This principle extended down to the secretaries and undersecretaries who served as assistants to magistrates such as the archons. Cite This Work License. Athens Mayor Ronnie Marks and Limestone County Commission Chairman Collin Daly have signed EMA's Limestone County Pandemic Standard Operating Guide, which provides protocols for … However, by now Athens had become "politically impotent". Similar bodies of elders existed in Corinth and Stymphalos. The ancient city of Athens, Greece, had a democratic government. A case can be made that discriminatory lines came to be drawn more sharply under Athenian democracy than before or elsewhere, in particular in relation to women and slaves, as well as in the line between citizens and non-citizens. [43], The system showed a marked anti-professionalism. Usually, the types of government relevant to ancient Greece are listed as three: Monarchy, Oligarchy (generally synonymous with rule by the aristocracy), and Democracy. The City of Athens has a municipal government comprised of an elected Mayor and 5 members of a City Council. It was modified somewhat after it was restored under Eucleides; the most detailed accounts of the system are of this fourth-century modification, rather than the Periclean system. [79] Following Rousseau (1712–1778), "democracy came to be associated with popular sovereignty instead of popular participation in the exercise of power". Boards & Commissions. The government systems of ancient Greece were varied as the Greeks searched for the answers to such fundamental questions as who should rule and how? In 561 BC, the nascent democracy was overthrown by the tyrant Peisistratos but was reinstated after the expulsion of his son, Hippias, in 510. Speaker's Platform, Athens Assembly, Pynx, Athensby Mark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA). Issues discussed in the assembly ranged from deciding magistracies to organising and maintaining food supplies to debating military matters. Athens' constitution is called a democracy because it respects the interests not of a minority but of the whole people. New York, This page was last edited on 14 January 2021, at 00:02. In Athens, "democracy" (literally meaning rule by the people) was in opposition to those supporting a system of oligarchy (rule by a few). Starting in 355 BC, political trials were no longer held in the assembly, but only in a court. BC. No office appointed by lot could be held twice by the same individual. Increasingly, responsibility was shifted from the assembly to the courts, with laws being made by jurors and all assembly decisions becoming reviewable by courts. However, accounts of the rise of democratic institutions are in reference to Athens, since only this city-state had sufficient historical records to speculate on the rise and nature of Greek democracy.[4]. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2021) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. The officials of the democracy were in part elected by the Assembly and in large part chosen by lottery in a process called sortition. In this: A new law might be proposed by any citizen. Perhaps the most famous bad decision from the Athenian democracy was the death sentence given to the philosopher Socrates in 399 BCE. For them, the common people were not necessarily the right people to rule and were likely to make huge mistakes. If the Assembly voted in favor of the proposed change, the proposal would be referred for further consideration by a group of citizens called nomothetai (literally "establishers of the law").[18]. But it was a long path to get there. Athens is, however, the state we know most about. 1. 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. Cartwright, M. (2018, March 20). Much of his writings were about his alternatives to democracy. A corollary of this was that, at least acclaimed by defendants, if a court had made an unjust decision, it must have been because it had been misled by a litigant. Solon (in 594 BC), Cleisthenes (in 508/7 BC), and Ephialtes (in 462 BC) contributed to the development of Athenian democracy. Oligarchy. His The Republic, The Statesman, and Laws contained many arguments against democratic rule and in favour of a much narrower form of government: "The organization of the city must be confided to those who possess knowledge, who alone can enable their fellow-citizens to attain virtue, and therefore excellence, by means of education."[70]. Instead of seeing it as a fair system under which everyone has equal rights, they regarded it as manifestly unjust. [15], Under Roman rule, the archons ranked as the highest officials. We know that in 411 BCE in Athens, ‘the oligarchy of the 400’ took power out of the hands of the Assembly and were themselves superseded by a more moderate oligarchy of 5000. Plateans in 427 BC and Samians in 405 BC). Unlike officeholders, the citizen initiator was not voted on before taking up office or automatically reviewed after stepping down; these institutions had, after all, no set tenure and might be an action lasting only a moment. During peacetime the kings were kept in check by ephors (ephoroi) who were themselves elected by the assembly. The jury could only cast a 'yes' or 'no' vote as to the guilt and sentence of the defendant. Cleisthenes formally identified free inhabitants of Attica as citizens of Athens, which gave them power and a role in a sense of civic solidarity. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms. However, the governors, like Demetrius of Phalerum, appointed by Cassander, kept some of the traditional institutions in formal existence, although the Athenian public would consider them to be nothing more than Macedonian puppet dictators. After his death, Athenian democracy was twice briefly interrupted by oligarchic revolutions towards the end of the Peloponnesian War. At the same time or soon afterward, the membership of the Areopagus was extended to the lower level of the propertied citizenship. Competence does not seem to have been the main issue, but rather, at least in the 4th century BC, whether they were loyal democrats or had oligarchic tendencies. Goldhill, S., 2004, The Good Citizen, in Love, Sex & Tragedy: Why Classics Matters. [53], Just before the reforms of Solon in the 7th century BC, Athens was governed by a few archons (three, then later nine) and the council of the Areopagus, which was composed of members powerful noble families. See information on boards, commissions, and committees. Athens and Sparta were the two largest city-states and they had many wars and battles. There were no lawyers as such; litigants acted solely in their capacity as citizens. The regular turnover of archai, due to limited terms of office and the prohibition of re-election, meant abuse of power was kept in check and the rulers would, in turn, become the ruled. The Ancient History Encyclopedia logo is a registered EU trademark. In 621 BC, Draco replaced the prevailing system of oral law by a written code to be enforced only by a court of law. Sometimes, mixed constitutions evolved with democratic elements, but "it definitely did not mean self-rule by citizens".