Search Results: Athenian Democracy

Athenian democracy refers to the system of democratic government used in Athens, Greece from the 5th to 4th century BCE. Under this system, all male citizens - the dēmos - had equal political rights, freedom of speech, and the opportunity...

Draco was an aristocrat who in 7th century BCE Athens was handed the task of composing a new body of laws. We have no particular clues concerning his life and general biography and the only certainty is that, as an aristocrat and an educated...

Ancient Greece witnessed a wide variety of government systems as people searched for the answers to such fundamental questions as who should rule and how? Should sovereignty lie in the rule of law, the constitution, officials, or the citizens...

Athens, Greece, with its famous Acropolis, has come to symbolize the whole of the country in the popular imagination, and not without cause. It not only has its iconic ruins and the famous port of Piraeus but, thanks to ancient writers, its...

The Thirty Tyrants (οἱ τριάκοντα τύραννοι) is a term first used by Polycrates in a speech praising Thrasybulus (Arist. Rhet. 1401a) to describe the brief 8-month oligarchy which governed Athens after the Peloponnesian War – roughly late-summer...

Solon (c. 640 – c. 560 BCE) was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet, who is credited with restructuring the social and political organisation of Athens and thereby laying the foundations for Athenian democracy. Such were his accomplishments...

Cleisthenes (b. late 570s BCE) was an Athenian statesman who famously reformed the political structure and processes of Athens at the end of the 6th century BCE and, thereby, greatly increased the influence of ordinary citizens on everyday...

The Dexileos Stele assesses the way that Athenian political thought penetrated all levels of society, showing the conflict that the aristocratic classes were faced with in trying to find their place within the Athenian Democracy. As a visual...

Pericles (l. 495–429 BCE) was a prominent Greek statesman, orator, and general during the Golden Age of Athens. The period in which he led Athens, in fact, has been called the Age of Pericles due to his influence, not only on his city's fortunes...

The term agora (pronounced ah-go-RAH) is Greek for 'open place of assembly' and, early in the history of Greece, designated the area in a city where free-born citizens could gather to hear civic announcements, muster for military campaigns...