Stages Of Government In Ancient Greece

In book VIII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates begins to discuss with Glaucon the four stages of government. Socrates identifies four basic governments and speaks of them in order of what he observes to be common occurrence. He begins with Timocracy, a government driven by the brave warriors and war heros of the day. Timocracy closely resembles how a powerful army is governed. It runs like a well oiled machine by the most powerful men. The second, an oligarchy, men of power not of strength, but of goods and riches. These men lavish their wealth on their passions and care little for anything but that which they can buy with money. The third, democracy. Democracy is made up of many men desiring freedom. Those who would rather die than be chained to the rich. The fourth and final form of government Socrates discusses is tyranny. The tyrant is a government driven by one man, who with no concern for his people, rules most unlawfully. Socrates says that the tyrannical government is the most regrettable form of government, ruled by the worst kind of man. Socrates says these are the inevitable stages in which every government will downfall.

Monarchies were ruled by one family, with a direct blood relative (a son) inheriting the throne and a claim

Let’s see what is Monarchy? It is a king or queen who gets all the powers of authority from inheritance and power stays in the same family, usually the bloodline from father to son. In Ancient Greeks, there weren’t too many monarchies, but there was some present and even Athens went under the monarchy at the end of the classical period which ended with the death of Alexander the Great. His father Phillip II of Macedon who became king after the deaths of his two brothers conquered Athens after the Peloponnesian war and ended democracy in the great city of Athens. (Wasson, 2014)

There were many forms of government in Ancient Greece. The ones that will be discussed in the following paragraphs are monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.

Monarchy is a type of government where a country has a royal family that symbolize

In classical Greece there were two major city-states, but both had different government systems, there was the oligarchy of Sparta and the democracy of Athens. The interests of the Greek people were better served by the democracy of Athens. The people who were considered citizens of the state all had the right to participate in government and had a voice in the political life of Athens. In Athens every citizen would have to take part in public services and the government provided them with payment for their services. Although in Athens there were slaves, they were treated very well compared to the Spartan slaves they could eventually buy their freedom and were protected by legislation.

Below the ruling class were the free commoners, consisting of military leaders and soldiers; They were very important to the empire because the empire had fought a lot, Merchants and craftsmen came next; They worked for themselves and made a lot of money. The bottom class was Peasants; They were farmers and worked the land owned by nobles. They weren’t slaves and weren’t really free like the free commoners.

Martin notes that word aristocracy translates to "rule of the best" whereas we commonly use the term to indicate rule of wealthy families in which power is passed down but not formalized by edicts or laws (p.41). Given the common use, I will use the term to for the rule of families not ratified by law. Athens had this type of rule in which wealthy land owners welded much power over the people until the demes later broke up

The major ancient Greek city-states -Athens and Sparta, depict different forms of government which are; monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. Aristocracy and democracy were found in Athens whereas monarchy and oligarchy were more established in Sparta. Both cities, in a way, they demonstrated a tyranny form of government. However, in reality, these forms of governments were controversial and one could debate their existence in each city-state.

The level of power sharing was different in a specific city-state. Sparta’s ruled by was oligarchy, the method by which governing was in the hands of a small unit of men. Corinth was ruled through tyranny (governance by which a tyrant took over political power by force). On the other hand, Athens developed a democratic system that allowed male citizens to share in its political power. The free inhabitants of Greek polis were offered citizenship, rich and poor alike. Male citizens were able to vote in regards to issues that concerned the government of their polis. It was expected that those who had political rights should participate in government affairs. Slaves and those born outside the polis were not given citizenship or allowed to vote. Though women had legal rights they were also not allowed to vote.

Ancient Greece was comprised of over 1500 city-states, their sizes varying from 200,000 to barely a town (in modern times). Each city-state had its own type of government; there wasn’t one to rule them all. The majority of governments were an oligarchy. This is defined as “a small group of people having control of a country, organization or institution.” Sparta was the most famous and powerful Greek oligarchy. It was made up of a council with their two kings, 28 members who were elected for 1-year terms by the citizens, and 5 officials who served their whole life. This council made every decision for the city-state and wrote the laws. They were also the ones making sure people followed them. Another part of Sparta’s government was the Assembly, a group of citizens that approved laws. They were expected to do this without debate.

Greek government lays the foundation for many different types of government we see today. Across the world, people are still using systems that the Greeks used over 2000 years ago. Starting as early 2000 BCE, and spanning four types of government systems, Greek government was always trying answer one question: who should rule and how.

Aristocracy by comparison, is defined by brittanica.com (n.d.), as rule by a priveledged few or minority made up of those percieved as best qualified to be rulers, rather than a single monarch. The article continues to states that it's difficult to differentiate aristocracy from an

Ancient Greece experienced many different forms of government such as monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.

The ruler also known as Tyrant of ancient Greek was a guy named Alexander the Great. The rulers are pick by A government ruled by the people, or assembly. Officials and leaders were elected and all citizens had opinions on it as well. Ancient greek government works by any system which excluded power from the whole, Citizen-body and was not a dictatorship or monarchy was described as an oligarchy. Oligarchies were perhaps the most common form of city-state government and they often occurred when democracy went wrong. Draco was the first person to wright the first law of Ancient Greece. This law established, exile as the penalty for murder and was the only one of Draco's laws that Solon kept when he was decided