Book 5
1303b
Factions arise therefore not about but out of small matters; but they are carried on about great matters. And even the small ones grow extremely violent when they spring up among men of the ruling class,as happened for example at Syracuse in ancient times. For the constitution underwent a revolution as a result of a quarrel that arosePerhaps under the oligarch of the Gamori, overthrown by the people and followed by Gelo’s tyranny, 485 B.C. between two young men, who belonged to the ruling class, about a love affair. While one of them was abroad the other who was his comrade won over the youth with whom he was in love, and the former in his anger against him retaliated by persuading his wife to come to him; owing to which they stirred up a party struggle among all the people in the state, enlisting them on their sides. On account of this it is necessary to guard against such affairs at their beginning, and to break up the factions of the leaders and powerful men; for the error occurs at the beginning, andthe beginning as the proverb says is half of the whole, so that even a small mistake at the beginning stands in the same ratioi.e. the ratio of being a half to the whole: a bad start does as much to harm as all the later mistakes put together. to mistakes at the other stages. And in general the faction quarrels of the notables involve the whole state in the consequences, as happened at HestiaeaAlso called Oreus, see 1303a 18. after the Persian wars, when two brothers quarrelled about the division of their patrimony; for the poorer of the two, on the ground that the other would not make a return of the estate and of the treasure that their father had found, got the common people on his side, and the other possessing much property was supported by therich. And at Delphi the beginning of all the factions that occurred afterwards was when a quarrel arose out of a marriage;
