[1275a] so that we have to consider who is entitled to the name of citizen, and what the essential nature of a citizen is. For there is often a difference of opinion as to this: people do not all agree that the same person is a citizen; often somebody who would be a citizen in a democracy is not a citizen under an oligarchy. [loeb_subsection_3] We need not here consider those who acquire the title of citizen in some exceptional manner, for example those who are citizens by adoption; and citizenship is not constituted by domicile in a certain place (for resident aliens and slaves share the domicile of citizens), nor are those citizens who participate in a common system of justice, conferring the right to defend an action and to bring one in the law-courts (for this right belongs also to the parties under a commercial treaty, as they too can sue and be sued at law,—or rather, in many places even the right of legal action is not shared completely by resident aliens, but they are obliged to produce a patron, so that they only share in a common legal procedure to an incomplete degree), [loeb_subsection_4] but these are only citizens in the manner in which children who are as yet too young to have been enrolled in the list and old men who have been dischargedThis seems to imply that aged citizens were excused attendance at the assembly and law-courts, as well as military service must be pronounced to be citizens in a sense, yet not quite absolutely, but with the added qualification of under age in the case of the former and superannuated or some other similar term (it makes no difference, the meaning being clear) in that of the latter. For we seek to define a citizen in the absolute sense, and one possessing nodisqualification of this nature that requires a correcting term, since similar difficulties may also be raised, and solved, about citizens who have been disfranchised or exiled. A citizen pure and simple is defined by nothing else so much as by the right to participate in judicial functions and in office. But some offices of government are definitely limited in regard to time, so that some of them are not allowed to be held twice by the same person at all, or only after certain fixed intervals of time; other officials are without limit of tenure, for example the juryman and the member of the assembly.[loeb_subsection_5] It might perhaps be said that such persons are not officials at all, and that the exercise of these functions does not constitute the holding of office;Or, amending the text, and yet that it is absurd to deny the title of citizen to those— and yet it is absurd to deny the title of official to those who have the greatest power in the state. But it need not make any difference, as it is only the question of a name, since there is no common name for a juryman and a member of the assembly that is properly applied to both. For the sake of distinction therefore let us call the combination of the two functions office without limitation. Accordingly we lay it down that those are citizens who participate in office in this manner.
Such more or less is the definition of citizen that would best fit with all of those to whom the name is applied.[loeb_subsection_6] But it must not be forgotten that things in the case of which the things to which they are related differ in kind, one of them being primary, another one secondary and so on, either do not contain a common nature at all, as being what they are, or barely do so.The meaning of this abstract principle is most easily seen from its application here: if states are generically different from one another, membership of a state, citizenship, can hardly be a single thing, and come under a single definition. Now we see that constitutions differ from one another in kind, and that some are subsequent and others prior;
[1275b] for erroneous and divergent forms are necessarily subsequent to correct forms (in what sense we employ the terms divergent of constitutions will appear later). Hence the citizen corresponding to each form of constitution will also necessarily be different. Therefore the definition of a citizen that we have given applies especially to citizenship in a democracy; under other forms of government it may hold good, but will not necessarily do so. [loeb_subsection_7] For in some states there is no body of common citizens, and they do not have the custom of a popular assembly but councils of specially convened members, and the office of trying law-suits goes by sections—for example at Sparta suits for breach of contract are tried by different ephors in different cases, while cases of homicide are tried by the ephors and doubtless other suits by some other magistrate. The same method is notThe negative is a conjectural insertion, cf. 1273a 20. followed at Carthage, where certain magistrates judge all the law-suits. [loeb_subsection_8] But still, our definition of a citizen admits of correction. For under the other forms of constitution a member of the assembly and of a jury-court is not an official without restriction, but an official defined according to his office; either all of them or some among them are assigned deliberative and judicial duties either in all matters or in certain matters. What constitutes a citizen is therefore clear from these considerations: we now declare that one who has the right to participate in deliberative or judicial office is a citizen of the statein which he has that right, and a state is a collection of such persons sufficiently numerous, speaking broadly, to secure independence of life.
[loeb_subsection_9] But in practice citizenship is limited to the child of citizens on both sides, not on one side only, that is, the child of a citizen father or of a citizen mother; and other people carry this requirement further back, for example to the second or the third preceding generation or further. But given this as a practical and hasty definition, some people raise the difficulty, How will that ancestor three or four generations back have been a citizen? GorgiasSicilian orator and nihilistic philosopher, visited Athens 427 B.C. of Leontini therefore, partly perhaps in genuine perplexity but partly in jest, said that just as the vessels made by mortar-makers were mortars, so the citizens made by the magistrates were Larisaeans, since some of the magistrates were actually larisa-makers. Larisa, a city in Thessaly, was famous for the manufacture of a kind of kettle called larisa. But it is really a simple matter; for if they possessed citizenship in the manner stated in our definition of a citizen, they were citizens—since it is clearly impossible to apply the qualification of descent from a citizen father or mother to the original colonizers or founders of a city.
[loeb_subsection_10] But perhaps a question rather arises about those who were admitted to citizenship when a revolution had taken place, for instance such a creation of citizens as that carried outIn 509 B.C. at Athens by Cleisthenes after the expulsion of the tyrants, when he enrolled in his tribes many resident aliens who had been foreigners or slaves. The dispute as to these is not about the fact of their citizenship, but whether they received it wrongly or rightly. Yet even as to this one might raise the further question,