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The American political system, like those of many other Western nations, is profoundly influenced by ideas from ancient Greece and Rome. Our ideas about democracy and republican government come from these ancient governments. Our values of citizen participation and limited government originate in these ancient societies.

Ancient Greece was not a unified nation, but a collection of poli. Poli is the plural of polis, a word often translated as city, but a polis is much more. When we think of a city, we generally think of a place. A Greek polis consisted of a small walled area that was generally no larger than a few city blocks, the farmland that surrounded it, and most importantly, the people who lived there. Today we think of the people who live in a place as citizens, but to the ancient Greeks the people were as much of the poli as the land or the buildings. The word politics is derived from the Greek polis.

Each polis was a nation of its own, but the poli of ancient Greece had many things in common. The Greek poli developed independently of one another because they were isolated by rugged mountains or were located on small islands, but the poli spoke a common language. The poli were also small and often had to depend on one another to survive. Further, the poli met every year at a great athletic contest known as the Olympics.

Government in Athens         Pericles was the leader of Athens for thirty years.  He was not a monarch or despot. The people of Athens elected him year after year.  He declared that Athens was a democracy.  In Athens, power was “in the hands of many rather than the few.”  Pericles was correct about saying that Athens was a democracy at that time.  Compared to other ancient governments, Athens was democratic, but it does not seem that way today.  When he spoke of government by the people, he should have said government by the citizens.       Citizens had more rights in Greeks cities than any of the others.  They could do almost anything they wanted to do.  They could own property, take part in politics and the law.  Most of the men in Greece were citizens, but women, slaves, and foreigners could not be.

n Sparta only rich men were citizens. Citizenship was like a family.  It depended on birth.  Only children of citizens could be citizens themselves.  Children that lived in Athens all of their lives were not citizens if their parents came from other places.  Athens seems undemocratic to us because women had no voice in government.       Slaves were normally captured prisoners of wars.  They were sold to people and whoever bought them owned them.  Some slaves lived good lives with their owners.  Others lived in terrible conditions or toiled in mines until death.  Unlike slaves in America, slaves in Greece got paid and if they saved their money they might be able to buy their own freedom. 

When Homer was born, the Greeks had just recently learned how to use the alphabet from the Phoenicians. Homer used the alphabet to write down two long epic poems called the Iliad and the Odyssey. Probably Homer didn't make up these stories, or even the words, himself. Poets or bards had been going around Greece telling these stories for hundreds of years already. But Homer wrote them down, and gave them their final form.

In our modern world there are few human practices that inspire such profound outrage as the practice of one human being enslaving another. This is, however, a very modern sentiment. The institution of slavery probably predates civilization itself. Slavery was an accepted institution and central to the economies of most major world civilization. Slaves were were often war captives, both captured warriors and the women and children of conquered populations. The offspring of these enslaved people provided a vast slave work force. The victors in battle might enslave the losers rather than kill them. Slavery in many early civilizations is poorly understood. Slavery in ancient Egypt is a poorly understood topic. We have done some work on Egyptian social classes, but destinguishing slaves from other groups with limited freedom is a challenging task that scholars have found very difficult. The same is true for the many civilizations of Mesopotamia. Slavery in both Greece and Rome are much better understood and were major components of the work force. Slaves in Greece and Rome were drawn from widly differing peoples and there was no association with race. Slaves might be blond, blue eyed Anglo-Saxons from Britania or blacks from Sahara as well as evry other racial type. Slavery in Rome had no racial basis. This appears to have been the general pattern in the ancient world. Even those of Italian stock were enslaved. It was thus impossible to tell from one's features if they were a slave. This complicated control. The Senate debated establishing a destinctive dress for slaves. In the end, the Senate decided against a slave attire, partly because they decided it was dangerous because it would show the slaves just how numerous they were. As in the Americn South, slavery was justified on the basis of the natural inferiority of certain individuals.

Athens did not have a king, it was ruled by the people as a democracy. The people of Athens believed that no one group of people should make the laws and so citizens could choose the government officials, and vote for or against new laws. The people of Athens chose their ruler. They held a large meeting on the slopes of a hill in Athens where any citizen could speak, and tell the government what it should be doing. This was called the Assembly, and there had to be at least 6,000 citizens at every Assembly. Athenian democracy was not like modern democracy. Only citizens over 18 could vote. Women, slaves and foreigners could not become citizens. So democracy in Athens meant rule by the men of Athens. Slavery Slaves made up about a quarter of the working population on Athens. Most were people who had been captured in warfare and sold to slave dealers. They were then put on sale in the slave market.

Classical Period (500-336 BC)

In this period Athens reached its greatest political and cultural heights: the full development of the democratic system of government under the Athenian statesman Pericles; the building of the Parthenon on the Acropolis; the creation of the tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides; and the founding of the philosophical schools of Socrates and Plato.

Classical

About 1450

Renaissance is a French word that means "rebirth."

beginning of modern history.