Ancient Greece

SEEDS OF DEMOCRACY

Ancient Greek culture is very important for the humankind. Nowadays, we see that our science and math knowledge goes back to Ancient Greek, and our art, literature and philosophy are coming from the Ancient Greek culture too. However, the most important things which are coming to us from Ancient Greek culture are the idea and the concept of democracy, the value of an invidual in a society and the toleration of opposite ideas to improve the society. These most important things emerged in the Ancient Greek culture in a city state, polis.

In the Dark Age of the Ancient Greece there were lots of bad things which destroy and hinder the Ancient Greek culture. At the end of this bad age there were radical changes like increase in population and shift from herding to agriculture. However, because Greece had a very rough terrain, which included very high mountains, agriculture wasn’t producing enough food for increasing population. Therefore they began trading with each other. As a result of this, marketplaces grew up in Greek villages and people came together into well defended and strengthened centers. And these lead to establish a new political and social system, polis.

A Greek polis was the central of political, social, religious and cultural life in Ancient Greece. Every city state (polis) was a small walled area which had an acropolis, some temples, a gymnasium and an agora. Around this small walled area there were some farmlands. And the most important thing that these city states had were citizens which lived in these small walled areas. These city states protected their citizens against some external forces like other cities and foreign intruders. Moreover, every polis developed independently, this means that every polis had its own policy, rules, thoughts and even calendars.

There are two typical types of governments(oligarchy and democracy) which used in the Ancient Greece by the city-states, this means there are two typical forms of city-states. Sparta used oligarchy and Athens used democracy. According to Hopper, Sparta “began to develop as a militant polis with a rigid social structure and a government that included an assembly representing all citizens.” Besides, they used the type of government oligarchy. Their economy based on agriculture and they ruled by a group. For example, there were two kings with limited power in Sparta, a Council of Elders, the Assembly and the Board of Ephors. All of these were participating in ruling the polis Sparta.

On the other hand, the polis Athens used the type of government democracy. There was an elected Assembly which has huge powers in Athens. Their economy based on trade and every people which was a citizen of the polis had right to vote, right to own property and right to participate in ruling the polis. These were the first signs of democracy in the world and in the civilization. On the contrary, in this democracy many adults can not participate in ruling, just men which were the citizen of the polis. Women, children and slaves didn’t have the rights like other men citizens. It was the bad part of Athens democracy. And there were also some timocratic, aristocratic and tyranny city-states in the Ancient Greece.

The city states had both positive and negative sides. There were positive, because they protected people from bad things and they help the people to improve themselves. And of course city states made contributions to improvement of civilization. Because these city states were very small, it caused that members of these city states worked hard for the civic well-being. On the negative side, there was a limited loyalty to city-states and it resulted to competition between people in the city-state like between citizens and non-citizens and between city states. It is obvious that most of the city states in Ancient Greek were in war with each other. Besides, some democratic city states had problems with their