ancient greek democracy essay

ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Democracy (ancient greece).

Democracy in ancient Greece served as one of the first forms of self-rule government in the ancient world. The system and ideas employed by the ancient Greeks had profound influences on how democracy developed, and its impact on the formation of the U.S. government.

Social Studies, Ancient Civilizations

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The ancient Greeks were the first to create a democracy . The word “ democracy ” comes from two Greek words that mean people ( demos ) and rule ( kratos ). Democracy is the idea that the citizens of a country should take an active role in the government of their country and manage it directly or through elected representatives . In addition, it supports the idea that the people can replace their government through peaceful transfers of power rather than violent uprising or revolution . Thus, a key part of democracy is that the people have a voice.

The first known democracy in the world was in Athens. Athenian democracy developed around the fifth century B.C.E. The Greek idea of democracy was different from present-day democracy because, in Athens, all adult citizens were required to take an active part in the government. If they did not fulfill their duty they would be fined and sometimes marked with red paint. The Athenian definition of “citizens” was also different from modern-day citizens: only free men were considered citizens in Athens. Women, children, and slaves were not considered citizens and therefore could not vote.

Each year 500 names were chosen from all the citizens of ancient Athens. Those 500 citizens had to actively serve in the government for one year. During that year, they were responsible for making new laws and controlled all parts of the political process. When a new law was proposed, all the citizens of Athens had the opportunity to vote on it. To vote, citizens had to attend the assembly on the day the vote took place. This form of government is called direct democracy.

The United States has a representative democracy. Representative democracy is a government in which citizens vote for representatives who create and change laws that govern the people rather than getting to vote directly on the laws themselves.

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The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory

Josiah Ober

Where did "democracy" come from, and what was its original form and meaning? Here Josiah Ober shows that this "power of the people" crystallized in a revolutionary uprising by the ordinary citizens of Athens in 508-507 B.C. He then examines the consequences of the development of direct democracy for upper-and lower-class citizens, for dissident Athenian intellectuals, and for those who were denied citizenship under the new regime (women, slaves, resident foreigners), as well as for the general development of Greek history.

When the citizens suddenly took power into their own hands, they changed the cultural and social landscape of Greece, thereby helping to inaugurate the Classical Era. Democracy led to fundamental adjustments in the basic structures of Athenian society, altered the forms and direction of political thinking, and sparked a series of dramatic reorientations in international relations. It quickly made Athens into the most powerful Greek city-state, but it also fatally undermined the traditional Greek rules of warfare. It stimulated the development of the Western tradition of political theorizing and encouraged a new conception of justice that has striking parallels to contemporary theories of rights. But Athenians never embraced the notions of inherency and inalienability that have placed the concept of rights at the center of modern political thought. Thus the play of power that constituted life in democratic Athens is revealed as at once strangely familiar and desperately foreign, and the values sustaining the Athenian political community as simultaneously admirable and terrifying.

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How Democracy Developed in Ancient Greece

By: Becky Little

Updated: June 29, 2023 | Original: August 2, 2021

In the late 6th century B.C., the Greek city-state of Athens began to lay the foundations for a new kind of political system. This demokratia , as it became known, was a direct democracy that gave political power to free male Athenian citizens rather than a ruling aristocratic class or dictator, which had largely been the norm in Athens for several hundred years before.

Athens’ demokratia, which lasted until 322 B.C., is one of the earliest known examples of democracy; and although recent scholarship has complicated the Eurocentric view that it was the first democracy, this ancient political system was extremely influential in the Mediterranean region. It inspired similar political systems in other Greek city-states and influenced the ancient Roman Republic.

Athenian Men Join the Assembly

The last tyrannos , or tyrant, to rule Athens was Hippias, who fled the city when Sparta invaded in 510 B.C. Two or three years later, an Athenian aristocrat named Cleisthenes helped introduce democratic reforms. Over the next several decades, subsequent reforms expanded this political system while also narrowing the definition of who counted as an Athenian citizen.

What was Cleisthenes’ motivation for initiating these changes? Unfortunately, “we don’t have any good contemporary historical Athenian sources that tell us what’s going on,” says Paul Cartledge , a classics professor at the University of Cambridge. After the 514 B.C. assassination of Hippias’ brother, Cleisthenes may have sensed there was growing public support for a system in which the city-state was not governed by an elite ruling class.

“Cleisthenes, I think probably partly for his own personal self-promotion, put himself forward as champion of the majority view, which was that we must have some form of popular, ‘people’ regime,” Cartledge says.

To participate in the demokratia, a person had to be free, male and Athenian. In the beginning of the democratic period, Athenian men had to have an Athenian father and a free mother. By the mid-5th century B.C., Athens changed the law so that only men with Athenian fathers and mothers could claim citizenship. Because there were no birth certificates (or DNA tests) to prove parentage, a young Athenian man’s political life began when his father introduced him at their local demos , or political unit, by swearing that he was his father and bringing witnesses to attest to this, Cartledge says.

The Athenian democracy was direct, rather than representative, meaning that Athenian men themselves made up the Assembly. Because there were no population censuses, we don’t know exactly how many Athenian men there were in the 5th century B.C., but historians have commonly estimated the number to be around 30,000. Of those, around 5,000 might regularly attend Assembly meetings. In addition, Athenian men served on juries and were annually selected by lot to serve on the Council of 500.

There were other government positions that were in theory open to all Athenian men, although wealth and location played a large role in whether a man could take on a full-time government job or even make it to the Assembly to vote in the first place. Still, there were some positions that were only open to elites: the treasurers were always wealthy (ostensibly because wealthy men knew how to handle finances), and the 10 generals who occupied the top government office were always elite, well-known men.

Political Citizenship Remained Narrow

And then, of course, there were all the other people in Athens who were completely cut off from political participation.

Assuming that there were about 30,000 Athenian men when the city-state developed its democracy, historians estimate there were probably about 90,000 other people living in Athens. A sizable portion of these people would have been non-Athenians who were enslaved (by law, Athenians couldn’t enslave other Athenians). Others were “resident aliens” who were free and lived in Athens but didn’t meet the requirements for Athenian citizenship. The rest were Athenian women and children, both of whom couldn’t join the Assembly.

Although these groups never gained the same political rights as Athenian men, there was some debate about whether they should be able to, says Josiah Ober , a classics professor at Stanford University.

“We know that the question of ‘could women be political beings?’ was debated,” he says. In 391 B.C., the Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote a comedy,  Assemblywomen,  in which women take over Athens’ government. “It’s meant to be funny in some ways, but there’s a serious thought behind it,” he says. Although Aristotle thought women weren’t psychologically fit for politics, Ober notes that Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, wrote in The Republic (circa 375 B.C.) that an ideal political system would include both women and men.

