Timocracy

A timocracy (from Greek τιμή timē, "honor, worth" and -κρατία -kratia, "rule")^[1] in Aristotle's Politics is a state where only property owners may participate in government. More advanced forms of timocracy, where power derives entirely from wealth with no regard for social or civic responsibility, may shift in their form and become a plutocracy where the wealthy rule.^[2]

Ancient Greece

• Pentacosiomedimnoi
  – "Men of the 500 bushel", those who produced 500 bushels of produce per year, could serve as generals in the army
• Hippeis – Knights, those who could equip themselves and one cavalry horse for war, valued at 300 bushels per year
• hoplites
• Thetes
  – Manual laborers

Aristotle later wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics (Book 8, Chapter 10) about three "true political forms" for a state, each of which could appear in corrupt form, becoming one of three negative forms. Aristotle describes timocracy in the sense of rule by property-owners: it comprised one of his true political forms. Aristotelian timocracy approximated to the constitution of Athens, although Athens exemplified the corrupted version of this form, described as democracy.

Thirteen Colonies

In the early times of American independence only men who would hold enough property and money (except in New Jersey, where women meeting the requirements were allowed as well) could vote; there were also at times requirement of race:

• Connecticut: an estate worth 40 shillings annually or £40 of personal property
• Delaware: fifty acres of land (twelve under cultivation) or £40 of personal property
• Georgia: fifty acres of land
• Maryland: fifty acres of land and £40 personal property
• Massachusetts Bay: an estate worth 40 shillings annually or £40 of personal property
• New Hampshire: £50 of personal property
• New Jersey: one-hundred acres of land, or real estate or personal property £50
• New York: £40 of personal property or ownership of land
• North Carolina: fifty acres of land
• New Jersey until 1807 (provided they could meet the property requirement)
• Pennsylvania: fifty acres of land or £50 of personal property
• Rhode Island and Providence Plantations: personal property worth £40 or yielding 50 shillings annually
• South Carolina: one-hundred acres of land on which taxes were paid; or a town house or lot worth £60 on which taxes were paid; or payment of 10 shillings in taxes
• Virginia: fifty acres of vacant land, twenty-fives acres of cultivated land, and a house twelve feet by twelve feet; or a town lot and a house twelve feet by twelve

Timocracy, comparable values, and Plato's five regimes

In