Exploring Ancient Greek Democracy and Its Impact

Democracy comes from the word demos. Demos can have a lot of other meanings, for example mob. Democracy puts the power to choose into the hands of people. In ancient Greece we can rename people to citizens and it was a club of male born Athenians.

“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. (Pericles, 431 BCE)”

Sparta was a monarchy with two kings. I did not know you could have that, but they did. The power was also in the hands of its citizens. It is interesting to see that the propaganda between Athens democracy and Sparta monarchy could be the same. The message was clear if you are deemed a citizen you can have an impact.

The level of impact of non-high born citizens was very low, but the constant hope for them to get a better life made them better citizens that contributed more to the city.

Tyranny is when a conqueror kills off the previous controlling entity and is the sole power after that. In Athens the people learned what Tyranny is when

Persia took over and controlled the cities. A famous Persian that is considered a Tyrant is Xerxes.
Democracy and Tyranny seem to be the very opposites, but in Athens there was a period where people were killing each other to control the votes. When you kill the people that have a different opinion than you there is no one left to question yours. 2 very different types of governments that in some level inflicted the same harm to what they deemed enemies.
Oligarchy is when the people with most power control the city.

In Athens aristocrat families did this before the democracy. In some ways even today we has some form of oligarchy. It does not matter who you choose to be your president the powerful rich people will always push their own agenda. Oligarchy and Tyranny are very similar, except that the violence is not publicly known. When someone dies at the hands of the people in power the message to the city would be that they committed a crime, or it was so subtle that no one knows who has been eliminated. Oligarchy in Greece form is also Aristocracy in disguise because the rich aristocrats were always in

control.
Aristocracy is very similar to Oligarchy, but they name the rulers aristocrats, the small rich class, controlling everything. There is a bit of aristocracy in every form of government mentioned here. In Athens the mobs were controlled by aristocrats, in Sparta the kings were aristocrats, in Tyranny you would think that anyone can kill their way to the top, but the aristocrats will never let the poor rule, and Oligarchy is just a way to say that the rulers are not deemed aristocrats, but they really are.