In addition, “there were moves several times in Athenian crisis history to…free large numbers of slaves to make them citizens, or at least make them resident aliens, on the argument that [Athens] needed more people who were full participants in the war effort,” Ober says. However, “these tended to get defeated.”

Athens’ democratic period also coincided with the city-state’s tightening of its control over what was originally a voluntary alliance of Greek city-states, but had now become an Athenian empire. The city-states had their own governments, some of which were influenced by Athens’ democratic system, but didn’t have any political power in Athens’ demokratia.

Athens’ democracy officially ended in 322 B.C., when Macedonia imposed an oligarchic government on Athens after defeating the city-state in battle. One of the Athenian democracy’s major legacies was its influence on the Roman Republic, which lasted until 27 B.C. The Roman Republic took the idea of direct democracy and amended it to create a representative democracy—a form of government that Europeans and European colonists became interested in several centuries later.

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The Athenian Revolution

Essays on ancient greek democracy and political theory.

• Josiah Ober
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Copyright year: 1996
• Audience: General/trade;
• Main content: 224
• Keywords: Athenian Democracy ; Ideology ; Thucydides ; Politics ; Democracy ; Classical Athens ; Political philosophy ; Institution ; Oligarchy ; Politician ; Demosthenes ; Political system ; Political history ; Sovereignty ; Hoplite ; Rhetoric ; Theory ; Politeia ; Political culture ; Government ; Aristotle ; Historiography ; Social class ; Public sphere ; Political science ; Westphalian sovereignty ; Literature ; Hoi polloi ; Public speaking ; Positivism ; Social inequality ; Direct democracy ; Greek democracy ; Classical antiquity ; Social reality ; Herodotus ; Radical democracy ; Political organization ; Liberalism ; Citizenship ; Value (ethics) ; State (polity) ; Criticism ; Forms of government ; Cambridge University Press ; Writing ; J. L. Austin ; Hegemony ; Superiority (short story) ; Slavery ; Ancient Greece ; False consciousness ; Intellectual history ; Indictment ; Isagoras ; Wealth ; Foreign policy ; Archaic Greece ; Postmodernism ; Ekklesia (think tank) ; Tax ; Regime ; Isocrates ; Republic (Plato) ; Explanation ; Political Affairs (magazine) ; Philosopher ; Narrative ; Aristocracy ; Social structure
• Published: September 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780691217970

The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy: A Politico-Cultural Transformation and its Interpretations. The Ancient World: Comparative Histories

Alexandra lianeri , university of thessaloniki. [email protected].

This sophisticated volume engages with a constantly reinvented meaning of democracy by means of a complex return to the walls of Athens. On one level, it re-examines Athens from the viewpoint of the relation between democracy and the wider frame of the polis society. It thus explores concepts, commitments and practices of the polis that encountered dēmokratia and reshaped it by means of opposition and dissent. On the other hand, it returns to Athens from the broader diachronic scope of modern democracy with the intention of challenging the developmental logic leading from antiquity to the modern democratic paradigm. As the editors point out, when observers consider ancient Greek democracy as a ‘success’ story, they overlook the fact that democratic practices were contested in the past and stand today as a challenging and problematic project rather than a triumphant finale to history (2).

This enterprise is organized around four distinct sections. In the first, the authors re-assess the Greek experience of democracy from the broader perspectives of historical-comparative sociology and the history of political thought. Johann Arnason takes on Christian Meier’s question of the emergence of the political in Greece 1 as a distinct version of the Axial breakthrough indicating cultural interaction with Near Eastern centres. Against a background centred on the problems, virtues and possibilities of monarchy, the Greek notion of the political involved the shaping of a polycentric field of conflicts associated with different patternings in diverse polis-regimes. Peter Wagner also enquires about the Greek concept of the political by exploring the trajectory of ancient and modern democracy in the context of the radical transformation of western political languages between 1770 and 1830. He argues that our relation to dēmokratia is one of conceptual and institutional transformations manifesting a constant element that sustains the modern return to Athens: a ‘democratic political imaginary’ holding that the people rule themselves, as the etymology and past usage of the term indicate.

In its second part, the book examines the embeddedness of democracy in the practices of the polis-society through an analysis of genres of expression and interpretation. Egon Flaig explores how tragedy was one of the answers given by Greek intellectuals to the contradiction between collective will formation and acting on the one hand, and the lack of undisputed normative and moral orientation on the other. The tragic entanglement stating that ‘who acts will suffer’ indicated a connection between ‘doing’ and ‘bearing the consequences’, inviting reflection about the fragility of normative rules. Comedy is then studied by Lucio Bertelli as a discursive mode of dissent. Unlike other dissenters in Athens, such as Pseudo-Xenophon and Plato, Aristophanes aimed at educating the democratic citizenry and fixing the vices of the people, whose lack of wisdom and learning was not considered to be an irreparable flaw.

Jonas Grethlein argues against the straightforward relation between historiography and democratic culture by examining the ambiguous attitudes of the first historians towards oratory. He suggests that while Herodotus and Thucydides criticize the speeches both explicitly and implicitly, the very form of their criticism contains democratic features creating a tension that is parallel to the one between content and form in Plato. Also focusing on rhetoric, Harvey Yunis explores the evolution of its political uses on the basis of two categories: primary political rhetoric composed for delivery in political or judicial institutions, and literary rhetoric as a written genre that did not aim to affect immediate decision making. The latter genre developed a complex artistic prose deployed by critics of democracy seeking to reshape the readers’ understanding of a historical event or a domain of knowledge.

The interpretive operation of the Athenian legal system is discussed by Adriaan Lanni as intertwined with democracy through its pervasive ‘amateurism’. It was not only that every player in the system was fundamentally a layman; argumentation in popular courts also reflected democratic ideology especially as regards the expression of hostility toward expertise. On the grounds of this amateurism, Athenian courts were arguably more successful at maintaining order and promoting political stability than other legal systems. Ryan Balot shifts the discussion to the tension between ancient Greek political thinking and practice with the aim of exploring within democratic politics certain ideological strands that informed the Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian political projects. This enterprise sustains a broader thesis about the dialectical intertwining of political thought and practice in Athens, which is traced back to Solon and precludes a binary opposition between democratic and anti-democratic discourses. Finally in this section, Elizabeth Meyer focuses on the history of inscriptions in Athens to argue against the easy connection between the epigraphic habit and the regime of democracy. Inscribing on stone was an act of memorializing and monumentalizing involving diverse cultural habits, such as honor and praise, religious traditions, political institutions and the culture of the city itself.

