Director’s Note

The Golden Age of Athens forever marks history as the birthplace of democracy. What is less well known is just how brief this radical experiment of “rule by the people” was before devolving into chaos.

Following Athens loss to Sparta in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC, the city’s democratic government was replaced by the brutal rule of the Thirty Tyrants.

During their reign, five percent of the Athenian population was executed, (the democratic opposition), confiscating immeasurable personal wealth and property, and exiling countless others deemed as threats.

Years later, Aristotle begins a systemic analysis of how best to govern a city-state, collecting 158 different constitutions in an attempt to evaluate their effectiveness.

To paraphrase his “Politics,” the best form of government is one in which the individual (monarchy), or the few (aristocracy), or the many (democracy), govern with a view to the common interest.

Above all, Aristotle stressed that the relationship between the citizen and the state must be reciprocal: “There are two parts to good government. One is the actual obedience of citizens to the laws. The other is the goodness of the laws which they are tasked obey.”

Aristotle believes that the worst form of government is tyranny. Once a ruler embarks on policy-making with private interests in mind, the entire edifice comes crashing down.

As America finds itself in the throes of its own political stress-test, we are confronted with the chilling reality Aristotle understood 2500 years ago: Constitutional democracies are far more fragile than we realize.

It is with this understanding that Aristotle accepted the role of tutoring a future ruler. With the proper education, Alexander had the potential to become the ideal philosopher-king, capable of bridging the divide between wisdom and power.

Synopsis