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Sparta Political Systems

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Athens and Sparta: Two Political Systems
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.
In both systems, there were three common prerequisites to enter public life: …show more content…

Indeed, ritualized vendettas («γδικιωμός») between families persisted in the area until the 1960s. In Athens, the executive power was invested in a committee called the boulē (βουλῆ) which was composed of 500 citizens who represented the 139 districts of Attica. In turn, the boulē had its own executive committee of fifty citizens called prytaneis (πρύτανεις) under a chairman (ἐπιστάτης). This convoluted power structure sounds like death by committee, though it was meant to ensure fair

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