The Persian Constitutional Debate

It was common in ancient political philosophy to present a classification scheme like the following. There are monarchies, in which one person rules. There are aristocracies, in which a few people rule. And then there are democracies, in which many people rule. Aristotle’s Politics makes a lot of this scheme, and its popularity continues through antiquity; it’s a pretty important part of Cicero’s De Re Publica.

So, where does it start? We observe it in Plato’s Statesman, and he’s somewhat critical. Why, he asks, should we care about how many people rule? Perhaps we should care instead about whether the ruler has the required expertise.

That’s an interesting criticism because it highlights what’s going on with the classificatory scheme: constitutions (politeiai), as the ancient Greeks termed the organizational framework of a city-state (polis), are distinguished by how many people rule.

But where did it start? Did it pre-date Plato? The answer is ‘yes, and we observe it first in Herodotus’.

This crucial bit of ancient political thought is first seen in the third book of Herodotus’ Histories.

Herodotus tells the story of a debate between three Persians: Otanes, Darius, and Megabyzus. After having gotten rid of an usurper, these three Persians are faced with the questions of who should rule the Persian Empire and of what this rule should look like. (Actually, the usurper is someone who is pretending to be, and has disguised himself as, the rightful emperor of Persia; it’s quite a colorful story!)

Herodotus reports that some people doubt that this debate really happened:

When the tumult had subsided and more than five days had elapsed, those who had risen against the Magians began to take counsel about the general state, and there were spoken speeches which some of the Hellenes do not believe were really uttered, but spoken they were nevertheless (III.80).

The episode that follows is called ‘the Persian Constitutional Debate’, and it’s a landmark moment in the history of political thought because it introduces themes (and the classificatory scheme that I mentioned earlier) that will influence the rest of intellectual history. And the earliness of this can’t be emphasized enough. Herodotus himself was born in 484 and died in 425 BCE, which means that his entire life, pretty much, pre-dates Plato (born in 428 BCE). And if anything like the Persian Constitutional Debate actually happened, then it happened a full century earlier in 522 BCE, right before Darius became the emperor of Persia.

Each of the characters defends a different view.

Otanes defends the rule of many. He begins by saying:

To me it seems best that no single one of us should henceforth be ruler, for that is neither pleasant nor profitable (III.80).

For him, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even if we took the best person, that person would still be corrupted:

Even the best of all men, if he were placed in this disposition, would be caused by it to change from his wonted disposition: for insolence is engendered in him by the good things which he possesses, and envy is implanted in man from the beginning; and having these two things, he has all vice: for he does many deeds of reckless wrong, partly moved by insolence proceeding from satiety, and partly by envy. And yet a despot at least ought to have been free from envy, seeing that he has all manner of good things. He is, however, naturally in just the opposite temper towards his subjects; for he grudges to the nobles that they should survive and live, but delights in the basest of citizens, and he is more ready than any other man to receive calumnies. Then of all things he is the most inconsistent; for if you express admiration of him moderately, he is offended that no very great court is paid to him, whereas if you pay court to him extravagantly, he is offended with you for being a flatterer (III.80).

The picture that emerges is that the ruler is quite dangerous: unpredictable, temperamental, vicious, and powerful.

Otanes instead prefers what he calls isonomia (literally, “equality before the law”). This is his term for democracy, a system in which power is dispersed so thoroughly that nobody is transformed in the way that happens when we give all that power to one person. This is the rule of many.

Then, Megabyzus gives his view. Megabyzus agrees with Otanes’ characterization of the rule of one person, but he doesn’t like the idea of the rule of many. For him, the crowd is senseless. And what was bad about the rule of one person was unrestrained power, and, well, an unrestrained crowd of people isn’t much better!

Megabyzus distrusts the people considerably. He seems to think of them as the mere unwashed masses who don’t know anything because they haven’t been taught anything.

His solution:

Let us choose a company of the best men, and to them attach the chief power; for in the number of these we shall ourselves also be, and it is likely that the resolutions taken by the best men will be the best (III.81).

Megabyzus views this as a compromise. Since he agrees with Otanes about the defects of the rule of one, he thinks that power needs to be dispersed and not given entirely to one person. But since the masses are not worthy of it, we can’t give power to everyone. The compromise: let us identify the best people and give them power. So, Megabyzus prefers the rule of a few people, which becomes known as aristocracy (which literally means ‘the power of the best’).

Lastly, there is Darius’ view. (Darius ends up becoming the emperor of Persia, so we can guess in advance that his position is tremendously important in this debate.)

Darius agrees with Megabyzus’ criticism of the rule of the many, but he thinks that Megabyzus has incorrectly characterized the rule of the few.

The problem with aristocracy, as Darius sees it, is that it encourages the growth of private ambition among the aristocrats. The rulers end up jostling for more and more power, inevitably and quickly leading to civil strife and turmoil. As he explains:

It happens often that many, while practising virtue with regard to the commonwealth, have strong private enmities arising among themselves; for as each man desires to be himself the leader and to prevail in counsels, they come to great enmities with one another, whence arise factions among them, and out of the factions comes murder, and from murder results the rule of one man; and thus it is shown in this instance by how much that is the best (III.82).

In other words, aristocracy ends up becoming monarchy anyway because the conflicts that one must endure during an aristocracy end up going in that direction. So, the stability that we seek is achieved only in a monarchy.

Even a democracy, he thinks, will in the end become a monarchy. There is too much corruption in a democracy as different factions emerge, and a strong ruler has to emerge to counteract the influence of these factions.

So, democracy too is unstable and pervaded by strife. Only a monarch can save us. As he concludes:

Finally, to sum up all in a single word, whence arose the liberty which we possess, and who gave it to us? Was it a gift of the people or of an oligarchy or of a monarch? I therefore am of opinion that we, having been set free by one man, should preserve that form of rule, and in other respects also that we should not annul the customs of our fathers which are ordered well; for that is not the better way (III.82).

So, it is one person who saves us both from aristocracy and democracy, and so it should be one person who rules. And besides, this is traditional and customary, so let’s not overturn traditional monarchic rule, says Darius.

This was clearly the decisive argument. The debate ends right away. Basically as soon as Darius’ speech ends, Herodotus says:

So when Otanes, who was desirous to give equality to the Persians, found his opinion defeated, he spoke to those assembled thus: "Partisans, it is clear that some one of us must become king…” (III.83).

The arguments presented by each speaker are fascinating in their own right. But even more important than the arguments themselves was the classificatory scheme that they fall into. Even though democracy, monarchy, and aristocracy don’t yet have the names that they will take on in the following century, in the time of Plato’s Statesman and Aristotle’s Politics, the idea that there are three ways of organizing states is crucial here. And the way we organize states can be classified along the lines of how many people rule. This sets up Plato’s criticism in the Statesman and, indeed, the debate continues long after that.

Douglas R. Campbell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Alma College. He is the author of An Introduction to the Ethics of Social Media. He is also the host of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast.

I appreciate all donations and shows of support. I will never put any material behind a paywall, but if you’d like to make a small donation, you can pay for a subscription to my Substack, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking this link.