The third part of the book explores democracy’s impact on the polis society. Sara Forsdyke discusses the uneven ways in which democracy influenced communal life. She suggests that tradition and innovation combined to produce a hybrid society in which the new did not wholly dispel the old and the existence of sophisticated formal institutions did not preclude the informal participation of women, metics and slaves in the life of the community. Claude Mossé also focuses on democracy’s principle of political participation to highlight the relation between the ambiguity of concepts such as dēmos, kratos, isonomia, isēgoria , and so on, and the actual historical conditions that framed participatory practice, such as class-divisions and the interdependence between the dēmos and the Athenian political elite.

Robin Osborne examines the relation of democracy and religion. Discussing how religious beliefs and practices made possible a democratic ethos, he contends that “it was in relation to the gods, and not simply in relation to other men, that individuals came to acquire and envisage their capacities for autonomy.” (292) On the other hand, while religion in Athens cannot be reduced to democracy, its links to certain democratic institutions and practices, such as the number of competitive festivals open to participation by all, made the expression of religion the expression of a democratic community. Lawrence Tritle shifts attention to the impact of war on democracy and democratic society, discussing the impacts on the Athenian community of changes in military ministry after the Persian wars, the relation between war and democratic decision making, the economy, and the ways in which the Athenian democracy dealt with the question of casualties and the social consequences of war’s trauma.

The book’s final section examines key concepts of the ancient Greek democratic self-understanding and their transformation between antiquity and the present. Kurt Raaflaub enquires about the historical conditions in the polis that transformed a polis-being into “a truly political being” (324). Tracing the history of the concepts of equality and the political, he recognizes significant democratizing processes in poleis other than Athens, but contends that the fifth-century Athenian breakthrough was unique as regards the extent and characteristics of political mobilization and participation of lower class citizens. Tracy Strong explores the interrelation of tyranny, democracy and tragedy via a reading of Nietzsche’s consideration of politics as a form of agōn and of tyranny as the act of considering as accomplished the world that one has made. Tragedy preserved the agōn by making available the experience of confronting two equally categorical positions and recognizing that disaster comes when one or the other or both insist on being taken as final. In the last essay, Natalie Karagiannis and Peter Wagner discuss the distinction between ancient and modern liberty. They suggest that a concept of freedom elaborated between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE included an idea of personal freedom which it combined with the democratic idea of collective freedom. This concept can provide important components of a remedy for ‘modern’ freedom both with regard to the idea of the human being as an atom and the consequences of individual liberty for the sustainability of political society.

The volume is part of the series The Ancient World: Comparative Histories which is intended to pursue the comparative study of ancient or early societies, while occasionally adopting a more diachronic scope (vii). Unlike other volumes in the series, which discuss civilizations from Asia through the Mediterranean to the Americas, the comparative perspective deployed here is more complex. The frames of comparison utilize the diachronic history of the polis, the long-term history of Athenian democracy, and divisions and differences characterizing Athenian democracy, as well as the interdisciplinary linking of classics, ancient history, the history of political thought, sociology, and political science. Indeed, with the exception of Arnason’s analysis and the introduction, the book consciously remains within the limits of the European, the Greek, and often the Athenian world. As the editors explain in the introduction, while they recognize democratic ‘alternatives to Athens’, these do not become the book’s focus (2).

This perspective is not comparative if comparison is understood as a juxtaposition of objects that exist on a global scale, whatever the grandiose adjective ‘global’ may be taken to mean. However, if one accepts that comparison, as Jörn Rüsen notes, presupposes a certain transformation of historical consciousness that challenges the historian’s own sense of the past in relation to what is ‘other’, 2 then this transformation may involve various comparative frames and constellations. The reconstitution of one’s perspective on Athenian democracy by means of a comparative approach involves replacing the image of Athens as a discrete entity with a complex set of relations. In other words, it involves identifying an entangled set of pathways that are open-ended and move in and out of other geopolitical and cultural topoi, but also in and out of the different topoi inscribed in the diversity of the Greek poleis, in the juxtaposition of democracy and the polis society, and in the long-term history of ancient and modern democracy.

By grounding its comparative perspective on gaps, tensions and conflicts characterizing the history of democracy and the Greek polis, the book usefully complements works utilizing a broader comparative frame which have challenged the uniqueness of the Greek paradigm by relating Greece to the Asian and Mediterranean worlds. 3 Still, the inclusion of this broader perspective in the book through Arnason’s essay raises significant theoretical questions about the interrelation of the two models. Comparison allows us to reinvent the historical objects it brings together by enabling their understanding in new terms generated by the comparative frame itself. This means that the image of Athenian democracy changes when historical data are examined, for instance, in comparison with the modern European democratic tradition; within the background of the diverse cultural and political traditions of the polis; or in comparison with alternatives to Athens manifested within or beyond the Greek world. How is it possible to sustain a dialogue between the different images associated with these distinct comparative frames? When it is seen from a worldly perspective, a comparative approach limited to the Greek poleis or Athenian democracy can justifiably be criticized as Eurocentric and Athenocentric, on the grounds that it naturalizes the imaginary uniqueness of Greek or Athenian history. Still, a broader frame does not straightforwardly imply a critical perspective on Eurocentrism, insofar as comparisons may well rely on concepts derived from the European tradition, such as democracy and the polis, and thus prefigure the uniqueness of the Greek paradigm. So the analysis of tensions underpinning these concepts, attempted by this volume, may serve to highlight paths of critique contained within the European tradition itself. 4 Reflection on the different models of comparison as regards ancient history goes beyond the scope of the present review. Yet it attests to the book’s theoretical sophistication that it invites such a reflection by suggesting that what we call ‘Athenian democracy’ is but a unifying category for a much more diversified, complex and interactive fabric of practices, concepts, historical objects and traditions, whose mutual opposition may grant new frames for comparative historiography in the ancient world.

1 . Meier, C., Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen , Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp 1980, Eng. tr. The Greek Discovery of Politics , tr. D. McLintock, Cambridge MA.: Harvard University Press, 1990.

2 . Rüsen, J., “Some Theoretical Approaches to Intercultural Comparative Historiography”, History and Theory 35, 1996: 5–22.

