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Was Ancient Athens: Was Ancient Athens Truly Democratic?

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Was ancient Athens truly democratic? Democracy is a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state. I do not believe that in the 4th to 5th century BCE ancient Athen were democratic for many reasons. Firstly, only male citizens had equal rights to vote, freedom of speech, and opportunities to participate directly in political arenas, which is only 12% of the population. For example Citizen women, Children of citizens, Metics, and Slaves did not have the right to vote which is the other 68%. This shows the Athenians were not democratic because not the whole population wasn 't a system of government, when not even half of them were. Also in Athen nobody had the freedom of thought and or speech. If someone
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The Athenians had a direct democracy which allowed the citizens to directly decide and vote for who they wanted to rule their country. In Athens there were three bodies of the government. The Assembly is the first branch which included all citizens that showed up to cast their vote. The Assembly decided what new laws would be and they made important decisions regarding war, laws, etc.

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Unlike the Romans, Athenians had a strict but fair schedule that allowed them to enjoy citizenship equally. Equally, hard workers have brought Athens power just as much as hereditary leaders. According to Document B all citizens should be allowed to speak their opinion and have a share in election because of the hard work they do to make the city powerful. Athenians allowed poor and common men to win a position in government which was a transition from the wealthy having power to everyone having power.

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The term, Democracy, stems from the Greek word ‘demokratia’ which means rule by the people and it wasn’t until around 500 BCE in Athens where the first examples of democracy originated. While Athens is widely regarded as the first historical example of a democratic system, some scholars believe that the Roman Empire’s republic system was more democratic than that of the Greek. As I will come to

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473 Words | 2 Pages

The Athens democracy was as follows, “It was a system of direct democracy, in which participating citizens voted directly on legislation and executive bills. Participation was not open to all residents: to vote

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This group of people only included white male citizens, meaning that slaves, foreign born residents, women and some men who hadn’t obtained citizenship couldn’t vote (Doc D). This completely contradicts the all-inclusive concept of direct democracy that the Athenian government preached so frequently. To have a powerful and lasting empire with great prosperity you must have a series of strong leaders. The period of prosperity in Athens was so short lived because they only had one strong leader, Pericles. After Pericles died Athens could not defeat Sparta in the Peloponnesian War and also couldn’t hold the truce that was signed in 421 BC which allowed Sparta to gain overall victory in the

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When you look at the literal definition of democracy in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, there is a decently large explanation. When looking at this definition and trying to decide whether the Athenian democratic system was truly democratic, one would have to go with the answer no. While it has been stated that Athens is the “cradle of democracy”, and that it was better than any of the other governments in the world, it was still a work in progress. The Athenian democracy, while it did give more power to the people, still left a lot of citizens out. The current American democracy may have steamed from Athens, but they do not really have that much in common.

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Though geographically near, both cities had their own unique characteristics that set them apart from each other. This is witnessed through their governments where Athens rule in a democracy and Spartans in dictatorship (Brand, 2010). Public Life and Political Rights In ancient Greece, the right to participate in public life and make decisions was not granted to all citizens. In Athens, only free adult males who were born in the city or had completed military service were allowed to participate in the Assembly and vote on important matters.

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The democratic environment of Ancient Greece was a system of political reforms created by the Athenian leader Cleisthenes. Back then, this system was called demokratia, or “rule by the people”. It was a rather new way of ruling the city-state considering past civilizations were ruled by kings or some other form of monarch. Although it was somewhat flawed, Athenian democracy was a turning point for Greek civilizations and more civilizations to come. The democracy in Athens without a doubt gave power and more great opportunities to most of the population, more specifically its citizens.

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Introduction The so called Greek democracy was centered mostly in the Polis of Athens although other Poleis tried to copy the system. This was a system of democracy where qualified participating citizens had to vote directly on legislation and executive bills. With this democracy, participation was not open to all citizens, but only to all adult males who are truly born Athenians and born by Athenian parents. Slaves, females, and other residents were not considered true citizens and therefore do not have the right to participate in any political activity.

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Before Athens, other civilizations, including ones that were extremely similar to Athens, did not create democracies or types of governments that were similar to the “structure” of a democracy. This made it hard for Athens to create the first democracy because they did not know what they needed to do and what they needed to have in order to create a democracy. According to the article that is titled The Making and Unmaking of Democracy, “The

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Additionally, the reliability affected by the emotive language being employed in this article as the author utilises this language it demonstrates that bias is present. This article was useful to my essay as it provided detailed information on the gaps in Athenian democracy. Moreover, the article provided a perspective that highlighted the differences in Athenian democracy such as that Athens was a direct democracy and that only some of the population was eligible, it mainly created a feeling that Athens was advanced for its time however the system had discrepancies. This information provided significantly when comparing modern societies to ancient Greece and also in justify as to why democracy was significant to Greece. A source that shares this view is the Ted-Ed video this also similarly to historian Paul Cartledge states that Athens was a direct democracy and also that not all of the population had the right to

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The Greeks displayed their humanistic values through government by they utilizing an effective system of self governing. This system was a direct democracy, defined as “government by the people” or “rule of the majority.” In the Athenian Democracy, the Assembly was the regular

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Overall, ancient Athens was indeed not truly democratic as a result of the government having male citizens have authority, being an oligarchy government instead of a democratic government, and voting not accessible to women, free foreigners(Metics), and slaves except for male citizens. So that is why I conclude that ancient Athens was indeed not truly

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1196 Words | 5 Pages

Although Ancient Greece performed democracy, it was not completely democracy. The limitations of gender, nationality and social classes made only a very small minority of people living in Ancient Greece enjoy equal rights. However, it was still the closest civilization and come to establishing democracy and the most open civilization had accepted the ideas of democracy. The form of government of my civilization, Pecunia, was very similar to the form of government practiced in Ancient Greece. I called it “partial democracy”.

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the idea of representative government began to take root in some city states, specifically Athens. Athenian reformers moved toward democracy, rule by the people. In Athens citizens participated directly in political decision making. However there were limitations on citizenship to ensure that only the most rational people were able to vote. Through the construction of democracy in Athens, equality of all citizens became greater, and the city would become the top democracy of all the democracies.

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