Classical definition of republic

'''A Classical Republic''', (Greek: πολιτεια; Latin: respublica) is a "mixed constitutional government". This definition of the form of a republic existed from Classical Antiquity to the French Revolutionary period. Since that time, the term republic has been confused with the term democracy. A republic, in the classical form, is a type of government that is made up of a mixture of elements from three other types of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. There is the Spartan model, which is a tri-political government of kings, gerousia (aristocracy) and the assembly of all the males (democratic body). There is the Roman model that has a civilian head, and an aristocratic body which is the Senate and smaller assemblies representing the citizens. A republic is marked by a bicameral legislative body (the upper house being aristocratic) and by a written constitution that marks out the duties and responsibilities of the different bodies. The classical republic or mixed government was created and developed by the Doric Greeks on the island of Crete. ¹¹ It is a by-product of the special Doric Cretan mentality of syncretism (which "Crete" forms the central portion of the word).⁶² "What the Dorians endeavoured to obtain in a state was good order, or cosmos, the regular combination of different elements." ⁵⁸ It is the product in most cases of the citizen/soldier/farmer societies. Because of the character of the Anglo-Saxons, Britain in periods of her history naturally evolved into the structure of a classical republic mirroring the Spartan model. ¹ The old English word "Commonwealth" is same as the Latin word Res publica. ⁵⁷ The Founding Fathers of the United States modelled America along the same lines as her mother country, Britain, and the Roman Republic with her civilian head. Since the 1920's, there have been no governments that are mixed.

What is a state

The Greeks defined differing governments by their dominant factor. Aristotle writes: "Now a constitution (Politeia) is the ordering of a state (Poleos) in respect of its various magistracies, and especially the magistracy that is supreme over all matters. For the government is everywhere supreme over the state and the constitution is the government. ³ Our customary designation for a monarchy that aims at the common advantage is kingship; for a government of more than one yet only a few aristocracy, ...while when the multitude govern the state with a view to the common advantage, it is called by the name common to all the forms of constitution, constitutional government. ⁴ Where a government has only a king, the dominant factor, it is called a monarchy. Where a government has only a few nobles ruling, the dominant factor, it is called an aristocracy." Where the people are the dominant factor it is called a democracy. The Greek word for State is "Poleos". It denotes "society" in general. Aristotle writes "A collection of persons all alike does not constitute a state". ⁵ This Greek word, "Politeia" is then named for every government that includes numerous classes of people as citizens and a written law, a constitution, that defines and delegates rights and responsibilities of those classes. A republic is one that does not have a dominant factor". Hence, the phrase "democratic republic" is an oxymoron. A democracy is when the people are dominant and a republic is mixed government wherein there is no dominant element. Therefore to say a "democratic republic" is an oxymoron. The confusion lies in that the word "republic" is synonymous with "constitution". For that reason, it is better to say "constitutional democracy" other than "democratic republic".

The Greek aspect

"Politea" is a Greek word used by Aristotle in his book, Politics, to describe a republican form of government. Aristotle records that "some people assert that the best constitution must be a combination of all the forms of constitution, therefore praise the constitution of Sparta." ⁶ He further argues that the better the constitution is mixed, the more permanent it is. ⁷ The definition he gives for this kind of government is a "politean"; the form intermediate between them which is termed a republic, (mesi de touton in kalousi politeian) for the government is constituted from the class that bears arms. ⁸ Again, Aristotle states that constitutional government is, to put it simply, a mixture of oligarchy and democracy. ⁹ Polybius (as also Plato and Aristotle) distinguishes three types of governments: "kingship, aristocracy, democracy". Furthermore, like Aristotle, he goes on to state that the best constitution is that "which partakes of all these three elements". ¹⁰ "The first to construct a constitution--that of Sparta--on this principle", Lycurgus, with some inspiration from his fellow Doric brothers in Crete ¹¹ created a government that combined an hereditary kingship with body of advisors from the aristocracy and another that represented the rest of the people (the democracy), all being checks and balances on each other. Polybius concludes by saying: "The result of this combination has been that the Lacedaemonians retained their freedom for the longest period of any people." ¹² and "...for securing unity among the citizens, for safeguarding the Laconian territory and preserving the liberty of Sparta inviolate, the legislation and provisions of Lycurgus were so excellent that I am forced to regard his wisdom as something superhuman." ¹³ Plutarch records; "Amongst the many changes and alterations which Lycurgus made, the first and of greatest importance was the establishment of the senate, which having a power equal to the king's in matters of great consequence, and as Plato expresses it, allaying and qualifying the fiery genius of the royal office, gave steadiness and safety to the commonwealth. For the state, which before had no firm basis to stand upon, but leaned one while towards an absolute monarchy, when the kings had the upper hand, and another while towards a pure democracy, when the people had the better, found in this establishment of the senate a central weight, like ballast in a ship, which always kept things in a just equilibrium; the twenty-eight always adhering to the kings so far as to resist democracy, and on the other hand, supporting the people against the establishment of absolute monarchy." ⁵⁶

