Greek Democracy: The Rise Of Athenian Democracy

Greek democracy first arose in Athens, for a short period of time. In the following paragraphs, the rise of Greek democracy, as well as the background and reasoning behind how it rose and fell, will be discussed. First, Athens became a democracy, but it was not always a democracy. In the period between 800 and 500 BCE, Athens had aristocrats that had taken control of most of the good land, as well as gaining much of the political power in the city. People that were either poorer or middle class were full of unrest, because of the power concentrated and competed for in the small minority of wealthy men on the top. The unrest eventually got so bad, that the aristocrats became afraid. An aristocrat named Solon was chosen to reform the system
This did not completely solve the problem, because Athenian society had divided into three groups, the wealthy aristocrats, the middle-class merchants and traders and poor fisherman, and the urban poor and landless people. Because these groups were so different from each other, it was hindering cooperation on attaining goals for Athens. Cleisthenes was later chosen to reform the system. He then proceeded to break the Athenian people into 10 tribes, and these tribes mixed the three groups together within one tribe. This successfully broke up the groups and dispersed the power of the aristocrats. Eventually, this ended
After Athen’s war with Persia, they formed a Delian League with some of the nations, where the other nations would contribute funding and ships, and Athens would put what it received toward defending and expanding the territory influenced by Greece in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Over time, however, more and more of the funds and resources were being given to Athens to improve upon itself and build monuments. The allies became more like subjects and eventually were downgraded to just paying a contribution to the fund. This made the allies angry, and eventually festered into the Peloponnesian Wars, which tore apart Greece as Athens fought against many other Greek states that were angry with how they were treating the other states. After 30 years at war, Athens was humbled. The loss of the Athenian empire was sometimes blamed on democracy in Athens. Eventually Athens went through many different revolutions where democracy would be defeated for a time, then it would come back, only to be defeated again. All in all, the democracy in Athens lasted less than 200 years, and the final blow came in 336 BCE, when Greece was overrun by the Macedons. There was a succession of rulers and empires from foreign countries that took over Greece for the rest of its history until the 1970s (Brand, n.d., 28, 34, 35). This was how Greek democracy