'Athenian Democracy 4 Essay\r'

'Who re in ally do our type of g all overn handst? We surely didn’t. It was amazingly the commonwealth of capital of Greece. It started in 508 BC and is thus far around as we use it. It remains a unique and thought-provoking experiment in direct democracy where the state do not elect representatives to vote on their behalf just now vote on legislation and decision maker bills in their own skillful Participation was not at all open, but the in-group of bug outicipants was constituted with no reference to economic class and they participated on a scale that was truly phenomenal.\r\nThe public opinion of voters was out raiseingly influenced by the policy-making satire performed by the odd poets at the theaters. Only adult male Athenian citizens who had completed their legions training as ephebes had the right to vote in capital of Greece. We extradite had that and many early(a) laws changed around the government. In our government every a few(prenominal) years the people vote on b atomic number 18-assed people to represent them, hence the name â€Å" substitute” Democracy. However the Athenian people also voted on some of their leaders but that was d wiz in the Agora, which is where every male land owner who is over the age of twenty would meet.\r\nThis meeting was called the assembly. The assembly could be best related to our State Representatives. Then in effect(p) above them was the council of 500, who monitored the assembly and gave them topics to discuss, as well as bills to vote on. Above the council of 500 come the Magistrates. The Magistrates personal credit line can be best described as the â€Å"Police in the Government. ” Their job is to ensure that all the laws are world followed and act accordingly when they are not.\r\nThe Magistrates, despite the amount of power that they hold, are still not the highest government official in the Athenian democracy, after them comes the Council of the 10 Generals. The Council of 10 Generals was in repoint of the military. The Athens didn’t start by being a democratic urban center. It was started by Cleisthenes whose reforms turned Athens from an oligarchy (government by the few) to a democracy (government of the people). The key to Athenian democracy was Cleisthenes redrawing of the social-political landscape of Athens and Attica.\r\nThe chief magistrate of the city was often called the Archon eponymous or ruler. His responsibilities included conducting investigations of jural cases, in particular those that involved the state. He was liable for protecting the orphans and heiresses with no family and to appoint the choregos who was in awaken of organizing the religious festivals. The move towards democracy reflects other changes in society. In the prehistoric period, throughout Greece, aristocratic families have erectd the main fighting force, as cavalry.\r\nIn the 7th degree centigrade the Greek city-states develop the new military idea o f the heavily armed soldier, the hoplite. A remorseless phalanx of hoplites becomes as effective on the domain as the tank in modern times. These soldiers provide their own weapons and armor, but this is expensive. Several of the Greek oligarchies, including that of Athens in the sixth century, reflect the power of this nerve class of citizens. A strategic change of pedagogy by Athens, early in the 5th century, gives these poorer citizens a new power.\r\nThe military effort is diverted into construction up an Athenian navy. Triremes, the fast warships of the time, need men to row them. Suddenly every citizen has a part to p get, and the crews of a fleet of warships have a obvious political strength. A more radical democracy, introduced by Pericles in 462, is almost an inevitable run. Approximately ace hundred officials out of a thousand were choose rather than chosen by lot. There were devil main categories in this group: those required to insure large sums of m geniusy, and the 10 generals, the strategy.\r\nOne reason that pecuniary officials were elected was that any money embezzled could be recovered from their estates; election in general strongly favored the rich, but in this case wealth was virtually a prerequisite. Generals were elected not tho because their role required expert knowledge but also because they needed to be people with let and contacts in the wider Greek world where wars were fought. In the fifth century BC, principally as inviten through the figure out of Pericles, the generals could be among the most powerful people in the polis.\r\nYet in the case of Pericles, it is wrong to see his power as coming from his long serial of annual generalships (each year along with nine others). His self-assurance holding was rather an expression and a result of the influence he wielded. That influence was based on his relation with the assembly, a relation that first lay simply in the right of any citizen to stand and speak before th e people. Under the fourth century version of democracy the roles of general and of key political speaker in the assembly tended to be make full by different persons.\r\nIn part this was a consequence of the increasingly specialized forms of warfare right in the later period. Elected officials too were sheath to review before holding stead and test after office. They too could be removed from office any time the assembly met. In one case from the fifth century BC the 10 treasurers of the Delian league (the Hellenotamiai) were accused at their scrutinies of misappropriation of funds. say on trial, they were condemned and executed one by one until before the trial of the tenth and last an misconduct of accounting was discovered, allowing him to go free.\r\n'