The Spartan republic

Plato in The Laws records how the Cretans and the Spartans could not classify their own form of government: Megillus the Spartan: Why sir, when I consider our Lacedaemonian constitution, I really cannot tell you offhand which would be the proper name for it. It actually seems to have its resemblances to an autocracy--in fact, the power of our ephors is astonishingly autocratic--and yet at times I think it looks like the most democratic of all societies. Again, it would be sheer paradox to deny that it is an aristocracy, while yet again a feature of it is a life monarchy, asserted by all mankind, as well as ourselves, to be the very oldest of such institutions. Clinias the Cretan: I find myself in the same perplexity as you, Megillus. I am quite at a loss to identify our Cnossian constitution confidently with any of them. The Athenian (Plato): That, my friends, is because you enjoy real constitutions, whereas the types we have specified are not constitutions, but settlements enslaved to the domination of some component section, each taking its designation from the dominant factor. ¹⁵ What is described above is the character of mixed government. Cicero labeled Sparta a Republic, i.e. respublica Lacedaemoniorum because it was mixta. ³⁹ Sparta is the site where in the first time in recorded Greek political life and in Western culture that a body of councillors took initiative and responsibility for presenting proposals and resolutions to an assembly. This occurred in the eighth or seventh century B.C. ¹⁶ Duties and responsibilities in the Spartan Republic are outlined in short verses called Rhetra (the constitution). These Rhetra are attributed to Lycurgus, the lawgiver of the Lacedaemonians. The Spartan society consisted of two kings from two different royal families called the Agiads and the Eurypontids. There also existed from former times a royal council called the Gerousia. Members of the Gerousia were appointed for life from the head of the aristocratic families. The council was made of 28 aristocratic members with two kings sitting in making a total of thirty. Upon this basis did Lycurgus add the Rhetra circa 776 B.C. At some time, an oligarchic body with members elected from the citizen body for one year was introduced called the Ephors. It was the Ephors who presided over an assembly of all the Spartan citizens called Spartiates which could only shout approval or disapproval of measures presented by the two bodies, the Gerousia and the Ephors. The whole legislative process required two legislative bodies and the whole body of citizens to affirm it. Furthermore, the Lycurgan constitution spelled out that if the demos passed crooked rhetra the gerousia and the kings were to veto them.

Athenian Politeia

In 594 B.C., Solon an inductee of the Seven Sages of Greece, was an admirer of Sparta and an adherent of Doric philosophy. He tried to copy the same principles and apply them to the Athenian polity. He divided the citizens into four classes, which had assemblies according to their assesment amount. This he called "Five-hundred-measure men". He instituted a leadership of Nine Archons. In between these two bodies, he created a senate house called the Council of the Aeropagus to have the "duty of guarding the laws". ⁴⁴ His reforms did not last his lifetime.

