Aristotle (384–322 BC) was born at Stagira in northern Greece, studied for twenty years in Plato's Academy, tutored the young Alexander of Macedon, and in 335 BC founded his own school, the Lyceum, at Athens. Ancient sources credit him and his school with collecting the constitutions of 158 Greek states as material for political study; The Athenian Constitution is the only one to survive in substantial form. Scholars still debate whether Aristotle wrote it himself or a pupil wrote it under his direction. His Politics, Ethics, Rhetoric and works on logic and nature shaped Western and Islamic thought for two thousand years.
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“So I stood with my shield outstretched, and both were safe in its sight, And I would not that either should triumph, when the triumph was not with right.”
The Athenian Constitution (Athenaion Politeia) is a short treatise in two parts on the government of Athens, written in the 330s or 320s BC by Aristotle or by a member of his school as one of the 158 constitutions the Lyceum is said to have collected. It was known only from quotations until a papyrus roll, copied on the back of farm accounts from Roman Egypt, was acquired by the British Museum and identified by Frederic G. Kenyon, who published the text and his translation in 1891.