The Greek City State In The Hellenic Period, And The Greek State

The Greco Roman Traditions ideas of democracy influenced today’s American government . The Greco Roman tradition includes the ideas from the two ancient civilizations, Greece and Rome. Some valuable ideas about government came from the Greek city state Athens. Athens was the first city state to adopt direct democracy, direct democracy allows the assembly of ordinary citizens to make decisions, the Athens democracy required that all citizens were to vote on major issues. One idea that Athenians believed was that all citizens have a responsibility. One important duty of an Athenian was to serve on juries, a body of people sworn to verdict in a legal case on the basis of evidence submitted to them in court. Not only did Athens’s ideas of about

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.

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.

Aristotle’s society in The Politics, is that of a realistic society, a city of man. Aristotle defines a citizen as a political animal, which means that for man to optimize the society in which he lives in, he must be politically active (Aristotle 1253a). By nature, they want to cooperate together in society. Aristotle defines a citizen as a person who has full political rights to participate in judicial or deliberative office. (Aristotle 1275b) Each citizen has the ability to possess moral virtues. This is in contrast to Plato’s ideal state, where only the ruling class is able to be politically involved. Each citizen is able to posses private property, for one should call the city-state happy not by looking at a part of it but at all the citizens (Aristotle 1329a). This means that all classes of the state as a whole should be happy, not just one sole tier.

democratic governance. Looking back at how the Greek city-states evolved and reacted to who held a

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

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

Swiss-French writer Benjamin Constant and ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle offer conflicting viewpoints concerning the merits and possibilities of ancient Greek democracy. Aristotle’s political theory attempts to justify his city-state’s political structure by providing a model of the common good, or Chief Aim, his end goal for Athenian democracy. He believed Athenians could reach the Chief Aim as a society by individually learning to be virtuous and then instilling laws and morals based on these ideals. In his lecture, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns, Constant highlights that the individual liberties protected in a modern representative democracy are much more important than the political liberties that one was given in antiquity. Constant illustrates that while some ideas of ancient Greek democracy are precious, Aristotle’s political theory is not an obtainable reality and it was beneficial that modern democracies transitioned to a system that protects individual liberty.

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new,” said Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher. Athens was one of many city-states in Ancient Greece. This city-state had a form of government that was for the people to have a say. Athens had great geography that was advantageous for them. Athens also had many achievements culturally such as architecture and philosophy.

The culture and political environment created by Alexander’s Empire made the competition of Greek city-states almost obsolete. This competition being gone helped to create a mentality more focused on being part of a vast Empire, rather than being the citizen of a certain city-state which had till this time been a predominate part of Greek culture and politics.

Both Greek Democracy and the Roman Republic contributed greatly to the development of the modern world, bringing into it the notions of democracy and republic. The evolution of these concepts took them to a level much higher than one present in Ancient Greece and Rome respectively. However, modern society continues to draw on somewhat idealized accounts of the ancient world for inspiration in improving today’s governing procedures.

Compare and contrast monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy as forms of government in Ancient Greek city-states. The ancient Greece has surely been a clear and shining example of human, cultural, social and political development; indeed, in the ancient Greece we’ve been seeing the first examples of government differentiation, a nation, whether big or small was no more simply ruled by a single omnipotent living god-king, instead new systems were slowly growing. Poleis such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes are clear examples of this differentiation, related to the age, their government changed when more, when less, between monarchy systems, to tyranny, oligarchy, to democracy and so on.

According to a report that was published in ‘Ancient History Encyclopaedia’ by Cartwright. M. (March, 2013) about the ancient Greek government, there was a general concern in the ancient Greek about who should rule them and how they should be ruled, and based on this uncertainty, the ancient Greek ended up using different forms of government to rule its people in different city states. This paper is going to compare the five forms of government that were used during the ancient Greek era, namely, monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy in the different city states.

Greece is in Southern Europe and in the Northern Hemisphere. Researching for this report taught me a lot about Greece. In this essay, you will learn about Greece's geography, economy, government, and people. Greece’s flag stands for the blue as in sky and white as in clouds.

Plato and Aristotle’s views on the nature of a human being and the city are fundamental blocks of forming the best political regime. The ideal city of Plato stands upon the four virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation and justice. The concept of justice embodies the understanding that only when citizens are fulfilling their obligated roles while not interfering with others can a city achieve harmony. For this purpose, farmers, artisans, and shepherds will do what’s expected of them per their expertise while the Guardians, a special class, is fit to rule the state. So his view that since every individual has a different yet pertinent role in the city and as most men are only