Greek Character and Outlook

From Cicero

The American constitution was influenced by Cicero. Cicero also terms the republic as a "mixed form of constitution". Michael Grant explicates the significance of Cicero: "This mixed constitution, previously admired by the historian Polybius (to whom Cicero's debts were extensive), reappeared again and again in early discussions of the constitution of the United States of America, figuring prominently, for example, in John Adams Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States (1787). ¹⁷ Cicero was familiar with Dicaearchus of Messana who wrote a treatise on the mixed constitution of Sparta, the Tripoliticus. ¹⁸ Dicaerchus "was greatly admired by Cicero". Cicero provides the knowledge train of this history of tri-political government: "This type of discussion, which I am undertaking, derives most of its material from that other philosophical school, of which Plato, was the leader. The men who came after him, Aristotle and Heraclides of Pontus, another follower of Plato, threw light on the whole topic of national constitutions through the inquiries they conducted. Moreover, as you know, Theophrastus, Aristotle's disciple specialized in this type of investigation; and another of Aristotle's pupils, Dicaearchus, was active in the same field of study." ¹⁹ The modality of mixed government is explained by Cicero: "When however, instead, a group of men seize the state by exploiting their wealth or noble birth or some other resource, that is a political upheaval, though they call themselves conservatives. If, on the other hand, the people gain the supremacy, and the whole government is conducted according to their wishes, a state of affairs has arisen which is hailed as liberty, but is, in fact, chaos. But when there is a situation of mutual fear, with one person or on class fearing another, then because nobody has sufficient confidence in his won strength a kind of bargain is struck between the ordinary people and the men who are powerful." The result, in that case, is the mixed constitution which Scipio recommends. (It is footnoted as monarchy, oligarchy and democracy.) Which means that weakness, not nature or good intention, is the mother of justice." ²⁰ It is Cicero that popularized the idea of mixed government and gave it wide currency, influencing many during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In De republica, he has Scipio observe that the common forms of government regularly degenerate and to avoid these cyclical movements, a fourth type of government is needed; one that is composed of all three. "He makes Laelius say that the compound form is best, in that it embodies the caritas of the king, the consilium of the aristocracy, and the libertas of the popular regime." ⁵⁹

The Roman republic

In 454 B.C., the Roman Senate sent a commission of three men to Greece to study and report on the legislation of Solon, Lycurgus, and other Greek constitutions. Upon its return to Rome, they choose ten men, called the Decemviri, to run Rome while they worked to formulate a new code for Rome. This code was adopted from the teachings of Solon and given the title "The Twelve Tables" which became the written constitution of the Roman Republic. ⁴³ A further connection between Rome and Sparta is that Plutarch records "...that many Laconian laws and customs appear amongst the Roman institutions" because of Numa Pompilius, a Sabine. The Sabines who lived in close proximity to the early Romans and who, in different periods intermarried with them, "declared themselves to be a colony of the Lacedæmonians". ⁵² The Roman Republic was formed basically on a tri-partite form. There were two consuls who were equal in authority and who were elected for a year, the Roman Senate which was a broad based oligarchy of about fifty aristocratic families and the citizens who were organized into Roman assemblies (comitia) which were further delineated into curia, tribes and centuries. The Senate would pass resolutions and magistrates would present them before their respective assemblies. The citizens would either approve or disapprove the resolutions. The consuls would then carry out the decree. The Roman Republic was a by product of Romanitas.

