Greek Democracy

Ancient Greek democracy

Bereniz cote

Ancient Greece democracy is important historically because people of many city-states overthrew tyrants.Some of the cities adopted a form of government called democracy.In a democracy , citizens govern themselves. The city-state in wich democracy was most fully expressed was Athens.About 594 B.C., a wise atheinian leader called Solon won the power to reform the laws. Solon was well known for his fairness.His laws reformed both economy and the government of the Athens. One of his first laws cancelled all debts and freed citizens who had been enslaved for having debts. Another law allowed any male citizen of the Athens aged 18 or older to have a say in debating important laws. These laws and others allowed Athens to become the leading democracy of the ancient world. Not everyone living in ancient Athens benefited from democracy. Only about one in five Athenians was a citizen. To be a citizen, a man had to have an Athenian father and mother.

Athenian democracy developed in the Greek city-states of Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 500 BC. Athens was one of the very first known democracies and probably the most important in ancient times. Other Greek cities set up democracies, most but not all following an Athenian model, but none were as powerful or as stable or as well-documented as that of Athens. It remains a unique and intriguing experiment in direct democracy where the people do not elect representatives to vote on their behalf but vote on legislation and executive bills in their own right. Participation was by no means open to all inhabitants of Attica, but the in-group of participants was constituted with no reference to economic class and they participated on a scale that was truly phenomenal. The public opinion of voters was remarkably influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters.

Solon (594 BC), cleisthenes (509 BC), and Ephialtes of athens(462 BC) all contributed to the development of Athenian democracy. Historians differ on which of them was responsible for which institutions, and which of them most represented a truly democratic movement. It is most usual to date Athenian democracy from Cleisthenes, since Solon's constitution fell and was replaced by the tyranny of peisistratus, whereas Ephialtes revised Cleisthenes' constitution relatively peacefully. Hipparchus, the brother of the tyrant hipparchus, was killed by Harmodius and aristogeition, who were subsequently honored by the Athenians for their alleged restoration of Athenian freedom.

The greatest and longest-lasting democratic leader was Pericles; after his death, Athenian democracy was twice briefly interrupted by oligarchic revolution towards the end of the Peloponnesian war It was modified somewhat after it was restored under Eucleidis the most detailed accounts are of this fourth-century modification rather than the Periclean system. It was suppressed by the Mecedonians in 322 B.C..