[78]. Books One might expect, by analogy, that the term "demarchy" would have been adopted for the new form of government introduced by Athenian democrats. Unlike office holders (magistrates), who could be impeached and prosecuted for misconduct, the jurors could not be censured, for they, in effect, were the people and no authority could be higher than that. Government - Government - Greece: The Phoenician example was followed by the Greeks, originally Indo-European nomads who gradually made their way south to the Aegean and there took to the sea. Ancient History Encyclopedia. In 404 BCE, following the defeat of the Athenian military forces in Sicily, there was an oligarchy of ‘the Thirty Tyrants’ in Athens which was a particularly brutal regime, noted for its summary executions. Most people today think of democracy as an inherently good thing. While there seems to have also been a type of citizen assembly (presumably of the hoplite class), the archons and the body of the Areopagus ran the state and the mass of people had no say in government at all before these reforms. During this time, oligarchy, or governing powers shared by a small group of society's members, was the norm. His officeholding was rather an expression and a result of the influence he wielded. There was however a mechanism for prosecuting the witnesses of a successful prosecutor, which it appears could lead to the undoing of the earlier verdict. The ancient city of Athens, Greece, had a democratic government. From the time of Hadrian, an imperial curator superintended the finances. These were known as the nomothetai (νομοθέται, 'the lawmakers'). However, even with Solon's creation of the citizen's assembly, the Archons and Areopagus still wielded a great deal of power. That influence was based on his relation with the assembly, a relation that in the first instance lay simply in the right of any citizen to stand and speak before the people. Pay was raised from two to three obols by Cleon early in the Peloponnesian war and there it stayed; the original amount is not known. [16], After Rome became an Empire under Augustus, the nominal independence of Athens dissolved and its government converged to the normal type for a Roman municipality, with a Senate of decuriones. By blurring the distinction between the natural and political world, democracy leads the powerful to act immorally and outside their own best interest. Ancient History Encyclopedia. The Athenian institutions were later revived, but how close they were to a real democracy is debatable. Neither was compulsory; individuals had to nominate themselves for both selection methods. And they could also be removed from office at any time that the assembly met. Remarkably, it seems that blocking and then successfully reviewing a measure was enough to validate it without needing the assembly to vote on it. government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. There was in Athens (and also Elis, Tegea, and Thasos) a smaller body, the boulē, which decided or prioritised the topics which were discussed in the assembly. Athens, Georgia is one of the thousands of cities across the United States that decided to make this "A Day On and Not a Day Off." Many of Classical civilization’s intellectual and artistic ideas originated there, and the city is generally considered to be the birthplace of Western civilization. The word "democracy" (Greek: dēmokratia, δημοκρατία) combines the elements dêmos (δῆμος, which means "people") and krátos (κράτος, which means "force" or "power"), and thus means literally "people power". An oligarchy is a system of political power controlled by a select group of individuals, sometimes small in number but it could also include large groups. George Grote claimed in his History of Greece (1846–1856) that "Athenian democracy was neither the tyranny of the poor, nor the rule of the mob". Though there might be blocs of opinion, sometimes enduring, on important matters, there were no political parties and likewise no government or opposition (as in the Westminster system). Voting was by simple majority. In Athens, the board of ten elected generals, known as the strategoi, could influence the agenda of the assembly and so prioritise their own causes. First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and... Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This also acted as a check against demagoguery, though this check was imperfect and did not prevent elections from involving pandering to voters.[60]. It was very direct; everyone had a vote, majority ruled, end of story. The term Athens can refer either to the Municipality of Athens, to Greater Athens, or to the entire Athens Urban Area. Democracy, however, was found in other areas as well and after the conquests of Alexander the Great and the process of Hellenization, it became the norm for both the liberated cities in Asia Minor as well … [51][52], Although, voters under Athenian democracy were allowed the same opportunity to voice their opinion and to sway the discussion, they were not always successful, and, often, the minority was forced to vote in favor of a motion that they did not agree with. By and large, the power exercised by these officials was routine administration and quite limited. If another citizen initiator chose, a public figure could be called to account for their actions and punished. The municipality (City) of Athens is also the capital of the Attica region. [15], In 88 BC, there was a revolution under the philosopher Athenion, who, as tyrant, forced the Assembly to agree to elect whomever he might ask to office. By so strongly validating one role, that of the male citizen, it has been argued that democracy compromised the status of those who did not share it. The Boule's roles in public affairs included finance, maintaining the military's cavalry and fleet of ships, advising the generals, approving of newly elected magistrates, and receiving ambassadors. [77], Since the middle of the 20th century, most countries have claimed to be democratic, regardless of the actual composition of their governments. Importantly, positions of power often required not only free time but also financial layout to fund municipal projects such as shipbuilding and festivals. 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