Renaissance

In the 13th century, the city-state of Venice underwent many governmental changes in order to construct a classical republic. It restricted the power of the Doge, created a senate to represent the aristocratic families and a greater Council, upper middle class, which was their democratic body. ⁶⁰ St. Thomas Aquinas wrote "For this is the best form of polity, being partly kingdom, since there is one at the head of all; partly aristocracy, in so far as a number of persons are set in authority; partly democracy, that is, government by the people, in so far as the rulers can be chosen from the people, and the people have the right to choose their rulers." ⁶⁰ St. Thomas claimed that this form of government was in practice among the Hebrews: :"For Moses and his successors governed the people in such a way that each of them was rule over all, so that there was a kind of kingdom. Moreover, seventy-two men were chosen, who were the elders in virtue...so that there was an element of aristocracy. But it was a democratical government in so far as the rulers were chosen from all the people." ⁶⁰ {Many Protestant preachers in the following centuries would conclude the same and also choose the period of the Judges for this concept. A Protestant preacher, referencing the text of Deuteronomy {17.18-20} writes, "God gave to Moses for His people as their form of civil government a constitutional republic, a set of rules (laws) which no one, not even a majority of the people or a future king and his government, were to be above." ⁶¹) St.Robert Bellarmine argued for mixed government "Because of the corruption of human nature we judge a monarchy blended from aristocracy and democracy better at this time." ³⁶

Mentality between republic and democracy

Aristotle does not use the word democracy and republic interchangeably; neither does Socrates in Plato's Republic. Aristotle defines a republic as the rule of law. "...it is preferable for the law to rule rather than any one of the citizens, and according to this same principle, even if it be better for certain men to govern, they must be appointed as guardians of the laws and in subordination to them;... the law shall govern seems to recommend that God and reason alone shall govern..." ²¹ Thomas Jefferson beseeched his countrymen to "bind men down from mischief by the chains of the constitution". ⁶¹ He further argues that a democracy puts the people above the law: "men ambitious of office by acting as popular leaders bring things to the point of the people's being sovereign even over the laws." ²² A democracy's mentality is that the people are sovereign and have become a law unto themselves wherefore the phrase vox populi, vox dei. The mentality of Despotism, as it can be seen in the Asian kings of the Pharoahs, Babylonians and Persians, Alexander the Great, his successors and the Roman Emperors starting with Julius Caesar, is that the king or Emperor makes the law so he is God. For the Spartan mindset, the Law is to rule not men collectively or singly as the Spartan King advises Xerxes at the Battle of Thermopylae, to wit, "The point is that although they're free, they're not entirely free; their master is the law, and they're far more afraid of this than your men are of you. At any rate, they do whatever the law commands...". ³⁸ A man's obedience, loyalty, and fidelity lie in the law and not in persons; the Spartan mindset being, "I'm obedient to the law but under no man". ⁶⁴ When the law loses respect, Aristotle says in V vii 7 that "constitutional government turns into a democracy". And in that situation, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle fear the possibility that "Tyranny, then arises from no other form of government than democracy." In more recent times, Huey Long said that when fascism came to the United States it would call itself "democracy". ²³ See The Kyklos.

The American republic

The history of mixed government in America goes back to the chief founders of New England. The early Massachusetts government was predominantly aristocratic. John Cotton and John Winthrop had an aversion to democracy. The Puritan preachers strongly believed that Scriptures only approved monarchy and aristocracy. "At best, Winthrop and his friends believed in what they called a mixt aristocracy". ²⁴ (See section below on "Occurrences of the word".) When the Articles of Confederation failed, a constitutional convention was convened to bring about a better form of federal government on 25 May 1787. Curiously, the popularity of democracy among the men who attended the Convention was not as high as would be expected. Governor Robert Morris of Pennsylvania believed that the Senate should be an aristocratic body composed of rich men holding office for life. Elbridge Gerry, a delegate from Massachusetts, declared that he "abhorred" democracy as "the worst of all political evils". Edmund Randolph, the governor of Virginia, believed that Virginia's Senate was designed as check against the tendencies of democracy. John Dickinson, another delegate, strongly urged that the United States Senate would be structured as nearly as possible to the House of Lords. ²⁵ Finally, it appears Alexander Hamilton wanted the American government to mirror the British government and also proposed that the Senate be styled along the same lines as the House of Lords. ²⁶ Woodrow Wilson, in Division and Reunion (pg 12), wrote that "The Federal government was not by intention a democratic government. In plan and in structure it had been meant to check the sweep and power of popular majorities..." ²⁷ Professor John D. Hicks in his book on The Federal Union said "Such statements could be multiplied almost at will." ²⁸ "All agreed that society was divided along class lines and the "'the most common and durable source of factions'" was "'the various and unequal distribution of property'", as Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10. The common philosophy accepted by most of the delegates was that of balanced government. They wanted to construct a national government in which no single interest would dominate the others. Since the men in Philadelphia represented groups alarmed by the tendencies of the agrarian interests to interfere with property, they were primarily concerned with balancing the government in the direction of protection for property and business." ¹⁴

