Athenian Democracy

 

Athenian democracy developed in the Greek city-state 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 (although anthropological research suggests that democratic forms were likely common in stateless societies long before the rise of Athens). 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, 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 (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 Hippias, was killed by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, 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 Eucleides; the most detailed accounts are of this fourth-century modification rather than the Periclean system. It was suppressed by the Macedonians in 322 BC. The Athenian institutions were later revived, but the extent to which they were a real democracy is debatable.

The word "democracy" (Greek: δημοκρατια) combines the elements Fdemos (δημος, which means "people") and Ukratos (κρατος, which means "force" or "power"). In the words "monarchy" and "oligarchy", the second element arche means rule, leading, or being first. It is not possible that the term "democracy" was coined by its detractors who rejected the possibility of, so to speak, a valid "demarchy", as long as the word "dematchy" already existed and had the meaning of mayor or municipal. That is why a new term has been invented, and was adopted wholeheartedly by Athenian democrats.

The word is attested in Herodotus, who wrote some of the earliest Greek prose to survive, but even this may not have been before 440 or 430 BC. It is not at all certain that the word goes back to the beginning of the democracy, but from around 460 BC[citation needed] at any rate an individual is known whose parents had decided to name him 'Democrates', a name which may have been manufactured as a gesture of democratic loyalty; the name can also be found in Aeolian Temnus, not a particularly democratic state.

Sparta

 

Sparta (Doric Σπάρτα; Attic Σπάρτη Spartē) was a city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the River Eurotas in the southern part of the Peloponnese. From c. 650 BC it rose to become the dominant military power in the region and as such was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars. Sparta owed its military efficiency to its social structure, unique in ancient Greece. The Spartans formed a minority in their own territory of Lakonia; all male citizens of Sparta were full-time soldiers; unskilled labour was performed by a much larger, heavily subjugated slave population known as Helots (Gr., "captives"), while skilled labour was provided by another group, the Perioikoi (Gr. "those who live round about"). Helots were the majority inhabitants of Sparta (over 80% of the population according to Herodotus). They were ritually humiliated. During the Crypteia they could be legally killed by Spartan citizens. Between 431 and 404 BC Sparta was the principal enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War. By 362 BC Sparta's role as the dominant military power in Greece was over. Sparta continues to fascinate Western culture; an admiration of Sparta is called laconophilia.

Sparta was generally referred to by the ancient Greeks as Lakedaimon (Λακεδαίμων) or Lakedaimonia (Λακεδαιμωνία); these are the names commonly used in the works of Homer and the Athenian historians Herodotus and Thucydides. Herodotus uses only the former and in some passages seems to denote by it the ancient Greek citadel at Therapne, in contrast to the lower town of Sparta. The immediate area around the town of Sparta, the plateau east of the Taygetos mountains, was generally referred as Lakonia. This term was sometimes used to refer to all the regions under direct Spartan control, including Messenia.

In Greek mythology, Lakedaimon was a son of Zeus by the nymph Taygete. He married Sparta the daughter of Eurotas, by whom he became the father of Amyclas, Eurydice, and Asine. He was king of the country which he named after himself, naming the capital after his wife. He was believed to have built the sanctuary of the Charites, which stood between Sparta and Amyclae, and to have given to those divinities the names of Cleta and Phaenna. A shrine was erected to him in the neighborhood of Therapne.

Lacedaemon is now the name of a province in the modern Greek prefecture of Laconia. The prehistory of Sparta is difficult to reconstruct, because the literary evidence is far removed in time from the events it describes and is also distorted by oral tradition. However, the earliest certain evidence of human settlement in the region of Sparta consists of pottery dating from the Middle Neolithic period, found in the vicinity of Kouphovouno some two kilometres south-southwest of Sparta. These are the earliest traces of the original Mycenaean Spartan civilisation, as represented in Homer's Iliad.

This civilization seems to have fallen into decline by the late Bronze Age, when Doric Greek warrior tribes from Epirus and Macedonia in northeast Greece came south to the Peloponnese and settled there. The Dorians seem to have set about expanding the frontiers of Spartan territory almost before they had established their own state. They fought against the Argive Dorians to the east and southeast, and also the Arcadian Achaeans to the northwest. The evidence suggests that Sparta, relatively inaccessible because of the topography of the Taygetan plain, was secure from early on: it was never fortified.

Between the eighth and seventh centuries BC the Spartans experienced a period of lawlessness and civil strife, later testified by both Herodotus and Thucydides. As a result they carried out a series of political and social reforms of their own society which they later attributed to a semi-mythical lawgiver, Lykourgos. These reforms mark the beginning of the history of Classical Sparta.