From subject to citizen

Abstract

During modernity the philosophy of the state and the law concentrated upon institutions and laws. By contrast, Antiquity emphasised a different aspect, one that seems more like an anomaly in a purely institutional theory, namely personal requirements, either as a substitute for institutions, as portrayed in Plato’s Republic, or in addition to them, as laid out in his Laws (731c, 687b–688b; 689a–c) or in Aristotle’s Politics (III 4, 1276b27–34; Hansen 1995, 311). Also, for the corresponding history of Rome one is best referred to Cicero’s On Duties (I.XVI 50) or the historians Sallustius, Livius and Tacitus.