La justice des oligarques et l’invention de l’aristocratie / The justice of oligarchs and the invention of aristocracy

Résumé

When Aristotle examines the causes of stasis in cities in his Politics, he makes the feeling of injustice the primary cause of revolutions and establishes that democrats and oligarchs are at odds over the definition of justice in political matters: whereas the formers base justice on the notion of equality, the latters use the recognition of arete as a criterion. The aim of this article is to examine how, from Herodotus with the discourse of the Persian Megabyze to the tyranny of the Thirty, a political discourse is developed that makes ‘virtue’ the measure of oligarchic justice.