Editing Aristocracy (section)

== Classical aristocracy ==
In [[ancient Greece]], the Greeks conceived aristocracy as rule by the best-qualified citizens—and often contrasted it favorably with [[monarchy]], rule by an individual. The term was first used by such ancient Greeks as [[Aristotle]] and [[Plato]], who used it to describe a system where only the best of the citizens, chosen through a careful process of selection, would become rulers, and [[hereditary monarchy|hereditary rule]] would actually have been forbidden, unless the rulers' children performed best and were better endowed with the attributes that make a person fit to rule compared with every other citizen in the polity.<ref name="Politics" /><ref name="Republic" /><ref name="Statesman" /> 

Hereditary rule in this understanding is more related to [[oligarchy]], a corrupted form of aristocracy where there is rule by a few, but not by the best. [[Plato]], [[Socrates]], Aristotle, [[Xenophon]], and the [[Spartans]] considered aristocracy (the ideal form of rule by the few) to be inherently better than the ideal form of rule by the many ([[politeia]]), but they also considered the corrupted form of aristocracy (oligarchy) to be worse than the corrupted form of democracy ([[mob rule]]).<ref name="Politics">{{cite book|author=Aristotle|title=Politics|url=http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.html}}</ref><ref name="Republic">{{cite book |author=Plato |title=The Republic |url=http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html}}</ref><ref name="Statesman">{{cite book |author=Plato |title=The Statesman |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1738/1738-h/1738-h.htm}}</ref><ref name="Polity">{{cite book |author=Xenophon |title=The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1178/1178-h/1178-h.htm}}</ref><ref name="Lycurgus">{{cite book |author=Plutarch |title=The Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans |chapter=The Life of Lycurgus |chapter-url=http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/lycurgus.html}}</ref> This belief was rooted in the assumption that the masses could only produce average policy, while the best of men could produce the best policy, if they were indeed the best of men.<ref name="Statesman" /> Later [[Polybius]] in his analysis of the [[Constitution of the Roman Republic|Roman Constitution]] used the concept of aristocracy to describe his conception of a [[republic]] as a [[mixed government|mixed form]] of government, along with democracy and monarchy in their conception from then, as a system of [[Separation of powers#Checks and balances|checks and balances]], where each element checks the excesses of the other.<ref name="Polybius">{{cite book |author=Polybius |title=The Histories |chapter=The Roman Republic Compared with Others, Book VI, Section 43 |chapter-url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44125/44125-h/44125-h.htm}}</ref>