Hi George.

Paul A. Rahe, Professor of History at Hillsdale College in the process of publishing and finishing four books on Sparta. The first in the series is called

The Spartan Regime: It's Character, It's Origins.

My gut twisted to see "Regime" in the title of the work. I sent an email protesting this because in modern connotations, "Regime" is a bad word. It is used for fascist governments and communist governments like "the Pinochet regime" and Fidel Castro's regime".

He wrote it is currently used by political theorists all the time and he recognizes that it includes constitution and a form of government. "But in Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, and others it has to do with the shaping of character."

He writes that "A regime is a politeia".

I agree with his use of the term 'regime' but not for the title of the book! To say "the Spartan Regime" when we call Rome, the Roman Republic and Athens a Democracy, we are going to call Sparta, not a republic but a regime. No one calls Athens a regime of Pericles. No one calls Rome, the Roman regime.

I could go with the "Regime of the Spartan Republic" or "The Spartan Republican Regime" or "The Spartan Republic: It's Regime, It's Character, It's Origin". But I can't handle "The Spartan Regime"; it sounds like "The Spartan Nazis".

Do you agree that regime is an excellent translation of the Greek word "politeia"? Can Politeia be translated as Regime?

Regime is not a proper translation of Politeia, nor Republic. As is usual with the most important Greek words, a proper translation is impossible.

One thing we have to keep in mind is that political science is at its beginning in Plato and Aristotle. No science jumps out and is fully grown with all of its tools. For instance, there was "wisdom" and there was no such thing as science. Science grew out of the wisdom tradition. Political science had its beginning with Plato and Aristotle improved upon it like he did with philosophy. In the beginning of any science the language is not settled and a bit confusing. Only after situations arise and things are confusing is when language has to become concrete and more specialized. Any and all science requires specialized language. In this regard, the many meanings in 'politeia' need to be separated out. George is right when he says that politeia is untranslatable into another language because it has so many meanings.

Politeia means many things: society, constitution, government, mixed government and "ways and reasons of a people to live together".


Plato, in the Laws states that Sparta has a "true politeia" because it was a mixture of different forms. It was not enslaved to a particular section of society. (712d and following) In the use of the phrase "true politeia" Plato is referring to a form of government, i.e. mixed government.

Aristotle continues Plato's definition.

"...since constitutional government (politeia) is, to put it simply, a mixture of oligarchy and democracy." (Politics, 1293b 34; Loeb, p. 315)

Way earlier, H. Rackham translated the word 'politeia' as 'republic':

"And the whole constitution is intended, it is true to be neither a dmeocracy nor an oligarchy, but of the form intermediate between them which is termed a republic, for the government is constituted from the class that bears arms." ( Politics, 1256b 25; Loeb, pg 105)

Therefore, following the example of H. Rackman, where the Greek word "politeia" means a form of government, a specific form of government, i.e. mixed government, the word to be used needs to be "republic". True-No single word in any language can translate 'politeia' so the word must be broken up to fit its many meanings for political science to work.

Rome had mixed government. It was called a republic. Since Sparta and Rome both had mixed government, then it is only right to use the term 'republic' for Sparta and to translate the word 'politeia' as republic when it refers to the mixed form of government.