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Ancient Greek Government Research Paper

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Ancient Greece was once a very united country, but subsequently got divided into various states such as Athens, Sparta, and Corinth. The two largest of these states, most powerful and ultimately most influential ones were Athens and Sparta. The governments of the city-states varied very widely in nature. After their separation, most of the states retained the original form of government inherited from the original Greek state for some time. As time went on, they began seeking for better ways to govern themselves and that leads to many of them adopting different styles. We will examine four main forms of governments in this essay and later examine how the city-states in ancient Greece practiced these forms of governing. These forms are monarchy, …show more content…

Usually, that one person is a king and is referred to as a monarch (MaoningTech, 2017). The only ancient Greek state that was a monarchy was Corinth (Wells, n.d) An aristocracy is a form of government in which power is held by nobles. Unlike Oligarchy, it doesn’t matter whether you are rich or powerful. In an aristocracy, you must be a noble and must come from a royal family or race. It comes from the Greek words “aristos” meaning excellent and “Kratos” meaning power. So in English, it would mean the rule of the best. Athens was also an aristocratic state since the ruling was done by only men (A noble race according to them). An oligarchy is a form of government in which running of the state is done by a few individuals. In the ancient Greek states, these were generally the rich and powerful men, who are usually nobles, aristocrats and also military groups. Their main aim was to get richer and more powerful and so the less privileged population especially the women and the slaves would suffer. This form of government was mainly used by the Spartans. Democracy is a form of government in which absolute rule is done by the people known in

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