Quel modèle pour l’oligarque ? Le passé, l’ailleurs et l’utopie dans la Constitution des Athéniens du Pseudo-Xénophon
Résumé
Although it presents Athenian democracy as the opposite of an ideal, the Pseudo-Xenophontic Constitution of the Athenians does not refer to a specific positive model, be it past, foreign, or imaginary. The absence of any reference to the past is particularly original among literary Constitutions, as well as among oligarchic views. It shows that declarations of nostalgia were not consubstantial with oligarchic ideology and gives evidence for a stage of development which preceded the birth of the notion of “ancestral constitution” that was put forward by Athenian oligarchs from 411 onwards.