3 . See Horden, P. and Purcell, N., The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History , Oxford: Blackwell, 2000; Lloyd, G. E. R., Ancient Worlds, Modern Reflections: Philosophical Perspectives on Greek and Chinese Science and Culture , Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006, and Disciplines in the Making: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Elites, Learning and Innovation , Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009; Vlassopoulos, K., Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History beyond Eurocentrism , Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007, and Greeks and Barbarians , Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013; Haubold, J., Greece and Mesopotamia: Dialogues in Literature , Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013.

4 . On this issue see Chakrabarty, D., Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference , Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000.

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Democracy, Justice, and Equality in Ancient Greece: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives

Georgios Anagnostopoulos and Gerasimos Santas (eds.), Democracy, Justice, and Equality in Ancient Greece: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives , Springer, 2019, 316pp., $139.99 (hbk), ISBN 9783319963129.

Reviewed by David J. Riesbeck, Tempe Preparatory Academy

The ideas of democracy, justice, and equality were central to political thought in ancient Greece and remain so for us today. Yet the vast cultural differences between antiquity and modernity inevitably put some distance between ancient concerns and our own. Nonetheless, historical and cultural perspective plays an indispensable role in self-understanding, and this volume seeks to offer just such perspective. Ten of its thirteen chapters focus on Plato, Aristotle, or both. The emphasis therefore falls decidedly on the philosophical rather than the historical, though most of the papers give some attention to matters of context. The quality of the contributions varies, but several chapters provide novel insight or especially helpful overviews of their topics. Much of the volume will be of interest only to specialists in ancient Greek philosophy or politics, but a few of the chapters would reward a wider readership among philosophers and students thinking about justice, equality, and democracy more broadly.

Following the editorial introduction, the volume opens with two historical chapters setting out the economic, social, and political background against which Plato and Aristotle did their thinking. Josiah Ober's 'Institutions, Growth, and Inequality in Ancient Greece' summarizes evidence and arguments from his recent The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece : by pre-modern standards, the classical Greek world sustained exceptionally high economic growth and, in Athens, historically low levels of income inequality, both driven primarily by "fair rules and fierce competition" (24). Claire Taylor, in 'Economic Inequality, Poverty, and Democracy in Athens,' focuses on the ways that Athens' democracy helped to ameliorate poverty for many despite reproducing it for others. Taylor presents a nuanced treatment of Greek ideas about poverty, and she draws fruitfully on recent social scientific work on the relationship between democracy and wealth. Both of these chapters largely reproduce material already published elsewhere, but they provide important perspectives for understanding and assessing the philosophical views discussed in the remaining chapters.

Those remaining chapters range from broad surveys of their topics to narrower interpretive arguments. Gerasimos Santas' 'Plato on Inequalities, Justice, and Democracy' offers a magisterial overview of equality and inequality in the Republic and the Laws . The chapter is valuable for its synoptic vision, but it also does two other things particularly well: it sets out helpful distinctions between different kinds and sources of (in)equality, and it clarifies the different roles that normative principles and empirical assumptions play in Plato's thinking about them. Santas notes that all of the strategies that Plato discusses for solving "the distribution problem of social justice" (162) -- strict equality, proportional equality, floors and ceilings, limits on the distance between the best and worst off -- find parallels in modern discussion; and though few will want to follow Plato in detail, Santas illustrates that his thinking on these matters is more sophisticated than sometimes supposed. One might wish for more critical engagement with Plato on Santas' part, especially in assessing the shifts from the Republic to the Laws . Nonetheless, the chapter provides an excellent entry point for anyone with interests in these topics.

Georgios Anagnostopoulos' 'Justice, Distribution of Resources, and (In)Equalities in Aristotle's Ideal Constitution' does for Aristotle some of what Santas does for Plato, but with a more critical and constructive philosophical agenda. Anagnostopoulos notes that while Aristotle is deeply concerned with equality and inequality, his discussion of the best constitution in Politics VII-VIII apparently does not apply his principle of distributive justice (articulated in NE V.3, elaborated in Pol . III.9-13) to the distribution of wealth and other resources. That principle applies to the distribution of political offices according to merit, but the distribution of other resources is guided by "concerns unrelated to justice" (213), such as minimizing or eliminating factional conflict and meeting citizens' needs. Anagnostopoulos finds this feature of Aristotle's argument puzzling, and he responds by attempting to construct arguments to show that Aristotle could justify many of the same conclusions by appeal to his principle of distributive justice. He goes on to argue that the principle should or at least might have led Aristotle to different conclusions with regard to women, laborers, merchants, resident aliens, and slaves.

The constructive aspect of Anagnostopoulos' approach fails to convince, especially since it requires an interpretation of 'merit' on which a citizen's needs count as a relevant merit. This interpretation seems inconsistent with Aristotle's conception of merit, on which the merit relevant to distributive justice is one's contribution to a shared goal ( Pol. III.12 12823a1-3). Anagnostopoulos explores the possibility of treating some needs (those of health or education, for instance) as relevant to citizens' contributing to civic functions, but this maneuver seems not to treat needs themselves as a basis for distribution; it meets citizens' needs not because they are the needs of citizens, but because the citizens will be more effective at their jobs if their needs are met. This approach thereby threatens to reduce the city's concern for its citizens to a concern for their effectiveness as political instruments. Yet, as Anagnostopoulos recognizes, Aristotle justifies many of the arrangements of his ideal constitution by appealing directly to the needs of the citizens.

We find a more fruitful approach to this problem in Paula Gottlieb's 'Aristotle on Inequality of Wealth.' Gottlieb focuses not on the best constitution of Politics VII-VIII, but the second-best constitution of IV.11. She argues persuasively that Aristotle attempts to improve on Phaleas of Chalcedon's proposals for equality in land (criticized in Pol. II.7) and to avoid the sort of 'hour-glass' distribution of wealth common in modern nations. More broadly, however, Gottlieb maintains that Aristotle's reflections on equality and inequality in wealth and other resources are guided not by principles of distributive justice, but by concerns about factional conflict and stability, on the one hand, and the promotion of virtue on the other:

In his discussion of the middling constitution, Aristotle does not address the issue of who deserves wealth. He is describing a system in which most people can enjoy a measured amount of resources. The point of the system is to free everyone of the vices, especially the vice of greed ( pleonexia ), a vice opposed to the virtue of justice. (266-7)

We can take Gottlieb's analysis further in identifying the fundamental problem with Anagnostopoulos' approach. For Anagnostopoulos, considerations that are not considerations of distributive justice are not considerations of justice at all. Yet the considerations that Gottlieb emphasizes, and that Anagnostopoulos recognizes, are considerations of justice; they belong to what Aristotle calls justice as lawfulness, what commentators often call 'universal' or 'general' justice. Justice as lawfulness is not primarily a matter of obedience to positive law, but of aiming at the common good and acting to "produce and protect happiness and its parts for the political community" ( EN 5.1 1129b17-19). Scholars all too often ignore justice as lawfulness, as though it were of minimal interest to Aristotle in comparison to his 'particular' species of justice. In fact, one of the most surprising and disappointing features of this volume is its virtually complete neglect of Aristotelian justice as lawfulness and the common good. Gottlieb does not explicitly connect her treatment of inequality to justice as lawfulness, but she points in the right direction: the purpose of an Aristotelian polis is the happiness of its citizens, and it is that purpose, not considerations of merit as such, that drives Aristotle's thinking about how a city should assign and manage resources such as wealth, education, occupations, and the like.

