Download Athens was the largest & most powerful city state in Greece

Government:
a system of political and social representation and control:
Democracy:
A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by
them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving
periodically held free elections
Athens Democracy
Greece, Athens & Athens Law
•Greece started about 2000 B.C. by establishing cities in valleys
along Greece’s rocky coast
•Each city-state had its own government due to their geographic
locations
•Athens was the largest & most powerful city state in Greece
•Athens first had a monarchy (government controlled by one person)
•Athens government developed into an aristocracy (State ruled by
noble class)
•Citizens - were all free adult males
•Slaves - formed 1/3 of the Athens population
Maps of Ancient Greece
Democratic Greek Leaders
Solon
Cleisthenes
Pericles
Elected chief Archon
(statesman) in 594
B.C. to help solve the
problems of Athens
Solon (SO-luhn)
•A statesman who solved the economic &
political crisis that Athens faced by
passing a law outlawing slavery based on
debt & he canceled the farmers debts.
•Established four classes of citizenship
based on wealth, rather than heredity.
•Created a council of 400, which prepared
business for the already existing council.
•Introduced a code of laws, which gave
citizens the right to bring charges against
wrongdoers.
•Encouraged the export of goods, which
became a profitable overseas trade.
With most of the land and political power in the hands of the nobles,
the peasants were rapidly losing not only their land but their freedom
as well. Solon annulled all mortgages and debts, limited the amount
of land anyone might add to his holdings, and outlawed all borrowing
in which a person’s liberty might be pledged.
Other economic reforms included a ban on the export of all
agricultural products except olive oil. Although there was opposition
to Solon’s reforms, they subsequently became the basis of the
Athenian state. He also introduced a more humane law code to
replace the code of Draco. - From later accounts in the writings of
Aristotle and Plutarch it appears that in Athens the penalty of death
was prescribed for the most trivial offense. The code adopted the
principle that murder must be punished by the state and not by
vendetta.
Cleisthenes
(Klice-then-eez)
•In 508 B.C. he introduces new reforms
A rich and
powerful
aristocrat
•Wanted to break up the power of the nobility
•He allowed all citizens to submit laws for debate & passage
•He reorganized the assembly to make Athens a Full Democracy (Every
Athenian man would have one vote, and they would all meet and vote on what to do.
The big meeting was called the Assembly)
•Created the council of Five Hundred, (a smaller council of 500 men, who were
chosen by a lottery, and changed every year)
•He arranged the voting so that his family, the Alcmaeonids (alk-MEEoh-nids), would have more votes than anyone else.
•Regarded as the Founder of Democracy in Athens
Greek – Persian Wars 490 B.C. - 479 B.C.
Persia invades Greece causing the Greek city-states to unite. Greece defeats
Persia & creates an alliance of 140 city-states called The Delian League, with
Athens as its lead city-state.
•A statesman who increased the number
of paid public officials & paid jurors
•Under Pericles, Athens evolved into a
Direct Democracy (a form of government
where citizens rule directly & not thru
representatives)
•Under Pericles, more Athens citizens
were actively involved in government
than any other city-state
Pericles
•He is also responsible for the building of
the Parthenon
Led Athens for 32
years, from 461 to
429 B.C.
“ Our constitution is called a democracy
because power is in the hands not of a
minority but of the whole people.”
The Golden Age
of Greece
Eventually, Greece is defeated by Sparta in what is known as The
Peloponnesian War (431 B.C. – 404 B.C.)
After the Peloponnesian War was over, all the cities of Greece were
worn out & poor. Many men went and fought for the Persians for
money. But others tried to rebuild the cities. This was the time of
Socrates and his student Plato, the great philosophers.
To the north of Greece, in a country called Macedon (MA-suh-donn),
King Philip II had noticed that the Greeks were very weak. He
attacked the Greek city-states and one by one he took them over.
When Philip II was assassinated in 336 B.C., his son Alexander
(Alexander The Great) became king, and he also ruled Greece.
Alexander was only 20 when he became king. At first a lot of people
thought he was too young. But he not only held onto Greece, he also
took a big army of Greeks and Macedonians and attacked the
Persian Empire!
In 334 BC, Alexander the Great of Macedonia
left Pella, crown city of Macedonia, to attack the
Persians that had been threatening the Greeks for
more than a century. Eight years later, Alexander
had put an end to the Egyptian and Persian
Empire; he controlled the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates,
and Indus valleys. He was both pharaoh of
Egypt, and The Great King of Persia. However
ten years after leaving Pella, he was dead in
Babylon, conquered by a fever. When asked on
his death bed who was to succeed him he
answered: "The strongest".
