The author is Aristotle.[a] I prefer the translation hosted by MIT at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.1.1.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotl

The author is Aristotle.[a] I prefer the translation hosted by MIT at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.1.1.html http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.1.1.html instead of the OP's translation, hosted by an organization that many people consider highly ideological and politically divisive.[b] In the translation hosted by MIT, Aristotle starts with this: > After this event there was contention for a long time between the upper classes and the populace. Not only was the constitution at this time oligarchical in every respect, but the poorer classes, men, women, and children, were the serfs of the rich. They were known as Pelatae and also as Hectemori, because they cultivated the lands of the rich at the rent thus indicated. The whole country was in the hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their rent they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their children with them. All loans secured upon the debtor's person, a custom which prevailed until the time of Solon, who was the first to appear as the champion of the people. But the hardest and bitterest part of the constitution in the eyes of the masses was their state of serfdom. Not but what they were also discontented with every other feature of their lot; for, to speak generally, they had no part nor share in anything. Aristotle wrote this 2372 years ago. Go read the whole thing. It will make you appreciate that many societal problems we have today are... not new. -- [a] It may have been written by one of his pupils. [b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Fund