Essay On Ancient Greek Government

Throughout history government has been a staple of society whether people have realized it or not. From Samarians to ancient Egypt all the way to Greece. Even in todays world we still use the government structures that man made thousands of years ago. Ancient Greece has several governments. The issue was that ancient Greece was not one signal city or empire but instead a series of cities called City-States with their own independent governments. Even though many of these city states shared the same religion and did in fact speak Greek each in many ways had its own unique identity and therefor, created its own style of government. The Four main governments that were established were Monarchy, Democracy, Oligarchy and Tyranny.
Monarchy is defined as “A supreme power or sovereignty held by a single person.” From around 2000-800 B.C most Greek city states were indeed monarchies. In 1400 …show more content…
A Tyranny is defined a “Rulers who seized power by force and who were not subject to the law.” (Speilvogel, 61) The way in which Tyranny was practiced was by achieving most of their power was by the local “coup d’état” (Speilvogal, 61) and also by using mercenary soldiers. When Tyrants were in charge they did many things to improve their city-states, things such as building new marketplaces and temples which helped bring jobs to these cities. The best example of how a tyranny worked was in the city of Corinth. Corinth at one point was ruled by an Oligarchy, but because the family that was ruling this city was so unpopular a man by the name of Cypselus a member of the family in charge overthrew the Oligarchy and claimed his position of ruler creating a very powerful Tyranny. Tyranny shaped Greek history in the fact that it was able to give citizens of these city-states not just the nobles a say in their