Comparing Democracy In Greece And The Roman Republic

Democracy has been around for hundreds of years and while the basic principles have stayed the same though each society governed in a slightly different way. The most influential democracies were Greece, as it was considered one of the first democracies, and the Roman Republic which lasted several hundred years. Because each sovereignty ruled differently, they had different advancements in the areas of democracy especially in the people's role in the government, the method of voting and fairness of law.

Democracy is a type of government that is meant to give power to the people and give them control over their government and allow their voice to be heard. The democracy in Greece was incredibly direct, citizens could vote on each individual thing, however to be qualified as a citizen you had to be a male born of Athenian parents, all citizens could hold positions of power and their roles were chosen based on chance. As a citizen you were able to participate in votes and your voice was heard giving you a great impact on the government, however the requirements for citizenship caused people who were not citizens to have little say, for them the votes weren’t democratic. Unlike Greece, Rome had a representative democracy, the citizens of Rome, both plebeians and patricians could vote on who they wanted to represent them, however only patricians could hold positions of power. The Roman republic had three tiers, patricians could hold positions in all three, while it took many years for Plebeians to be able to hold all the positions of power. When we consider democracy to be based based on the say of the people, Rome was more democratic compared to Greece. …show more content…
In both Rome and Greece there were methods for voting, either on laws or for representatives, both method were democratic, but the Roman method was the will of the people, more so than the Athenian