Threefold structure

The tri-political concept of government and the tripartite form of mixed government (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) can be seen in the United States Constitution. The Presidency is the element of the monarchical office. The United States Senate is the representation of the aristocracy. ⁴² The House of Representatives is the element of democracy, representing the people. The Senate was originally intended to be the representative body of the aristocracy and the landed gentry, as well as a representation of state's interests, as a corporate entity, in the Federal Government. Madison said, "The Senate, on the other hand, will derive its powers from the States, as political and coequal societies; and these will be represented on the principle of equality in the Senate, as they now are in the existing Congress." ²⁹ Senators were appointed by their respective State legislatures and were not voted on by the people. The Senate was originally designed to check the House of Representatives and the Presidential office and be the "guardian of the constitution". This is the original principle of a bicameral legislative house; i.e. the senate and the representatives. In Article III, sec 4, it states, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government..." This means that all the state governments must have a bicameral house with the upper house being the seat of the aristocracy, not elected by the people.

Destruction of the upper house

Republics are converted to democracies by reformers and leaders who modify the constitution whereby the powers of the upper house, i.e. the Senate, are restricted and demoted. Aristotle remarks that around 480 B.C., the Athenian polity was by slow stages growing into a democracy and about 462 B.C., the senate, the Council of the Areopagites, was stripped of its powers and the constitution relaxed turning the polity into a democracy.⁴⁵ In modern times, "The abolition of the Senate, however, is a reform which American socialists demand in common with the Socialists of several countries. Thus we find the British Social Democratic Party, the Belgian Labor Party, the French Socialist Party and several other Socialist parties, demanding the abolition of the Senate, or, in England, the House of Lords". ⁴¹ In America, the XVII amendment in 1913 fundamentally changed the character of the American government. It starts by saying that "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof,..." It demolished the fundamental "checks and balances" that mark a republican form of government. The people elect both the Senators and the Representatives. In classical terminology and definition, the U.S. form of government was changed from a republic to a democracy. In Britain, the House of Lords was also nullified when the law was changed making it possible that the Parliament (the assembly of the people) could overrule any veto of the House of Lords.

Philosophy of Mixed Government

The Cretans and Spartans, being the most warlike of the tribes of the Greeks and very family oriented, based their idea of mixed government on the tripartite form exhibited in both military and family institutions. Both of these institutions are of one body but composed of three different classes or persons. Hierarchy is throughout nature; to the classical mind, societies are no different. Aristocracy is an important element for mixed government. The word aristocracy is the combination of two Greek words: Aristos means "the best" and kratos means "power". Kratos is the same ending as in the word "democracy". Aristocracy or mid-level management is needed and present in every human institution. An example of this is the military; between the top commander and the regular soldier is an intermediate body called the non-commissioned officers. The non-commissioned officers are soldiers who are given positions of leadership due to merit and worth; in other words, an aristocracy. Intermediate bodies are necessary in every human institution such as already mentioned; the armies; factories, foremen; hospitals, nurses; churches, priests and deacons; etc. The aristocracy is the seat of wisdom, prudence and experience. Plato argued that "Persia and Athens show the fundamental elements of all political life exaggerated as far as possible in one direction and the other (the one monarchical, the other democratic)...the merit of Sparta is that she has been trying to blend them, and has therefore maintained herself for a long time." ³⁰ A republic is really the Golden Mean between the extremes of democracy and Asian monarchical despotism. Consequently, a republic is basically formed around the middle class in cooperation with the upper classes. Again, the middle class is the "golden mean" between the lower and upper classes. Werner Jaeger argues that Socrates and Plato believed that "A state is never power alone, but the spiritual structure of the man whom it represents". ³¹ The forms of government are physical manifestations of the spiritual condition of the state, which Socrates and Plato saw through the principle of Macrocosm/microcosm. Socrates observed that the "character of the individual passes into the state". ⁶⁵ As a republic is the golden mean, so it is that it's individuals must also be in possession of the golden mean; ones that have balance, harmony and symmetry. It is virtuous individuals that make up a republic; virtue being, as Aristotle describes it, as the "golden mean" between the extremes of excess and deficiency in character. Virtue along with religion and piety was the paramount characteristics of Doric Crete, Sparta, Early Republican Rome, Victorian England and Colonial America. In the understanding of this principle, the Spartans endeavored greatly in the education of youth because the virtue of obedience (in Greek, dikaiosyne) and other virtues is only gained in the habitual practice thereof. Like the iron they beat into their weapons, they beat their boys into manhood in order to perpetrate their government by law.