War Path of Alexander the Great
The Conquest of Egypt and Persia
Greek Philosophers
Socrates
Aristotle
Plato
Ancient Greek philosophy is dominated by three very famous men:
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. All three of these lived in Athens for
most of their lives, and they knew each other. Socrates came first,
and Plato was his student. Socrates was killed in 399 B.C., & Plato
began his work by writing down what Socrates had taught, and then
continued by writing down his own ideas and opening a school.
Aristotle, who was younger, came to study at Plato's school, and
ended up starting his own school as well.
Socrates was
Plato was born in Athens, to a very wealthy &
aristocratic family. Many of his relatives were involved
ultimately arrested for
with Athenian politics, though Plato himself was not.
his philosophical
When Plato was a young man, he went to listen to
teachings & sentenced
Socrates, & learned from Socrates how to think, and
what sort of questions to think about. When Socrates was
to death. He was
killed, Plato was very upset (He was 30 years old when
poisoned by being
Socrates died). Practically everything we know about
made to drink
Socrates comes from what Plato wrote down. One of his
earlier works is the Republic, which describes what Plato
Hemlock, (a plant).
thought would be a better form of government than the
He never wrote down
government of Athens.
his teachings.
Plato also thought a lot about the natural world and how it works.
He thought that everything had a sort of ideal form. The ideal form
of a man is his soul, according to Plato. The soul is made of three
parts: our natural desires, our will, which lets us resist our natural
desires, and our reason, which tells us when to resist our natural
desires and when to obey them. For instance, when you are hungry,
and you want to eat, that's a natural desire. If you are in the
cafeteria at lunchtime, that's a good time to obey your natural desire
and go ahead and eat. But if you are hungry in the middle of class,
your reason will tell you to wait until lunch, and your will lets you
control yourself.
Plato started a school for philosophers, called the Academy. The
Academy was a big success, and Plato stayed there for the rest of his
life. One of Plato's students at the Academy was Aristotle. Plato
spent a lot of the last part of his life writing another political piece
called the Laws, which talks about how corrupt politicians are, and
how they have to be watched every minute. Plato died at 82, in 347
B.C.
Aristotle was not originally from Athens. He lived near Macedon, in the north of Greece.
He was not from a rich family like Plato. When Aristotle was a young man, about 350
B.C., he went to study at Plato's Academy. Plato was old then. Aristotle did very well at
the Academy, but he never got to be among its leaders, & when Plato died, he was not
chosen to lead the Academy after him. Soon afterwards, Aristotle left Athens and went to
Macedon to be the tutor of the young prince Alexander, who grew up to be Alexander The
Great.
When Alexander grew up and became King, Aristotle went back to Athens and opened his
own school, the Lyceum (lie-SAY-um). The school was successful for hundreds of years.
Aristotle & Alexander remained friends for the remainder of Alexander’s life.
Aristotle was more interested in science than Socrates or Plato. He wanted to use
Socrates' logical methods to figure out how the real world worked; therefore Aristotle is
really the father of today's scientific method. Aristotle was especially interested in biology,
in classifying plants & animals in a way that would make sense. This is part of the Greek
impulse to make order out of chaos: to take the chaotic natural world and impose a manmade order on it. He created a classification system of monarchies, oligarchies, tyrannies,
democracies & republics which we still use today.
When Alexander died in 323 B.C., there were revolts against Macedonian rule in Athens.
People accused Aristotle of being secretly on the side of the Macedonians. He left town
quickly, and spent the last years of his life back in the north again where he had been
born.
Greek Games
The first Olympic games at Olympia were held in Ancient
Greece in the city state of Athens 776 B.C. There was a
flame burning in the honor of Zeus, lord of all the gods.
They were a constant in ancient Greece. The games were
even held in 480 B.C. during the Persian Wars, and they
coincided with the Battle of Thermopylae.
The games were held every four years from 776 BC to 393
AD, when they were abolished by the Christian Byzantine
Emperor Theodosius I.
The very first Olympic games only held one event - the marathon.
The games were greatly expanded from a one-day festival of athletics and
wrestling to, in 472 BC, five days with many events:
wrestling, boxing, horse racing, long jumping, javelin, and chariot races.
Early Olympic victors became national heroes and celebrated in music and poetry.
In early Olympic Games - women were not allowed to watch the games.
