1. Ancient Greece Had Many Governments
Ancient Greece GovernmentThe Greeks had a lot of different kinds of governments, because there were many different?city-states?in ancient Greece, and they each had their own government. In addition,?people's ideas about what made a good government changed over time.Aristotle?divided Greek governments into?monarchies,?oligarchies,tyrannies?and?democracies, and most historians still use these same divisions. For the most part, Greece began by having monarchies, then oligarchies, then tyrannies and then democracies, but at each period there were plenty of city-states using a different system, and there were many which never did become democracies or tyrannies at all.In the?Late Bronze Age?(the Mycenean period), between about 2000 and 1200BC, all Greek?city-states?seem to have been?monarchies, ruled by kings. Homer's?Iliad, and Greek mythology in general, shows us a whole series of kings like?Agamemnon?and?Theseus, and some of their?palaces?have survived for archaeologists to dig up.After the?Dark Age, though, only a few Greek city-states still had kings.Sparta?is the most famous of these, though actually Sparta had two kings, usually brothers or cousins, at the same time. One would stay home and the other go off to fight wars.?Most city-states in the?Archaic period?were ruled by?oligarchies, which is a group of aristocrats (rich men) who tell everyone else what to do. Then in the 600s and 500s?BC?a lot of city-states were taken over by?tyrants. Tyrants were usually one of the aristocrats who got power over the others by getting the support of the poor people. They ruled kind of like kings, but without any legal right to rule.In 510 BC, the city-state of?Athens?created the first?democratic?government, and soon other Greek city-states imitated them. Even city-states that weren't Greek, likeCarthage?and?Rome, experimented with giving the poor people more power at this time. But Athenian democracy did not really give power to everyone. Most of the people in Athens couldn't vote - no women, no?slaves, no foreigners (even Greeks from?other city-states), no children. And also, Athens at this time had anempire, ruling over many other Greek city-states, and none of those people living in the other city-states could vote either. Of course it is a lot easier to have a democratic government when you are only deciding what other people should do.(And many Greek city-states kept?oligarchic?government, or?tyrannies, ormonarchies, through this whole time).Then in the 300s BC, Greece was conquered by?Philip of Macedon, and all of Greece began to be ruled by him as their king (in theory he was only leading a league of Greek city-states, but really he acted like a king).?Athens?and other Greek city-states still kept their local democracies or oligarchies for local government, but bigger decisions were made by Philip, and then by Philip's son Alexander the Great.After Alexander died in 323 BC, Greece became a kingdom ruled by a series of Macedonian kings, until it was gradually taken over by the Romans between 200 and 146 BC. From 146 BC on, Greece was a province of the?Roman Empire. Even after the Roman Empire in the West collapsed, Greece was still part of theEastern Empire. In the 1100s and 1200s?AD, parts of Greece were taken over byNormans, who built castles and ruled as kings.And finally, in 1453 AD, the?Turkstook over and established Greece as a province in their Ottoman Empire; there was not very much change in the system of government from the Roman Empire. **Information from this article taken from the website: . Ancient Greece Had Many GovernmentsPD Courtesy? HYPERLINK "" \t "_blank" Cornell University LibraryIn ancient times, the area that we call Greece was many independent, self-governing city-states. The technical, much-used term for these city-states is?poleis?(the plural of?polis). We're familiar with the governments of the 2 leading poleis, Athens and Sparta.Poleis joined together voluntarily for protection against the Persians. Athens served as the head [technical term to learn:?hegemon] of theDelian League.The aftermath of the Peloponnesian War eroded the integrity of the poleis, as successive poleis dominated each other. Athens was temporarily forced to give up its democracy.Then the Macedonians, and later, the Romans incorporated the Greek poleis into their empires, putting an end to the independent polis.2.?Athens Invented DemocracyProbably one of the first things learned from history books or classes on ancient Greece is that the Greeks invented democracy. Athens originally had kings, but gradually, by the 5th century B.C., it developed a system that required active, ongoing participation of the citizens. Rule by the?demes?or people is a literal translation of the word "democracy". While virtually all citizens were allowed to participate in the democracy, citizens did?not?include:women,children,slaves, orresident aliens, including those from other Greek poleis.This means that the majority were excluded from the democratic process.The democratization of Athens was gradual, but the germ of it, the assembly, was part of the other poleis -- even Sparta.3.?Democracy Didn't Just Mean Everyone VotesThe modern world looks at democracy as a matter of electing men and women (in theory our equals, but in practice already powerful people or those we look up to) by voting, perhaps once a year or four. The Classical Athenians might not even recognize such limited participation in the government as democracy.Democracy is rule by the people, not rule by majority vote, although voting -- quite a lot of it -- was part of the ancient procedure, as was selection by lot. Athenian democracy included appointment of citizens to office and active participation in the running of the country.Citizens didn't just elect their favorites to represent them. They sat on court cases in very large numbers, perhaps as high as 1500 and as low as 201, voted, by various not necessarily precise methods, including estimation of hands raised, and spoke their minds on everything affecting the community in the assembly [technical term to learn:?ecclesia], and they might be selected by lot as one of the equal number of magistrates from each of the tribes to sit on the council [technical term to learn:?Boule].4.?Tyrants Could Be BenevolentWhen we think of tyrants, we think of oppressive, autocratic rulers. In ancient Greece, tyrants could be benevolent and supported by the populace, although not usually the aristocrats. However, a tyrant did not gain supreme power by constitutional means; nor was he the hereditary monarch. Tyrants seized power and generally maintained their position by means of mercenaries or soldiers from another?polis. Tyrants and oligarchies (the aristocratic rule by the few) were the main forms of government of the Greek poleis after the fall of the kings.5.?Sparta Had a Mixed Form of GovernmentSparta was less interested than Athens in following the will of the people. The people were supposed to be working for the good of the state. However, just as Athens experimented with a novel form of government, so also was Sparta's system unusual. Originally, monarchs ruled Sparta, but over time, Sparta hybridized its government:The kings remained, but there were 2 of them at a time so one could go to war,there were also 5 annually-elected ephors,a council of 28 elders [technical term to learn:?Gerousia],and an assembly of the people.The kings were a monarchical element, the ephors and Gerousia were an oligarchic component, and the assembly was a democratic element.6.?Macedonia Was a MonarchyAt the time of Philip of Macedonia and his son Alexander the Great, the government of Macedonia was monarchical. Macedonia's monarchy was not only hereditary, but powerful, unlike Sparta whose kings held circumscribed powers. Although the term may not be accurate,feudal?captures the essence of the Macedonian monarchy. With the Macedonian victory over mainland Greece at the?Battle of Chaeronea, the Greek poleis ceased to be independent, but were forced to join the Corinthian League.7.?Aristotle Preferred AristocracyUsually, the types of government relevant to ancient Greece are listed as three: Monarchy, Oligarchy (generally synonymous with rule by the aristocracy), and Democracy. Simplifying, Aristotle divided each into good and bad forms. Democracy in its extreme form is mob rule. Tyrants are a type of monarch, with their own self-serving interests paramount. For Aristotle, oligarchy was a bad type of aristocracy. Oligarchy, which means rule by the few, was rule by and for the wealthy for Aristotle. Aristotle preferred rule by the aristocrats who were, by definition, those who were the best. They would operate to reward merit and in the interests of the rmation contained in this article was taken from the website: ................
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