Ancient Greek Democracy : The Foundation Of Democracy

The concept of Democracy dates back to the Classic Period, otherwise known as the Golden Age of Greece. Prior to becoming a unified nation, Greece was made up of city-states that were constantly warring with one another. None of these city-states possessed full control over its neighbors. It was during this time and because of these circumstances that there was great advancement in Greek thought encompassing philosophy and politics. These advancements are responsible for the strong Greek

Today, much of the world’s governments have converted to democracies. In the Ancient World, there was only one truly notable example of a democratic society: The City-State of Athens. This is actually the birthplace of democracy, where instead of the rich or powerful ruling, it was the citizens of the city-state that held the power. This advanced way of government was so effective and well structured, it even laid the foundations for the development of our own democracy, right here in the United States, over 2,000 years in the future. Prior to Athens’s collapse during the Peloponnesian War, it truly had an efficient and very organized system of government.

Ancient Athens was not truly democratic because the middle class was in charge of politics. The upper and lower classes were not in politics at all. It was not democratic because the only people that could vote were men who are of citizen birth by both parents. People whose parent is a slave could not become a citizen so they could not vote. Democracy was excluding women, free foreigners and slaves.

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

The principal of Democracy is something that we often fail to appreciate. Democracy means a government that allows the public to be heard by having periodically held elections.

Ancient Greece is the place where modern democracy and government originated from. Democracy is a word that has Greek origin and is defined as the government by the people to rule. Greece’s form of government was a direct democracy where the citizens voted for their decision rather than electing people to make the decision. Athens a Greek city-state established the earliest form of democracy. Greek democracy was separated into three ruling bodies known as the Assembly, Council and the Courts. The Assembly elected certain officials and made laws. Majority rules, a system in which a group with the most votes has power was used to make decisions in the Assembly. Currently, in the United States, the government system they use is a democracy because of Greece. A key difference between the Greek and US democracy is that the US uses an indirect democracy, in which the citizens vote on who should represent them. The essence of the US voting system is implemented because Ancient Greece conducted the motion by allowing people to vote on essential matters. When The founding fathers of the

The word democracy is from the Greek word ¨demokratia¨: demo, meaning the people, and kratia, meaning power or rule. Therefore, democracy technically means rule by the people or citizens. There are many examples of democracy, such as letting all citizens, at a certain age, vote for a presidential canidate. In fact, there is a gigantic debate about whether Ancient Athens was democratic or not. Based on the evidence, No, Ancient Athens was not truly a democracy.

Democracy developed in ancient Greece due to warfare between Greek city-states. The social class became an important part of warfare. In the beginning the wealthy nobles fought because they had horses. As time

The legacy of democracies from Ancient Greece and Rome helped officially establish the United States’ current government. In early Greece, each polis had its own type of government, including monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, and democracy. Democracy, which is a government ruled by the people, started in the polis of Athens. Early Athens established the basis of democracy, where only free male adults were considered citizens and could vote. The United States’ government today has expanded to allow women to vote instead of only men. In both early Athens’ and today’s United States governments, citizens have power, so in order to receive most people’s opinions on a topic, they increased the amount of people voting in the population of the polis.

As I said before Ancient Greece was a Direct Democracy. Meaning any free man could speak in an assembly, vote on a new law, propose to go to war or run the city's any to day business. As you can tell in the U.S it's very different, we vote for representatives who decide issues for us in our name. In Athens specifically every year five hundred names were drawn from a pool of all citizens in Athens.The citizens chosen from the pool would have to serve for a year, and no longer. How this worked was that the five hundred chosen from the pool would have

Aristotle once said, “In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.” To make democratic ideas work to their advantages, the people of Athens had to vote for superiors, rather than simply observe. Like other forms of government, democracy has its strengths and its weaknesses. It was very organized and fair, giving people rights and freedoms, and participation in the rule of the city. Though, there were some negatives.

In the first section of the chapter describing ancient Greece, Paul Cartledge explains that researchers know how and in what way the ancient Greeks surrendered in battle, but do not know exactly why they surrendered since they did not keep a comprehensive account of their surrenders. Cartledge goes on to describe ancient Greece, not as a single political body, but being composed of one thousand separate, widely dispersed entities known as city-states. Some of these city-states, including Athens and Sparta, were radically different from each other. But according to Herodotus, these separate states were all united under their decent, linguistics, customs, and religion, but divided because of politics and self-differentiation. It was the disuniting factors that caused these states to fight among one another and other non-Greek states. Cartledge mentions he based most of this chapter off of the writings of two men from two different wars: Thucydides from the Peloponnesian War and Herodotus from the Persian Wars. According to him, the ancient Greeks typically identified themselves by their state name first and then as being Greek second. But under the Persian Wars, the Greeks united to fight off the Persian invaders. The author finishes the section by describing Greek culture and customs not just from the Greeks themselves, but from other outsiders as well. These outsiders, such as the Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, and Persians, influenced the Greeks in culture, military,

Of all the civilizations we have to choose from, I think the Ancient Greek Civilization was the most successful. They may not have been the most powerful civilization of the ancient times, but their influence on modern day government and philosophy is unsurpassed. Greece had great influence on the Roman Empire and continues to effect modern times. The Greeks continue to have a great impact on modern democracy.

Greek democracy was able to coexist with military needs and divisions in social classes by Greek warfare. For a long time the Greek city-states were at war with each other. Warfare was mainly wealthy people that had enough money to own houses. Greeks realized that the way to keep things in order was to fight in organized formations. The men that were poor were only able to fight with a sword, a shield, and a helmet. Foreigners in Athens and Greece had little to no freedom. The next thing is slavery and is was a pretty big part of Greek city-states but it only took place in the very early civilizations. Sometimes even if you belonged to the state you will still would not have freedom but the women have more freedom. Even though most people had

one essential conviction, expressed in the word democracy itself: that power should be in the hands of the people. Although democracy today has been slightly inefficient in this idea, with the wealthy, elite class challenging this right, “it nevertheless claims for itself a fundamental validity that no other kind of society shares….” To completely understand the structure of democracy, one must return to the roots of the practice itself, and examine the origins in ancient Greece, the expansion in the Roman Empire, and how these practices combined make what we recognize as today’s democratic government.