ARISTOBULUS, of Cassandreia, Greek historian, accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaigns, of which he wrote an account, mainly geographical and ethnological. His work was largely used by Arrian.
Müller, Historicorum Graecorum Fragmenta; Schöne, De Rerum Alexandri Magni Scriptoribus (1870).
ARISTOBULUS, of Paneas (c. 160 B.C.), a Jewish philosopher of the Peripatetic school. Gercke places him in the time of Ptolemy X. Philometor (end of 2nd century), Anatolius in that of Ptolemy II. Philadelphus, but the middle of the 2nd century is more probable. He was among the earliest of the Jewish-Alexandrian philosophers whose aim was to reconcile and identify Greek philosophical conceptions with the Jewish religion. Only a few fragments of his work, apparently entitled Commentaries on the Writings of Moses, are quoted by Clement, Eusebius and other theological writers, but they suffice to show its object. He endeavoured to prove that early Greek philosophers had borrowed largely from certain parts of Scripture, and quoted from Linus, Orpheus, Musaeus and others, passages which strongly resemble the Mosaic writings. These passages, however, were obvious forgeries. It is suggested that the name Aristobulus was taken from 2 Macc. i. 10. The hypothesis (Schlatter, Das neugefundene hebräische Stück des Sirach) that it was from Aristobulus that the philosophy of Ecclesiasticus was derived is not generally accepted.
See E. Schürer, History of the Jewish People (Eng. trans., 1890-1891), ii. 237 seq.; article [Alexandrian School]: Philosophy; and s.v. “Aristobulus” in Jewish Encyclopedia (Paul Wendland).
ARISTOCRACY (Gr. ἄριστος, best; κρατία, government), etymologically, the “rule of the best,” a form of government variously defined and appreciated at different times and by different authorities. In Greek political philosophy, aristocracy is the government of those who most nearly attain to the ideal of human perfection. Thus Plato in the Republic advocates the rule of the “philosopher-king” who, in the social scheme, is analogous to Reason in the intellectual, and alone is qualified to control the active principles, i.e. the fighting population and the artisans or workers. Aristocracy is thus the government by those who are superior both morally and intellectually, and, therefore, govern directly in the interests of the governed, as a good doctor works for the good of his patient. Aristotle classified good governments under three heads—monarchy, aristocracy and commonwealth πολιτεία, to which he opposed the three perverted forms—tyranny or absolutism, oligarchy and democracy or mob-rule. The distinction between aristocracy and oligarchy, which are both necessarily the rule of the few, is that whereas the few ἄριστοι will govern unselfishly, the oligarchs, being the few wealthy (“plutocracy” in modern terminology), will allow their personal interests to predominate. While Plato’s aristocracy might be the rule of the wise and benevolent despot, Aristotle’s is necessarily the rule of the few.
Historically aristocracy develops from primitive monarchy by the gradual progressive limitation of the regal authority. This process is effected primarily by the nobles who have hitherto formed the council of the king (an excellent example will be found in Athenian politics, see [Archon]), whose triple prerogative— religious, military and judicial—is vested, e.g., in a magistracy of three. These are either members of the royal house or the heads of noble families, and are elected for life or periodically by their peers, i.e. by the old royal council (cf. the Areopagus at Athens, the Senate at Rome), now the sovereign power. In practice this council depends primarily on a birth qualification, and thus has always been more or less inferior to the Aristotelian ideal; it is, by definition, an “oligarchy” of birth, and is recruited from the noble families, generally by the addition of emeritus magistrates. From the earliest times, therefore, the word “aristocracy” became practically synonymous with “oligarchy,” and as such it is now generally used in opposition to democracy (which similarly took the place of Aristotle’s πολιτεία), in which the ultimate sovereignty resides in the whole citizen body.
The aristocracy of which we know most in ancient Greece was that of Athens prior to the reforms of Cleisthenes, but all the Greek city-states passed through a period of aristocratic or oligarchic government. Rome, between the regal and the imperial periods, was always more or less under the aristocratic government of the senate, in spite of the gradual growth of democratic institutions (the Lat. optimates is the equivalent of ἄριστοι). There is, however, one feature which distinguishes these aristocracies from those of modern states, namely, that they were all slave-owning. The original relation of the slave-population, which in many cases outnumbered the free citizens, cannot always be discovered. But in some cases we know that the slaves were the original inhabitants who had been overcome by an influx of racially different invaders (cf. Sparta with its Helots); in others they were captives taken in war. Hence even the most democratic states of antiquity were so far aristocratic that the larger proportion of the inhabitants had no voice in the government. In the second place this relation gave rise to a philosophic doctrine, held even by Aristotle, that there were peoples who were inferior by nature and adapted to submission (Φύσει δοῦλοι); such people had no “virtue” in the technical civic sense, and were properly occupied in performing the menial functions of society, under the control of the ἄριστοι. Thus, combined with the criteria of descent, civic status and the ownership of the land, there was the further idea of intellectual and social superiority. These qualifications were naturally, in course of time, shared by an increasingly large number of the lower class who broke down the barriers of wealth and education. From this stage the transition is easy to the aristocracy of wealth, such as we find at Carthage and later at Venice, in periods when the importance of commerce was paramount and mercantile pursuits had cast off the stigma of inferiority (in Gr. βαναυσία).
It is important at this stage to distinguish between aristocracy and the feudal governments of medieval Europe. In these it is true that certain power was exercised by a small number of families, at the expense of the majority. But under this system each noble governed in a particular area and within strict limitations imposed by his sovereign; no sovereign authority was vested in the nobles collectively.