Of course, Aristotle infamously limits the scope of the happiness and virtue at which his ideal constitutions aim, endorsing slavery, excluding or marginalizing manual laborers and merchants, neglecting resident aliens, and denying citizenship to women. Anagnostopoulos devotes a great deal of attention to these exclusions in Aristotle, and Santas considers similar questions about Plato. Dorothea Frede's 'Equal but Not Equal: Plato and Aristotle on Women as Citizens' considers what the two philosophers thought about women's citizenship and why. Readers familiar with these issues will find few surprises here: the limits and motivations of Plato's apparent egalitarianism in the Republic will fail to satisfy feminist concerns, the Laws extends more rights and opportunities to women than contemporary Greek cities but hardly advocates for equality, and the Timaeus represents a "fall from grace" in its treatment of women as naturally inferior to men; Aristotle's uncompromising exclusion of women derives not from personal misogyny but from his commitment to a sort of naturalistic conservatism that too readily identifies what is usually the case with what is natural and appropriate. Scholars who have argued for alternative interpretations will not find strong reasons to revise their views. In particular, Frede does not fully engage with arguments against her controversial claims that the egalitarianism of the Republic does not extend to the productive class and that Aristotle's understanding of women's psychology does not regard them as constitutionally akratic.

Other chapters likewise focus on specific issues. Christopher J. Rowe's 'Plato on Equality and Democracy' addresses a narrower set of questions than its title suggests, attending especially to whether inequality in wealth per se justifies inequality in power. Rowe defends a negative answer and argues that Plato's criticisms of democracy are more limited than is often supposed. Catherine McKeen and Nicholas D. Smith's 'Like-Mindedness: Plato's Solution to the Problem of Faction' offers a careful interpretation of Platonic homonoia , often translated as 'agreement' or 'consensus' but here taken as a psychological similarity that underlies agreements relevant to resisting faction. The argument, drawing on the role of homonoia in the Alcibiades I to shed light on the Republic , is convincing, but it is unclear whether it points to a solution to the problem of faction significantly different from what others have found in Plato. Deborah K. W. Modrak's 'Virtue, Equality, and Inequality in Aristotle's Politics ' explores what roles Aristotle gives to equality in his account of faction and his analysis of constitutions. She discovers a "psychologically perceptive" (256) account of the desire for equality in the explanation of faction and a normative role in guiding attempts to balance competing class interests, but finds the principles involved highly indeterminate.

Terry Penner's 'Inequality, Intention, and Ignorance: Socrates on Punishment and the Human Good' sets out to apply his rich and controversial interpretations of Socratic ethics and psychology to contemporary problems of racial and class-based inequality in education and punishment. In fact the chapter touches on inequality only tangentially, as Penner's central argument advocates the outright abolition of punishment, not its equitable application. Those who have followed Penner's work on Socrates will read this paper with interest, but those more concerned with the philosophy of punishment will likely find its contentions too implausible to take seriously. Penner's case depends on the wildly controversial claims that "none of us ever has the faintest idea of just what it is that we are intentionally doing" (116), that those who harm others harm themselves and thereby fail to achieve their real ends due to ignorance, and that nobody should be punished for any sort of ignorance. Penner offers food for thought about the assumptions behind the practice of punishment, but proponents of standard theories of punishment will not find much of a challenge here.

The two highlights of the volume, to my mind, are David Keyt's 'Aristotle on Freedom and Equality' and Fred D. Miller's 'Aristotle on Democracy and the Marketplace.' Both of these chapters contain some material published elsewhere, but each makes a valuable contribution to understanding Aristotle, and they should prove of broad interest to readers with general interests in these topics.

Keyt considers Aristotle's explicit account of the democratic conception of freedom and equality and reconstructs his implicit account of their aristocratic conception. Drawing on Gerald MacCallum's well known "triadic analysis" of freedom in terms of an agent, an impediment, and a goal, Keyt distinguishes legal freedom ("freedom of a human being from legally imposed servitude"), personal freedom ("freedom of a person to pursue his own goals"), and political freedom, itself divided into civic freedom ("freedom of a citizen from impediments to his personal freedom imposed by the political system under which he lives") and polis freedom ("freedom of a polis from impediments to its autonomy, or self-government, imposed by another polis or nation," 227-8). Aristotle's democratic and aristocratic conceptions of justice involve different conceptions of these freedoms, especially personal freedom, which in turn shape their divergent conceptions of equality. Keyt's reconstruction of the aristocratic conception of freedom is highly plausible, though Aristotle leaves enough implicit to allow for disagreement about details. Where the chapter really shines is in its analysis of the democratic conception.

While some have dismissed Aristotle's treatment of democracy as a polemical distortion, Keyt shows that the democratic conception as Aristotle understands it is coherent and at least somewhat attractive: Aristotle's democrats are "anarchists at heart" (228), but recognize the benefits of living together in a political community, and so value equality in ruling and being ruled as a way of preserving their personal freedom while enjoying the fruits of positive political co-operation. Keyt does not argue that Aristotle accurately represents Athenian democratic ideals, but he successfully shows that the democratic conception Aristotle describes is not a caricature, but at least the outline of a serious alternative to his own aristocratic ideal. That aristocratic ideal also emerges as more coherent and attractive than its critics sometimes allow. In Aristotle's hands it licenses severe inequalities, but ancient democrats accepted many of the same inequalities in their exclusion of women, endorsement of slavery, and privileging of citizens over non-citizens. Though Keyt does not put it in these terms, the fundamental dispute between Aristotle's democrats and aristocrats shares many features of disputes that persist today between proponents of liberal neutrality and political perfectionism. This paper will reward not only Aristotelian scholars, but historians, political theorists, and philosophers sensitive to the history of these concepts and debates.

