ARISTOCRACY, a form of government variously defined at different times and by different authorities (Gr. "best"; "power"). In Greek political philosophy, aris tocracy is the government of those who most nearly attain to the ideal of human perfection. Aristocracy is thus the govern ment 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, aris tocracy and commonwealth (7roXcrEia), 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 apea-roc will govern unselfishly, the oligarchs, being the few wealthy ("plutocracy" in modern terminology), will allow their personal interests to predominate.
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 (for an excellent example in Athenian politics, see ARCHON), whose triple prerogative—re ligious, 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 [qq.v.] ), now the sovereign power. From the earliest time, aristocracy became synonymous with oligarchy and the opposite of democracy.
The aristocracy of which we know most in ancient Greece was that of Athens prior to the reforms of Cleisthenes (q.v.), but all the Greek city-states passed through a period of aristo cratic 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 apcci roc). The relations existing between his slaves and the apwroe set up a philosophic doctrine, held even by Aristotle, that there were peoples who were inferior by nature (c/vo'a 5ovXoc) and adapted to submission; 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 apearot. 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 pur suits had cast off the stigma of inferiority (in Gr. (3avavata)• At the present day the sovereign power of a state no longer resides in an aristocracy, and the word has acquired a social rather than a political sense, being practically equivalent to "nobility."