Essay On Ancient Greek Government

The ancient Greece city-states had several different forms of government, monarchy,tyranny, oligarchy, democracy, and aristocracy, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Not all city-states maintained a uniformly way of government, and not each city-state maintain a single type of government during that time period. Depending on where you were and when you were determined what government type.

A monarch by definition from the website dictionary.com is “a hereditary sovereign, as a king, queen, or emperor.”. This type of rule was from a specific bloodline and would be passed down over the generations. A monarch rule had potential to last a very long time. Mark Cartwright writes in the article Greek Government “In the greek world monarchies were rare and were often only distinguishable from tyranny when the hereditary ruler was more benevolent and ruled in the genuine interest of his people”. Cartwright later talks about the most famous monarchies were from the states of Macedonia and Epeiros. Spartans who did have a kings were not a true monarch because they were monitored by ephors, people who were elected by the assembly. With a monarchy, the citizens did have one voice to rule all.
A democracy is a government that is formed by the people or those that are elected. Athens being credit as the birthplace of democracy in the article Athens & Sparta: Democracy vs. Dictatorship by Peter J. Brand. With that I could only image how hard it was for the people of Athens to see it fall into anything but a Democracy. Brand writes in his paper that in Athens at one point, every citizen could vote on laws and policies during the assemblies. With this type of ability, it provided the the citizens of Athens a true democracy. One thing to keep in mind about this however is that the citizens of Athens only included its male residents, excluding women, foreigners, and