Talk:Anacyclosis

What is it?

So what is it? Blast ^{[improve me]} 21.06.07 1143 (UTC)

This page appears to have merely one source (it's a Johnny One-Note). The very same idea of a political cycle occurs in the much-more-read Plato's Republic, and is answered by Aristotle. Plato says that Monarchy needs peers to breed into and to handle its affairs, which leads to Aristocracy; that Aristocracy gets met in their daily matters by gentlemen, who though not nobly born can perform some tasks better than they, and eventually take power from them in a type of rule he calls Timocracy; that less capable or moral people take power to form an Oligarchy; that the better sort of people cannot stand the rule of the Oligarchs and actively take power from them to form Democracy (not representative, but voice-vote up or down and choosing functionaries by lot); that the lesser sort of people, who are a large part of the majority, next take power and form what he calls an Ochlocracy; and that this form cannot solve the people's problems and they accept a Tyrant. Next he says that a Tyrant cannot succeed himself without taking on the trappings of a Monarch, so the cycle completes itself.

Notice that the Oligarchy is not stated as being the way that the word is used today, say, in Latin America or Russia. It's just a bad few who are ruling for no specific purpose. Rather, it is Aristotle who contradicts Plato by saying that Athens is a democracy, and that the only system of rule that is a real contender is a specific form of Oligarchy - that of rule by the few who are rich. That's the source of the modern use of the word. "Plutocracy" means the same thing, but that's considered a silly word. I wish the word Oligarchy had not so been taken, for Liberals are a few (well, not a majority or plurality) who can rule without any explanation whatsoever as well. 74.10.198.105 (talk) 20:48, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Added the needed ref, maybe

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anacyclosis&diff=prev&oldid=1134799100 claims that there's no proper refs to this. I've found the direct reference to the concept in 150 BC-ish here:

Polybius (2010) [c. 150–120 BCE]. The Histories. Loeb Classical Library 138. Vol. III. Harvard University Press. 6.9.10-11. Αὕτη πολιτειῶν ἀνακύκλωσις, αὕτη φύσεως οἰκονομία, καθ᾿ ἣν μεταβάλλει καὶ μεθίσταται καὶ πάλιν εἰς αὑτὰ καταντᾷ τὰ κατὰ τὰς πολιτείας.

This citation is direct to the correct page. Though apparently they have some sort of cookie-gated reading limit. (Try in private mode?) .

Thing is that there's a small ref to this particular book in the federalist papers (very short though) and potentially by John Adams too, *but* those latter references all use the English translation of the term afaict.

Further searches outside JSTOR actually do find further reliable sources, but I've already spent way too much time on this. Feel free to turn back into a redir if this doesn't satisfy.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 02:11, 12 March 2026 (UTC)