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Oligarchy, Monarchies, And Democracy In Ancient Greece

658 Words3 Pages

There were various types of governments practiced throughout ancient Greece. These included monarchies, tyrannies, oligarchies, aristocracies, and democracy. Sometimes one form of government was overthrown for another, often by force and a single polis could go through several different forms of governance during its history. What form of government a polis had depended largely on who had last invaded the given polis.

Monarchies. A monarchy is when a territory, whether that be a city-state or a nation, is ruled by an inherited succession (Cartledge, 2011) of kings, emperors, or possibly even queens (“Monarch”, 2016). In ancient Greece, having a ruling queen would not have even been considered, since a woman’s job was to run the home and have …show more content…

An oligarchy is when a small group of people have all the power of governance in a nation or city-state (“Oligarchy”, 2016). This is perhaps a more accurate description of the government of Sparta (Brand, n.d.). Sparta had a small group of elders, the Gerousia, that had far more power than the kings of Sparta had when the kings were not in battle. They, quite literally, decided who lived and who died on a case by case basis. They went to see every infant born in Sparta and if there were any sign of weakness, the child was to die of exposure. This is quite a lot of power for any group of thirty people to have. Athens could also technically be an oligarchy, since the ability to participate in the politics of the polis was limited to a minority of the population, namely adult male Athenians with Athenian …show more content…

An aristocracy is when the power of government rests with the nobility of a given city-state (“Aristocracy”, 2016). Both Athens and Sparta had shades of this in their government (Brand, n.d.). In Sparta, to be part of Gerousia one had to be an aristocrat. Aristocrats in Sparta where the descendants of the veterans of the Messenian wars, because they were given the lifetime service of the Messenian people, or Helots, in perpetuity as a reward. In Athens, the wealthier you were, based on how much your land could produce, determined your social class in society. The upper echelons were essentially nobility and could hold high government and military offices, which granted them significant power, especially since Athens did not use the concept of legal precedence in court

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