The Whole and the Parts. Categories and Subjects of Political Conflict in Antiquity

Abstract

This article explores how the classical world conceived political conflict, beginning with its views on “factions” and “parties”. Starting from Homer and Hesiod, for whom Justice is what enabled the transition from original chaos to an organized cosmos, the article then focuses on the birth of the polis as mediator in the conflict between the social “parts”. It examines the works of Thucidides, Plato and Aristotle, who share a critical view of “parts”, which are seen as “factions” destroying political order. Polybius, on the other hand, credits the “parts” with being constituents of the political “whole”, whereas for Sallustius “factions” are responsible for the decline of the Roman Republic. Cicero, too, rejects “factions” as undermining the “concord” of the State, whereas with the advent of the Empire, the particularistic horizon of the poleis is superseded. It will take Tacitus to point out the contradictions of a particular power that legitimizes itself as universal.