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Ancient Greek Government

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University of the People
HIST 1421: Greek and Roman Civilization
Written Assignment Unit - Governments in Ancient Greek city-states
Student at UoPEOPLE
January, 2017
Points to address
Compare and contrast monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy as forms of government in Ancient Greek city-states
Different complex forms of governments were in practice in different city-states of ancient Greek. The five main forms of governments are monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. I will discuss what type of governments each refers to and finally what similarities and differences exist between them.
Monarchy
Monarchy is a type of government where a country has a royal family that symbolize its sovereignty. A …show more content…

When a group of people controlled the power and strips away the will of the citizens, it is called oligarchy. Megara and Thebes are some of the ancient city-states that passed through such system. This type of system could be deadly as evident in
Athens in 404 BCE (Cartwright, 2013).
Democracy
Athens is the only state characterized by having this type of system. Democracy is a form of government where the citizens has the ultimate power above all. The citizens in the ancient Greek are male person who is above 18 years of age and are not enslaved or stripped off their citizenship for some reason. The people form assembly where they are free to debate and pass laws the determine the fate (Cartwright, 2013).
The forms of government discussed above has many similarities and different that over laps with each other. This overlaps makes the one form of government to come out of the other. For instance, tyranny could emerge from oligarchy. The main difference between them is about who has the ultimate power. In democracy, the people has the power, whereas in the other forms of government the power belongs to a group of people or an individual.

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