# Greece: a limited democracy.



## Alex (Jul 11, 2012)

Ok, so I know that ancient greek city states were a limited democracy, like Athens.  Correct me if I am wrong, but a limited democracy is a democracy in which women and children have no voting rights? Is there anything else that I'm missing, in terms of their laws?


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## Chilari (Jul 11, 2012)

Greek city states had a variety of different forms of government. Oligarchies were common in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Sparta had it's very own system comprising 2 kings and 28 or possibly 30 ephors, who were older men voted into office by means of a "who gets the loudest cheers" system. Tyrannies existed in some states, but mostly not mainland Greece in the Classical period - Athens, Corinth, Argos and other places had tyrannies in the Archaic period, and Syracuse on Sicily had tyrants in the Classical period, though it's debatable whether what Classical writers knew about contemporary Sicilian tyrants influenced the way they wrote about historical archaic tyrants who were in fact probably a different type of ruler, a confusion brought about by a subtle change in meaning of the word "turranoi" (tyrant).

In terms of democracy, while Athens wasn't the only city state that had it, it is the one we know most about (I can't even remember the names of any other democratic states right now). In Athens, to vote you had to be an adult male citizen. That meant both your parents had to be citizens too. No metics (foreigners) could vote, nor the children of foreigners. Neither could slaves. Women of course couldn't vote.

The Athenian system consisted of ten tribes, each split into three sections dependant on where the individuals in the tribe lived - city, coast and inland. Each year one of the tribes would be the tribe in charge, and members of the tribe were selected by lot to hold certain offices. I can't really remember more than that off the top of my head (I'm at work right now), but if you research Solon and Kleisthenes (aka Cleisthenes), you should find out more about the system these two men developed.

What I can tell you, as far as actual voting is concerned, is that every year the people (ie the citizen body) were asked if they thought there was someone who had become too powerful. If enough citizens said yes, there was an ostracism vote. You then whe name of the person you thought was too powerful on a bit of broken pot and gave it to the arbitrators (or possibly dropped it in a big ballot vessel). Whoever had the most votes, over a certain threshold which I can't remember right now, was exiled for ten years. Their property remained theirs, but they couldn't return to Athens for ten years on pain of death. The idea was to prevent anyone becoming too powerful and reinstating tyranny. The effect was that political rivals teamed up against a third so they could both stay around. And possibly a poor level of literacy meant some voters might not actually know what was written on the potsherd someone else had written for them. It was an imperfect system and wasn't used much.

There's a passage in Aristotle's Politics, I think it's 1279b, where he talks about the forms of government, the "right forms" and their equivalents. You might find it useful.


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