Aristotle found support for his thesis in facts drawn from geopolitics or ‘natural law’. Greek superiority had to be proved demonstrably innate, a gi… - Peter Green

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Aristotle found support for his thesis in facts drawn from geopolitics or ‘natural law’. Greek superiority had to be proved demonstrably innate, a gift of nature. In one celebrated fragment he counsels Alexander to be ‘a hegemon [leader] of Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants’.