Athens invented democracy — direct citizen voting, in person, on every major political question. When did the system reach its mature form?
Cleisthenes's reforms in 508/507 BC reorganised the Athenian citizen body into ten new tribes and introduced the lot-based council that ran daily business. Pericles in the mid-5th century pushed direct popular participation further. The system lasted about 180 years before Macedonian conquest in 322 BC suppressed it. Participation was restricted to adult male citizens — roughly 30,000–60,000 men out of a city population of perhaps 300,000 including women, slaves, and resident foreigners. Demosthenes was a 4th-century BC orator at the tail end of democratic Athens, not its founder. The Bronze Age date predates Greek writing entirely.
Read the full facts →Ancient Greece was the Greek-speaking civilisation of the eastern Mediterranean from approximately 800 BC to 146 BC, when it was absorbed into the Roman Republic. Its philosophy, mathematics, drama, and political theory shaped Western thought for the next 2,500 years.
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