aristocratic "foreign" politics takes, it is not the only one. A special form of treaty is marriage. It is another way of acquiring power and land, that is, of carrying on and settling conflicts among aristocrats, characteristic of the fact that aristocratic politics is often family politics. If rulers are their empires, then family relations between rulers are relations between their empires, and a family union through marriage becomes an alliance or even a territorial union between empires.