Miller's chapter begins with Aristotle's critique of extreme forms of democracy on the grounds that they grant citizenship not only to manual laborers, but to merchants and people engaged in other commercial occupations. Aristotle's antipathy toward commercial pursuits is well known but poorly understood. He shares that antipathy, at least broadly, with Plato, and one common view dismisses it as merely an inherited aristocratic prejudice. Miller rightly resists that move; whatever role class bias might have played in Aristotle's views, he defended his judgments on the basis of philosophical arguments that deserve careful analysis and assessment. Those arguments depend in part on the general theses of his ethical theory, but no less importantly on his analysis of commercial practices. After reviewing the basic tenets of Aristotle's 'virtue ethics,' Miller turns to his analyses of barter, commercial exchange and profit-seeking, banking and lending at interest, and commodity speculation. He then develops a thought experiment of the familiar twin-earth sort: we imagine an earth just like ours and a philosopher just like Aristotle except that he has somehow become aware of and accepts the basic principles of modern microeconomics. If this twin-earth Aristotle, 'Aristecon,' reconsiders barter, commerce, banking, and commodity speculation in light of these principles, Miller argues, he will reach markedly different conclusions from Aristotle despite accepting Aristotle's ethical and political principles.

Aristecon's understanding of the mutual gains of trade will enable him to see how each of the parties in exchange can benefit and end up with "the mean relative to him" even though there is no objective equality in the objects exchanged, and even when one or both parties make a profit. So too, his understanding of time preferences will enable him to see lending and borrowing at interest as a potentially fair exchange that assigns to each the mean relative to him, while his appreciation of the roles of risk and knowledge in an economy will allow him to see commodity speculation not as exploitation, but as having a valuable social function. Aristotle also offers a more general critique of commerce as unnatural insofar as it treats wealth as an end in itself or as an unlimited means to the gratification of appetite. Aristecon will instead see that money-making, like medicine, can be and often is subordinated to higher ends that limit the pursuit of wealth maximization. Aristotle's case for excluding people engaged in commercial enterprises from citizenship rests on the view that commercial activities necessarily involve vicious actions or cultivate vicious character. Miller makes a strong case that this view rests in turn on an understanding of commerce inconsistent with modern economics.

Critics with Thomist or Marxist sympathies may doubt that Miller's microeconomic principles suffice to undermine Aristotelian theories of just price or the perversity of profit-seeking exchange. Even those wholly at peace with mainstream economic theories of value and exchange might reasonably doubt that Aristecon is right to dismiss worries about the corrupting effects of profit-seeking. The main value of Miller's chapter, however, is to show that Aristotle's hostility to commerce does not follow straightforwardly from his broader ethical or political theory. By the same token, the modern economic principles that Miller discusses need not conflict with Aristotle's broader ideals, including that of promoting and protecting the common good via the regulation of property and wealth. Anagnostopoulos highlights some of the severe problems that arise from Aristotle's insistence that citizens ideally avoid the tasks of wealth production. Miller's chapter shows that wealth production and commerce need not conflict with the aims of virtue and happiness. Yet one imagines that Aristotle, if not Aristecon, would insist that the city has an important role to play in preventing such conflict from arising. Perhaps contemporary neo-Aristotelians should think the same.

This volume makes a valuable addition to scholarship. It is a pity that only the wealthy will be able to afford it.

Democracy and Education: A History from Ancient Athens

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• Nicholas C. Kyriazis 2 &
• Emmanouil Marios L. Economou 2  

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Economics ((BRIEFSECONOMICS,volume 89))

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In the present essay we present first a theoretical model, introducing the term “macroculture” as a long-term set of norms, values, institutions, and organizations that characterize societies. We analyze how a/new democratic macroculture emerged for the first time in the Greek city-states by the end of the sixth century BCE. We then, inspired by Humboldt’s work on education as a condition for the good functioning of democracy, taking a case study, Classical Athens. Athenians were well aware that for a smooth functioning of democracy the citizens, who voted in the Assembly under direct democracy procedures, had to be educated. Thus, they could find good solutions in the decision process of the Assembly. To achieve this, they introduced some ingenious policy measures.

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An issue faced also by modern democracies: Should for example a football hooligan, or a member of the SS during the Weimar Republic, or “Golden Dawn” Nazi party in modern Greece, who demonstrate violent behavior, and in the last two cases being avowed enemies of democracy, have the same voting right with an “ordinary” citizen? A satisfactory solution was not found then (leading to the fall of the Weimar Republic) nor now.

We prefer the term “initiator” than politician to characterize leaders of ancient Athens, since at the time, there were not established political parties, and most government positions were covered by lot. The initiators brought forward initiatives in front of the citizens Assembly, and arguing in order to convince citizens to vote in favor.

This point has been raised as a criticism against North ( 1981 ) by Daunton ( 2010 ).

For the way that the phalanx formation was deployed in battlefields during war campaigns see Hanson ( 2009 ).

For this issue, see Kyriazis and Economou ( 2013 ) and the references there in.

For the calculation of the number of the Athenian citizens during the fifth century, being 60,000, see Kyriazis and Paparrigopoulos ( 2012 ). The basic source is Herodotus “History.”

At the time the fourth class (according to wealth criteria) the “thetes” did not have full political rights. They would vote, but not be elected to government positions (Kyriazis 2012 ). But by serving as rowers in the fleet, e.g., taking part in the defense of their country, they would get full political rights, as they finally did.

Miletus on the coast of Asia Minor was sacked and destroyed by the Persians in 479 BCE, after the unsuccessful Ionian Revolt against Persian rule.

Of the 340 Greek ships at Salamis, 180 were Athenian (Strauss 2004 ; Shepherd 2010 ).

Contrary to older views, modern scholars have presented a lot of evidence that the average Athenian citizen was hard working, either as self-employed in one of the almost 200 types of jobs specified by Xenophon on “Oeconomicus” and “Cyropaedia,” or as a salaried employee (Cohen 1992 ; Amemiya 2007 ; Halkos and Kyriazis 2010 ).

On morals, Antigone includes the famous line “I was not born to hate but to love,” a precursor by five centuries of Christian teaching.

We have argued (Kyriazis 2012 ; Kyriazis and Metaxas 2013 ) that ancient Greeks developed coordination and cooperation mechanisms, which were the phalanx tactical formation, and the ships (triremes) and fleets. Values and norms developed in the military field, like equality, self-awareness, listening to the expert, courage, etc., were taken over and adapted as democratic political values. For example, it required real political courage (known as “paressia”), to come confidently forward in the Assembly and make specific proposals, as the initiator could face substantial punishments if his proposal proved to be wrong, mainly fines, but sometimes even the death penalty. The victor of Marathon, Miltiades was fined to the exorbitant fine of 50 talents for his failed military expedition against Paros, which his son Kimon paid after his death.