Shift in meaning

Sometime and somehow, the word, republic lost its classical meaning and took on simply the meaning of self government. The revolutionaries of the French Revolution seeking to become "citizens" and run their own lives, gave themselves the title "Republicans". Hence, since the French Revolution was a democratic movement, the words "democracy" and "republic" came to be intertwined. Republicanism in the French revolutionary meaning meant self-government with a constitution. In most books this is described as a democratic republic. It can also be described as constitutional democracy. Madison, in the Federalist Paper #39, uses the term "Republican branch" for the "House of Commons". In the twentieth century the word became even broader, with the French calling their parliamentary governments "Republics"; with the Spanish leftists calling their government a "Republic"; also with various autocratic governments (which would have been identified as monarchies in previous centuries) calling themselves "republics". For example, Mussolini's short-lived fascist state in northern Italy, which existed between 1943 and 1945, was called the "Italian Social Republic" (previous to the allied overthrow of his first regime, Fascist Italy had been a monarchy under king Victor Emmanuel III). Hitler once referred to the Third Reich as a "republic of the people" (''eine völkische Republik''), while Goebbels called it a "republican Fuhrer-state". ³⁴ This because they thought themselves the full counterpart of the French Revolution and thus democratic. ⁶³ Many other non-democratic governments also referred to their states as "republics".

Occurrences of the word republic

• "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands,..." Pledge of Allegiance of America

• Apparently Americans outside of the convention shared the impression that they were getting a quasi monarchy. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it." ³⁵ (a reference to The Kyklos)

• "But our commonwealth (Politeuma) is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,..." New Testament, Phil, 3.20

• "...remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth (Politeias) of Israel,..." New Testament, Eph, 2.12

• "Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Carthage were all republics; two of them, Athens and Carthage, of the commercial kind. ⁴⁷

• Two principal causes, however, cemented this union: first, the inhabitants of Sparta were few in number...that by not permitting strangers to establish themselves in the republic, (refering to the xenelasia), they had neither oppurtunity of becoming corrupt..." ⁶⁶

• "It was a fundamental maxim of the Lacedæmonian commonwealth that the post of admiral should not be conferred twice on the same person." ⁴⁸

• "For as it is the opinion of philosophers, that could you take away strife and opposition out of the universe, all the heavenly bodies would stand still, generation and motion would cease in the mutual concord and agreement of all things, so the Spartan legislator seems to have admitted ambition and emulation among the ingredients of his commonwealth, as the incentives of virtue, distinctly wishing that there should be some dispute and contention among his men of worth, and pronouncing the mere idle, uncontested, mutual compliance to unproved deserts to be but a false source of concord." ⁵⁵

• "So far are the suggestions of Montesquieu from standing in opposition to a general Union of the States that he explicitly treats of a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC as the expedient for extending the sphere of popular government and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism". ⁴⁹

• "The Hill quarter favoured democracy, the Plain, oligarchy, and those that lived by the Seaside stood for mixed sort of government, and so hindered either of the other parties from prevailing." ⁵¹

