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The soil is not very good for growing things, there are a lot of mountains that make it hard to walk from one place to another, and there is never enough fresh water.

what Greece does have is a lot of coastline

No part of Greece is more than about forty miles from the sea: a couple of days walking

in Greece, they were sailors

Greeks have always spent a lot of time sailing on the ocean.

suited for agriculture

volcanic ash made the soil near Rome some of the best in all of Europe. Rome attracted new settlers during its rise to power due to its agricultural potentia

The Roman population grew quickly, thanks to surplus production of grains, olives and other crops. The extra population later helped Rome's military expansion by providing a large supply of troops.

establish trade ties with other Mediterranean powers, enhancing the city's economic might.

position at the center of the Mediterranean Sea. As Smith notes, the Italian Peninsula is only 50 miles from Greece, while Sicily is less than 100 miles from Africa. Rome is also a short voyage by boat from Spain and only a few days' journey to France on horseback. Its central location made Rome a desirable trading post even before the city's rise to power. This centrality later helped the Romans administer their empire effectively by reducing communication times.

Several geographic advantages helped Rome to grow and ultimately dominate the known world.

each for one side of the debate.  It was quite obvious that the pile for stopping the use of the boat was a bit larger, so without any counting, everybody declared that the majority ruled.

"At least it's not Sparta.  Oligarchies," a small woman nearby talking the elder that I had ran into before whispered.

Only a small group of probably aristocratic people can make decisions.

Starting to think about our representative democracy back in the United States of America, I headed back to my sleeping spot the previous night.  The debate had taken so long, it was almost sunset.  Direct democracies are much more different than our representative democracy, I thought. 

In a direct democracy, there are no separation of powers: citizens create laws, enforce laws, and act as judges, whereas in a representative democracy, some people have more power than others and citizens vote people to create laws, enforce laws, and act as judges.  But both direct and representative democracies are different than theocracies or monarchies.