Aristotle didn't go beyond city-state model. At a time when Empire was in the offing, he talked about the perfect workings of a city no bigger than could be taken in at a glance from a hill-top One research project at the Lyceum collected and compared 158 different city-state constitutions. His formula for political stability was a strong middle class to create a MEAN between tyranny and democracy. He didn't challenge slavery and though women were unfit for freedom and political rights.