• "...for he (Dion) designed to suppress the unlimited democratic government, which indeed is not a government, but, as Plato calls it, a market-place of governments, and to introduce and establish a mixed polity, on the Spartan and Cretan model, between a commonwealth and a monarchy, wherein an aristocratic body should preside, and determine all matters of greatest consequence;..." ⁵⁴

• "Polybius' theme is the imperium Romanum in expansion, and on it he sets the seal of Greek approval when he declares it to be the result, not of chance, but of manifest destiny working through the agency of her chosen people; adding, in characteristic fashion, that the success of the Romans is to be ascribed to the advantages of the mixed form at the time fashionable in Greek political philosophy." ⁵⁰

• "The histories of ancient Greece published at that period, though encapsulating a great deal of truthful historical data, were intended to provide an antidote to political liberalism, whilst pledging the encomium of the ‘harmonious’ British mixed constitution." ⁵³

Occurrences of the word under the shift in meaning

• "Outraged at the brutalities of the Republicans, aided by the Russians, in the Spanish Civil War, he (Jesuit Enrico Rosa) deplored the fact that hundreds of the clergy had been murdered; religious buildings had been burned; nuns raped; priests mutilated." ⁴⁶

Miscellanea

• Prof. J. Salwyn Schapiro writes of one of the products of the French Revolution was that "it provided for a unicameral parliament, thereby eliminating the reactionary influence of an aristocratic upper house, as in England." ³⁷

• Four states in the United States of America are not called states but commonwealths. They are Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Kentucky.

Related topics

Family/State paradigm

References

Due to page length, References have moved to their own article. See References for classical republic definition

Bibliography

• The Republic, The Laws, Plato
• Politics Aristotle
• De republica Cicero
• Federalist Papers
• Cicero, On Government, Michael Grant, Penguin Classics, NY, l993.
• Harpers Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, edited by Harry Thurston Peck, Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., 1896, l962. (See entry Sparta pg 1483.)
• Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (see entries on republic, Roman and Republic{dialogue of Plato})
• Republics and Democracies, "The New American", June 30, 1986.
• The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas, edited w/ introduction by Dino Bigongiari, Hafner Publishing Company, NY, 1953. Subsection titled: Mixed Government pp xxix-xxxi.
• The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli, trans. & ed. by Robert M. Adams, W.W. Norton & Co., NY, 1992. Machiaveli Balanced Government
• Polybius and the Founding Fathers: the separation of powers, Marshall Davies Lloyd.
• Mixed Government and Classical Pastoralism, David H. Kelly, Professor Emeritus, Department of Classics and General Humanities, Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043.
• De Republica Anglorum; the Manner of Government or Policie of the Realme of England, Sir Thomas Smyth, 1583. (England is described under Queen Elizabeth I as a republic.)
• The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity, Kurt Von Fritz, New York, 1954.
• The Political Science of John Adams: A Study in the Theory of Mixed Government and the Bicameral System, Correa M. Walsh, New York, 1915.
• Ideal Government and The Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages, James Blythe
• Dangerous Positions; Mixed Government, the Estates of the Realm, and the Making of the "Answer to the xix propositions", Michael Mendle, University of Alabama Press, 1985.

A more complete bibliography can be found here It is suggested to use of the Loeb Classical Library of Harvard University Press for technical purposes. The original language and the English translation are placed side by side.

Bibliography on US Classical Republican Character

• Democracy and Liberty, William E. H. Lecky, Longmans, Green, NY, l896. pp. 66-67.
• The Framing of the Constitution of the United States, Max Farrand, 1913.
• The Fathers of the Constitution, l921.
• The Making of the Constitution, Charles Warren, l928.
• The Constitution of the United States, R. L. Schuyler, l923.

External Links

• NotaBene Republican Liberty

Category:Classical studiesCategory:Ancient RomeCategory:PoliticsCategory: Forms of governmentCategory:Ancient GreeceCategory:Crete

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