“Eklesia” being the name of the popular Assembly, originally meaning coming together, gathering. The name was taken over in Greek and Latin to mean religious gatherings, in Christian times, church. The remuneration was between 4 and 6 obols, 1 drachma being 6 obols and 1 drachma being the average wage for skilled worker during the second half of the fifth century. This was the wage paid to workers (stone masons, etc.) in the Acropolis-Parthenon building project.

According to the “Freedom in the World” indicator for 2014 , there is an erosion in global freedom, with 54 countries registering declines and 40 gains.

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Kyriazis, N., Economou, E. (2015). Democracy and Education: A History from Ancient Athens. In: Backhaus, J. (eds) The University According to Humboldt. SpringerBriefs in Economics, vol 89. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13856-5_7

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Ancient Greek Democracy That Still Makes People Strive for Perfection Essay

Ancient Greece is often referred to as a cradle of the Western World. This is not just a smart metaphor, but a certain fact that can hardly be refuted.

Thus, Greek dreams of a perfect society where everyone (or at least the majority) is happy resulted in the creation of the first democracy in the world. This invention of humanity has had a great impact on the development of the human society.

First, Greek cities were governed as any other kingdom in the ancient world. However, a number of uprisings made Ancient Greeks work out a unique political system. Thus, in the 6 th century B.C. Greeks created the first democratic society.

It is possible to understand the major principles of Ancient Greek democracy when considering the meaning of the very word democratic . Thus, the word consists of two composites: demos and kratos . The first composite is translated as “the people” and kratos is translated as “power”, which gives us the following meaning: “the power of the people” (qtd. in Ober 3).

Therefore, there was no single ruler in the country and there was no risk of tyranny. Basically, people discussed the problems and worked out specific solutions to the problems. Admittedly, it can be a bit naïve to think that the majority always benefitted as there were always elite groups that pursued their specific objectives.

Nonetheless, needs of many people were taken into account and many people could enjoy basic rights. It is possible to state that the creation of such a democratic society was revolutionary. Of course, it had an enormous impact on the development of humanity.

Notably, many societies are based on the principles of Greek democracy. Many European countries followed the example of Ancient Greece to create new better societies. Thus, French Republic was based on major principles developed by ancient Greeks.

The USA can be regarded as one of the brightest examples of democratic societies. Undoubtedly, Americans used experience of French people and used the principles outlined in Ancient Greece. Apart from such significant political implications, democratic principles of Ancient Greece have become certain part of people’s consciousness.

As far as I am concerned, I am also affected by the democratic principles. I think Ancient Greeks managed to outline major principles of a perfect and just society. More so, I think I have specific views on society due to the influence of Ancient Greece.

I have heard of justice and equality from my childhood. Of course, these views date back to the ancient world. Now I think that people should take a stand whenever they may need. I think that people can find solutions if they start a proper discussion when they listen to each other.

I also think that these principles have affected my life. For instance, I believe discussion is the most important thing in any human interaction. Thus, I always discuss issues and I never jump to conclusions. I try to consider all possible factors and take into account all opinions.

Of course, some time ago I thought I developed such principles as I was so smart and just. However, I think I did not work out these ideas. I only adopted them.

These ideas are in the air and people cannot but adopt them (or try to oppose to them). Most importantly, no one remains distant as these ideas are integrated in our universe.

Works Cited

Ober, Josiah. “The Original Meaning of “Democracy”: Capacity to Do Things, not Majority Rule.” Constellations 15.1 (2008): 3-9. Print.

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The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory Kindle Edition

Where did "democracy" come from, and what was its original form and meaning? Here Josiah Ober shows that this "power of the people" crystallized in a revolutionary uprising by the ordinary citizens of Athens in 508-507 B.C. He then examines the consequences of the development of direct democracy for upper-and lower-class citizens, for dissident Athenian intellectuals, and for those who were denied citizenship under the new regime (women, slaves, resident foreigners), as well as for the general development of Greek history. When the citizens suddenly took power into their own hands, they changed the cultural and social landscape of Greece, thereby helping to inaugurate the Classical Era. Democracy led to fundamental adjustments in the basic structures of Athenian society, altered the forms and direction of political thinking, and sparked a series of dramatic reorientations in international relations. It quickly made Athens into the most powerful Greek city-state, but it also fatally undermined the traditional Greek rules of warfare. It stimulated the development of the Western tradition of political theorizing and encouraged a new conception of justice that has striking parallels to contemporary theories of rights. But Athenians never embraced the notions of inherency and inalienability that have placed the concept of rights at the center of modern political thought. Thus the play of power that constituted life in democratic Athens is revealed as at once strangely familiar and desperately foreign, and the values sustaining the Athenian political community as simultaneously admirable and terrifying.

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Editorial Reviews

From the inside flap.

"This book brings together some of Ober's most important essays of the last decade. . . . Anyone who cares about democracy, ancient or modern, should read this book."-- Ian Morris, Stanford University

"By confronting critically an alien way of thinking, doing, and speaking politics that is nevertheless also the fountainhead of our own Western political tradition, Ober provides a wide range of readers with a truly unsettling and therefore properly educational experience."-- P. A. Cartledge, University of Cambridge

About the Author

From the back cover.

"This book brings together some of Ober's most important essays of the last decade. . . . Anyone who cares about democracy, ancient or modern, should read this book." --Ian Morris, Stanford University

"By confronting critically an alien way of thinking, doing, and speaking politics that is nevertheless also the fountainhead of our own Western political tradition, Ober provides a wide range of readers with a truly unsettling and therefore properly educational experience." --P. A. Cartledge, University of Cambridge

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About the author

Josiah ober.

I am a professor of Political Science and Classics at Stanford University. I am also the founder and currently faculty director of the Stanford Civics Initiative (https://civics.stanford.edu/). I hold a bachelor's degree in History from the University of Minnesota and a PhD in History from the University of Michigan. I joined the Stanford faculty in 2006; I previously taught at Princeton and Montana State Universities. I once served as Chairman of Princeton’s Classics Department and later as Chairman of Stanford’s Political Science Department. My writing focuses on history, political theory, economic thought, and the contemporary relevance of the ancient Greek world. My current work in progress includes a book, co-authored with my friend Brook Manville, on the role of civic bargains in the emergence and persistence of democratic government. My wife is Adrienne Mayor, the author of a number of terrific books on ancient myth and science.

