Different Forms Of Government In Ancient Greece

Forms of governments in ancient Greek

In ancient time Greece was not one country, but it was composed of several hundred city-states (Brand, n.d.). Each of these city-states spoke the same language, but each of them was independent and distinctively from others. Their organization, it sets of laws, and forms of government were unique to each polis. The power in politics rested in the hands of either a single, or a few people, or several people. Even though there were hundreds of city-states the five most known forms of government used in several city-states were a monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy (Cartledge, 2011).

Monarchy

The most common form of government in ancient time was a monarchy and a single person ruled the country for life (Wilde, 2018). This monarch use titles as king or queen, emperor or empress, emir or sultan. Most, monarchies are hereditary, which means that power was inherited through a family line. At present, there are still monarchies throughout the world. An example is the United Kingdom, which is ruled by Queen Elizabeth II.

This small group was considered the best qualify to rule (EncyclopaediaBritanica, 2016). This group of people enjoyed both social and economic prestige as well as political power and uses titles, such as Duke or Duchess, Baron or Baroness. One of the similarities that it has from a monarchy is the social status is passed to the next generation. The differences between monarchies vs. aristocracy were that aristocracy ruled by a small group of people and not by just one, which was the case of a monarchy or by a