Ancient Greek And Greek History

In Greece, the “Greek polis was the focus of the classical era of Greece. The Greek polis was an ancient political community that took a rich variety of forms and worked to shape the Ancient Greek culture that was so prominent in the world by the eight century. (Oak)”. The government was usually small, because many places didn’t really have a government at that time.

The most distinctive feature of Greek political culture lay in the extent of popular participation in political life that occurred within the city-states. This participation was based on the unique ideas of “citizenship,” of free people running the affairs of state, and of equality for all citizens before the law. Political participation in Greek city-states was much wider than in Persia, but it varied considerably between city-states and over time. Early in Greek history, only the wealthy and wellborn had the rights of full citizenship, but middle- and lower-class men gradually obtained these rights in some city-states.

During the times of Ancient Greece, two major forms of government existed, democracy and oligarchy. The city-states of Athens and Sparta are the best representatives of democracy and oligarchy, respectively. The focus of the times was directed towards military capabilities, while the Athenians were more interested in comfort and culture. It was the oligarchy in Sparta that put a war-like attitude as its first priority and best met the needs of Ancient Greece. These factors empowered Sparta and led to the development of an authoritative and potent state. Other contrasting issues included women’s rights, social classes, and value of human life.

In the period known as classical Greece in the years 800-323 BCE, Greece comprised of small city states (poleis) which were considered and operated as independent small countries. Amongst those city states Athens and Sparta were two of the most powerful and considered in Greek history as the most influential states to western civilisation. These two city states shared some common characteristics whilst in some instances they were very different from each other. Sparta and Athens had differences and similarities in the way they governed their city states, in how they established their military forces, how they treated women, their marriage customs and social gatherings

The city-states of Ancient Greek provide examples of different types of government structures that, even

1. During the Mycenaean civilization, who was the great poet and what were his two important literary works that influenced the Greeks and formed part of Western literature? Homer, The Iliad, The Odyssey

Athens and Sparta were two of the most powerful and well known cities among all the Greek nations. Most would find it easier to find more similarities among these two groups of mighty people. But there are some differences between these two power houses. For instance the way that these cities were governed and their political procedures and functions were quite different from each other.

These self-governed city-states were governed by the natural laws of the universe. The polis also had a psychological pull to the point where it was infested into the art, religion, literature and philosophy (Document 1). In a way similar to India though, everyone identified first and foremost with their polis identity, like the Indians did with their caste system (Document 1). The way to gain power in Greece was not though money, but through family names and heritage, but in 330 BC, Cleisthenes created the basis of his reform for Greece: the demes (Document 2). By doing this he takes out the powerful noble families and gives the lower class the power to decide what happens with their government and therefore became more “deme-ocratic.” He did many things to change the structure of Greece to make it fairer. For example he took the original four tribes of Greece and redistributed them into ten different tribes so now the tribes can have more “civic rights.” Another example of what Cleisthenes did to fix things was that he increased the Council members from 400 to 500. Now each tribe was only sending fifty representatives, instead of the original hundred. Finally, one last example is that Cleisthenes divided Greece up into thirty parts. Ten urban and suburban, ten costal and ten inland and each of these contained its own special number of demes. Now, men were to be identified first by their demes name, which is very similar to India’s recognition of their caste name or level (Document

During the late Archaic Greek and Classical periods, two particular city-states were in existence with significant similarities as well as differences. These two city-states, Sparta and Athens have unique formations of government, histories, goals, as well as societies.

“Polis is a term that is used to describe a tight knit small community of Ancient Greek citizens who agreed on certain rules and customs. Usually a polis was centered on a small town and the countryside the surrounded it” (Deering). The polis defined a public and communal space, the Agora, for the purpose of leading public affairs. The affairs of men and affairs were included as these had essentials parts to the entire community’s affairs. The Ancient Greek poleis are among the first recorded democratic governments in the world. The term polis has been translated into city-state as there was typically only one city and because an individual polis was independent from other poleis in terms of political, judicial, legal, religious and social institutions and practices (Cartwright). A polis offered security for its inhabitants and gave organization to government through structure, function and hierarchy.

In ancient Greece there were two major polises which allowed the Greek culture to achieve greatness during the 400-500 B.C.E. era. These two polises were Athens and Sparta; both city states differed in many ways before the start of the Persian War. There were low rugged mountains that separated these two city states so communication and travel were difficult. The government of these two city states can be seen as a primary difference between the two. Draco, Solon, Pisistratus, and Cleithenes were four leaders that greatly influenced the political development of Athens. Athens and Sparta differed primarily in their political, social, and economical aspects. But there were other difference that Athens and Sparta share which I will examine in this essay.

Introduction This assignment describes the character of the four ancient governments in order to compare and contrast the five government forms in the Ancient Greek city-states. They are monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.

City-states such as Sparta, Salamis, Olympia, Marathon, Delphi, Crete, Corinth, Athens, and Argos are some of the poleis that witnessed a political revolution across rules of government. In the same way, Plato eloquently stated the poleis of Greece crosses along the shores of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea similar to “frogs around a pond” (Cartledge, 2011). Although accurate, information about monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, and democracy was gathered to illustrate how each structure of government compares and contrasts while using theory as a framework among the hundreds of city-states. The Greek poleis evolved to support some of the most famous forms of government in our history. Thankfully, it was their groundwork that paved a path for numerous implementations of democracy observed

Regarding the Greek polis, I believe it plays an important role in the forming of competiting but not necessarily incompatible Greek cultures and identities as well as how social organization and political structure evolved. The mountainous area of Greece lead to the division of Greece based on the available flat lands (The Ohio State University, n.d.). Several settlements in a region would have merged together (or subjugated by others in the same region) throughout the Archaic period, followed by urbanization (The Saylor Foundation, n.d.). We can see the evidence of this in Sparta's dual kingship (Brand, n.d.). Early in the period, subsistence based farming might have been practiced, but as the polis developed, social order also evolved and

Like 18th century Italy, classical Greece (5th and 4th century BC) was divided in rival city-states that were frequent at war with each other. To the modern people this situation might look both foolish and inefficient; yet, one has to understand the times. First of all, the European population is estimated to have been only 30 million people (Livi-Bacci, 2012)—and this means that vast tracts of wilderness separated the various cities. Then, geographical isolation was exacerbated by the infant state of transportation and communication technologies; for example, there were no state-maintained roads. One can get an idea how long and perilous trips were back then by reading the myth of Theseus; in his travel from Corinth to Athens—a distance of only fifty-miles—Theseus almost lost his life six times to bandits and beasts. This semi-hermitic state of existence allowed the city-states to experiment and develop their own political and social structures; by the fifth century BC, the Greek cities have tried every political arrangement imaginable, with two main systems competing for Greek-world dominion: democracy represented by Athens, and militocracy represented by Sparta.