BBC - History - Ancient History in depth: The Democratic Experiment - 1 views
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Take politics for example: apart from the word itself (from polis, meaning city-state or community) many of the other basic political terms in our everyday vocabulary are borrowed from the ancient Greeks: monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy and - of course - democracy.
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There's a theory that the word demokratia was coined by democracy's enemies, members of the rich and aristocratic elite who did not like being outvoted by the common herd, their social and economic inferiors.
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By the time of Aristotle (fourth century BC) there were hundreds of Greek democracies. Greece in those times was not a single political entity but rather a collection of some 1,500 separate poleis or 'cities' scattered round the Mediterranean and Black Sea shores 'like frogs around a pond', as Plato once charmingly put it.
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monarchies, called 'tyrannies' in cases where the sole ruler had usurped power by force rather than inheritanc
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nder this political system that Athens successfully resisted the Persian onslaughts of 490 and 480/79
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victory in turn encouraged the poorest Athenians to demand a greater say in the running of their city
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Ephialtes and Pericles presided over a radicalisation of power that shifted the balance decisively to the poorest sections of society
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when Athens had been weakened by the catastrophic Peloponnesian War (431-404) these critics got their chance
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n 411 and again in 404 Athenian oligarchs led counter-revolutions that replaced democracy with extreme oligarchy
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'blips' such as the trial of Socrates - the restored Athenian democracy flourished stably and effectively for another 80 years
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total population of fifth-century Athens, including its home territory of Attica, at around 250,000 - men, women and children, free and unfree, enfranchised and disenfranchised. Of those
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This was thought to be the democratic way, since election favoured the rich, famous and powerful over the ordinary citizen.
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mid fifth century, office holders, jurymen, members of the city's main administrative Council of 500, and even Assembly attenders were paid a small sum from public funds to compensate them for time spent on political service away from field or workshop.
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adult male citizens need apply for the privileges and duties of democratic government, and a birth criterion of double descent - from an Athenian mother as well as father -
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Athenian democracy did not happen only in the Assembly and Council. The courts were also essentially political spaces, located symbolically right at the centre of the city.
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One distinctively Athenian democratic practice that aroused the special ire of the system's critics was the practice of ostracism -
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For almost 100 years ostracism fulfilled its function of aborting serious civil unrest or even civil war
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Power to the people, all the people, especially the poor majority, remained the guiding principle of Athenian democracy.