Book 4
1290a
But it is not right to define democracy, as some people are in the custom of doing now, merely as the constitution in which the multitude is sovereign (for even in oligarchies and everywhere the majority is sovereign) nor oligarchy as the constitution in which a few are sovereign over the government. For if the whole number were thirteen hundred, and a thousand of these were rich and did not give the three hundred poor a share in the government although they were free-born and like themselves in all other respects, no one would say that this people was governed democratically; and similarly also if there were few poor, but these more powerful than the rich who were more numerous, no one would call such a government a democracy either, if the other citizens being rich had no share in the honors.
