Ancient Greek democracy appears to have ended as a result of both internal and external factors. Like the subsequent Roman Empire, the Athenian state appears to have over-reached in its militaristic ambitions, ultimately weakening it; while the relative strength of other empires enabled them to take Greece over. The imposition of rule by foreign empires finally ended Greek democracy. From internally, Athens moved from being a defender of its own nation to an aggressor though it would have no doubt maintained that this was in its national security interests. One of the consequences of this aggression and ambition was the loss of the alliances that had helped repel the Persians and in some cases their subjugation (Brand, n.d., p.28).…
Document C analyzed that all people were never allowed to vote except men. The percentage of the population who were able to vote was 12%. Document D states that Athenian democracy was both criticized for being less democratic and more democratic at the…
I personally think that Athens is not represented as democratic. There were aspects that were considered democratic but there were also aspects that were considered oligarchy. The word democracy means “government by the people.” But in Athens, “Demokratia” was rule by male citizens only, excluding women, free foreigners, and slaves. The people performed rule candidly, however democracy today means rule by the representatives of the people.…
The Athenian government consists of a Democratic government. In theory, a Democracy is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Taken from that theory of the Athenian Democracy, the “people” referred to men over the age of 18 who were born from Athenian parents. Men ruled the government, where they were able to vote and make political decisions regarding the country. Women, foreigners and slaves were not allowed to participate in the government at all.…
In Athens, democracy was generally not viewed as a good form of government because giving power to all meant giving power to the ignorant and uneducated lower-class people. In Pseudo-Xenophon: Constitution of the Athenians (431 BCE), an unknown Athenian commonly referred to as Pseudo-Xenophon shares his thoughts about democracy. The Athenian tells the reader than the higher class citizens are respectable and the lower classes are ignorant and uneducated, making the working class unfit to lead. The essay on the Athenian Constitution says that the masses “display extreme ignorance, indiscipline and wickedness” and that “poverty gives them a tendency toward the immoral and in some cases their poverty leads to their being uneducated and ignorant.”…
Yet, was ancient Athens truly considered, democratic? With the Athenian’s government being consisted of a civilian voted government, voted laws that give equal justice to all, and the ability to allow foreigners to become citizens, the Athenians were lucidly a democracy. With democracy being considered a people’s government, the thought…
Only male citizens could vote. A citizen is a man or woman whose parents were both natives. “There were about 100,000citizens… 10,000 mitolkoi or resident foreigners and 15,000 slaves… only about 40,000 people could vote” (“Ancient Greek Democracy”). How is it a society where everyone has a say. There are a total of 260, 000 people in this country and only about 40,000 people could vote (male citizen over the age of 18) not even ⅕ of the population.…
Was ancient Athens truly democratic ? To say about how Athens was more of a democratic civilization, it was not because of how most things that certain people are allowed to do in the city it was because there was not much laws and our order between one another. but between the democracy and the city of Athens it was not so secure about their laws or order because of how most people were citizens at some weren’t because of how they were born in the city with their parent but their parents came to Athens as uncivilized people. But in order to be a citizen there in Athens you would have to be born there and also your parents to be from there as also to be able to have law and order in the population of the city. Also as of how men had more…
Athenian Attitudes Toward the Authority of State Through the Eyes of Plato and Sophocles The first evidence of democracy, a government in which the citizens have say in the rulings, was discovered in Ancient Athens. However, when we study Athenian history, we focus on the democratic system of government and tend to overlook the Athenian citizen’s points of view. Through close examination of the writings of Sophocles and Plato, one can discover that the Athenian’s respect towards the governing power, changed during the Classical Athens period. Although the Ancient Athenian government seemed to have control over its people, Antigone of Sophocles and Crito of Plato reveal that from 441 BCE to 360 BCE, the citizens began to lose respect for the…
Ancient Greece was the very first democracy in history, and their beliefs in Freedom and Liberty for their citizens. The two types of freedoms were political (Governed by their own laws), and individual (do what we want). Freedom is the Central theme associated with democracy. After Greece’s downfall, democracy was not known again till the American Revolution. History is made by Great People.…
The Athenian democracy developed when Cleisthenes took over Athens and made it into a democracy in 507 BC. This government excluded foreigners, slaves, and women, but they wanted everyone to be equal under the law. The Athenian democracy changed the entire aspect of Athens. Athens was split into 10 different tribes. They had a council of 500 men, so they chose 50 men from each tribe.…
Athens was famous for being the purest, most extreme form of democracy in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. The constitution of Athens progressed in time moving from harsh laws, as written by Draco, to more lenient once. However, the Athenian Constitution was not written down on a piece of paper; according to Roderick T. Long it was ‘to speak of the way the Athenian policy was constituted, i.e., what the structure of the political system was.’ Yet despite this, The Athenian constitution has been noted down partly by Aristotle during the classical period 500- 323 BC as well as other Ancient Historians such as Pericles or Thucydides. The Constitution of Athenians is known mainly due to Aristotle giving evidence at the end of his Nicomachean Ethics, stating that his Politics would be based in part on the “collected…
As an American woman, Athens’ form of government is the most familiar of the Ancient Greek culture’s governments. Although women were not considered citizens in Ancient Athens, a democracy in which…
The Athenian government was a direct democracy, meaning the citizens of the city-state had a say in the decisions they made. Although the government was based on direct democracy, only adult males could vote. The Athenians had the power to change anything in their government due to having direct democracy. This could take a turn at any time since it was a direct democracy, which could lead to some people cheating the vote. In Athens, they valued the individual over the group.…
Question: Compare and contrast monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy as forms of government in Ancient Greek city-states. Democracy Democracy is a form of government in which the people have a voice in the exercise of power, typically through elected representatives (Oxford Dictionary). Athens’ constitution is called a democracy because it allows the interests of all people in the system of government not just minority. We have known that the democratic system of government is governed by the people so it has the most government officials chosen by lottery and served the people for a year.…