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Democracy: The Role Of Democracy In Ancient Greece Essay

Let’s take a vote: Are the Ancient Greeks impressive or what? Isn’t their organized government fascinating? Well, it’s definitely a unanimous vote in favor of the Greeks! By participating in that vote, you have just taken part of a Greek legacy. The government! One of Greece’s most beneficial contributions to the modern-world is our democratic system of government, which reached its peak in Athens during Pericles’ time. Greek’s government is a stable and unified form of government, whose connections are well spread.

It derives from the profound ideas of Greek political leaders such as Pericles. Their unique ideas are extremely strong, and are like flames, as they catch on very easily. Many nations have used some of its central ideas while developing their governments and a great example is the United States of America. Ancient Greek democracy had a deep influence on the design of political institutions in the United States . Many ideas from Ancient Greece pertaining to how they set up their government and legislation had inspired some of our ancestors significantly.

The founding generation of the United States saw ancient Athens as both, an inspirational model and also as an example of dangerous excess. They also led to the government we currently have established. Hence, the Greeks’ contribution to our government can be reflected in our daily lives in various ways. Ancient Greeks’ Influence Governmental policies were strongly influenced by Ancient Greece’s ideas, which helped build a fundamental foundation for our country with innovative ideas that were progressive for their time.

The Greeks were the first known civilization to have made a working form of democratic rule, although it lasted for a relatively short time; until the traditional monarch rule preponderated once more. The Greeks’ form of government elped establish equality within the country, and aimed for the common prosperity of its citizens similar to the objectives of America today . Last but not least, the Greeks also galvanized the idea of representatives within the democracy, which inspired the establishment of the democratic-republican government we currently have implemented.

Types of Democracy Ancient democracy developed in Athens right after the ameliorating Solon in 594 B. C. However, it was a system of direct democracy, unlike the representative democracy, we have today. According to Yale University, it means that, “every adult, ho was a male Athenian citizen, had the right to participate in deliberations and voting in the law-making assembly and other governing institutions. ” On the other hand, representative democracy is a system where citizens vote for representatives to symbolize their viewpoints, beliefs, and ideas, rather than offering input directly.

Nonetheless, democracy is viewed as an immortal form of government that is sure to thrive for generations to come even today. The collapse of ancient Athenian democracy occurred in 338 B. C. and the democratic institutions revived in the early 19th century . During that time eriod, Ancient Encyclopedia feels that “democracy was a highly critical term signifying a chaotic, anarchic system in which political power was in the hands of the rabble. ” Evolution of Greek Democracy Although some American leaders disagreed with his viewpoints, Thomas Paine stood out as a supporter of preserving ancient democracy.

Paine was standing strong with an intense determination, as he even portrayed the United States as a descendant of Ancient Greece, who would expand upon the deeply rooted base of direct democracy. Evidence of his extensive campaigning is apparent when Paine wrote in The Rights of Man that “We see more to admire and less to condemn, in that great, extraordinary people, than in anything which history affords”. For Paine, the principle of representation through elected candidates was a means of augmenting, because it was the route to perfecting democracy rather than relinquishing it.

Paine’s powerful, yet peaceful words, urged Americans to think “outside the box for themselves”, so they could be within the democratic as well as republican tradition, symbolizing the faithful embracement of representative democracy within our country. America’s Modern Democracy Paying closing heed to Paine’s words, America established a representative democracy. However, there are quite a few differences between America’s and Greece’s democracy. Three key differences in particular are pertaining to scale, participation and eligibility. First is scale.

There were no proper population censuses in ancient Athens, but an educated guess from History . com, puts “the total population of fifth-century Athens, at around 250,000 – men, women and children, free and bound, enfranchised and disenfranchised. ” It also states that, “of those 250,000 some 30,000 on average were fully paid-up citizens – he adult males of Athenian birth and full status. Of those 30,000 perhaps 5,000 might regularly attend one or more meetings of the popular Assembly, of which there were at least 40 a year in Aristotle’s day.

Approximately 6,000 citizens were selected to be potential jurymen who would staff the popular jury courts and make up the annual panel. With similar approaches to the subject, our Founding Fathers only allowed men to vote and have legal representation at first. However, after some time elapsed, the idea was seen from another light, and was reassessed. Thereafter, men and women were given qual legal representation. Derived for Same Cause As Pericles once said at a funeral in 404 BC, “Athens’ constitution is called a democracy because it respects the interests not of the minority but of the whole people.

When it is a question of settling private disputes, everyone is equal before the law; when it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility , what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. ” Many malevolent aristocrats ruled a brutal oligarchical rule, which caused the Greeks want to create a fundamental overnment where the torch of power was in the hands of the citizens, who were given the dominating authority to decide upon how the state was run.

Similarly, after being tyrannized by the rule of a monarch, the Americans, who had recently obtained political independence, strived for a similar governmental structure . However, some viewpoints differed, but it is still evident when looking at the U. S. Constitution that the Founding Fathers were inspired, by the unique ideas of ancient Athens. Similarities in Legal Systems In ancient Athens, legislation was created and enacted by the Assembly, which was made up of every citizen who wanted to attend.

Anyone who was a legal citizen had the right to speak at an assembly meeting. However, responsibilities such as issuing preliminary decrees and setting agendas for assembly meetings were given to a full-time council made of 500 representatives. The U. S. Congress takes the role of the Assembly and Council of 500 did in ancient Athens, as they propose and vote on legislation in a similar way, although made up of a much smaller body of elected representatives than the Assembly. Furthermore, it is believed by Documents of Freedom states, “As arly as 350 B. C. Greek philosopher Aristotle observed in the Politics that every government, no matter its form, performed three distinct functions: “the deliberative, the magisterial, and the judicative”.

“Although this intense terminology has been modified, a correlation of ideas is present in today’s legislative, executive, and judicial branches. It supports the common belief of modern and ancient times of how the decision of handing all power in the hands of one person can lead to a destruction of liberty. In other words, it was the foundation for the concept of checks and balances.

In conclusion, the Greeks have been the foundation of our nation in a variety of ways, whose progressive ideas have influenced the founding generation. They have granted our nation with sophisticated and precious knowledge pertaining to the governmental structure we currently have implemented, preserving the integrity of the ancient democracy. Their experiences offered new insights on types of democracy, and led the citizens to acknowledge representative democracy as a perfect fit for America. Just imagine how meaningful the Greeks are for us! They have presented us with a priceless legacy that is sure to be remembered for years to come!

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