The Olympic Games were held to help unite many different countries in a peaceful
manner. Each participating country is limited to three entries.
The Greek competitors marked the first modern event of the Olympics with cross
country runners bringing a torch from the valley of Olympia to light a much larger
torch in the stadium where the games are held.
The Olympic Games were banned in AD 394 but were revived and made
international in 1896.
The Legacy of Greece
•Greece set lasting standards in politics & Philosophy.
•Greeks did not rely on superstition or traditional explanations of the
world. Instead, they used reason & intelligence to discover predictable
patterns that they called “Natural Laws”.
•The Greeks developed direct democracy in order that citizens could
actively participate in political decisions.
•They were the first to think of 3 branches of government
•Legislative branch – to pass laws.
•Executive branch – to carry out the laws.
•Judicial branch – to settle disputes about the laws
ROME
History of Republican Government
A Republic means the people rule themselves through votes and their consent, not one
single person (For the People, By the People). The Roman Republic took much of the
Greek government's principles and incorporated them into their own. The Republic's
governing body was called the Senate, made up of Patricians who ran for elections. In
America, a senator is elected into office for six years, while in Rome, a senator, unless
proclaimed Senator For Life, had one year in office. The Senate elected two wealthy
men to become the Consuls of Rome. These men would be the ones to execute laws
and whatever the Senate thought up, each with the power to check the other because the
Romans swore they'd never bow to a king again. If a war should come up, one Consul
would lead the armies, called Legions, while the other minded the civil businesses. If
the now greatly expanded Republic should be in a situation most dire, the Senate would
elect one man Dictator of Rome. This meant that the Senate agreed to have one man
have total power of 6 months, after that, he was no longer in power.
This Republic, however, wasn't much of a Republic to poor people called
Plebeians. Slaves had no say at all in anything. The lack of Plebeian representation led
to uprisings or civil wars, so the Senate put in a position for two men to represent the
Plebeians and they had the power to call veto (I oppose) and thereby nullifying anything
the Senate passed which was not in the best interests of the common people.
An important
victory for the
plebeians was
forcing creation
of a written law
code. With laws
unwritten,
patrician officials
often interpreted
the law to suit
themselves
In 451 B.C. a group of 10 officials began writing down Rome’s laws.
They had the laws carved on 12 tables, or tablets & publicly displayed.
The 12 tables established the idea that all free citizens had the right to
protection of the law & that laws would be fairly administered.
Magistrates - is a judicial officer with limited authority to
administer and enforce the law.
2 *consuls—chief magistrates who convened and presided over
the Senate and assemblies, initiated and administered legislation,
served as generals in military campaigns, and represented Rome
in foreign affairs.
8 *praetors—served primarily as judges in law courts, but could
convene the Senate and assemblies; they assumed administrative
duties of consuls when these were absent from Rome. 2
censors—elected every 5 years for terms of 1½ years; revised
lists of senators and equestrians; conducted census of citizens and
property assessments for tax purposes; granted state contracts.
4 aediles—supervised public places, public games, and the grain
supply in the city of Rome; 2 were required to be plebeians, and
the other two (who had more status) could come from either
order; the latter 2 were called curule aediles.
10 tribunes—had to be plebeian, because the office was
established to protect the plebeians from arbitrary actions of
magistrates. Hence the primary power of tribunes was negative;
they could veto the act of any magistrate and stop any official act
of administration.
20 quaestors—administered finances of state treasury and served
in various capacities in the provinces; when elected quaestor, a
man automatically became eligible for membership in the Senate,
though censors had to appoint him to fill a vacancy
Senate:
•composed of 600 magistrates and ex-magistrates (minimum qualification was
election as quaestor) who served for life unless expelled by the censors
•normally met in a building called the Curia located in the Roman Forum
•although technically an advisory body, in effect the Senate was the chief
governmental body because it controlled public finances and foreign affairs, assigned
military commands and provinces, and debated and passed decrees that would be
submitted to the assemblies for final ratification
•the Republican government was symbolized by the letters SPQR (senatus
populusque Romanus), meaning “the Senate and the Roman people”
Assemblies:
These were theoretically composed of all males who were full Roman citizens, though
individuals had to attend in person in order to vote. No debate from the floor was
possible, and votes were counted in groups, not individually (the vote of each group
was determined by the vote of the majority of individuals in that group).
For hundreds of years after the founding of the
republic, Rome expanded its territories through
conquest & trade. By about 70 B.C. Rome’s
Mediterranean possessions stretched from Anatolia
in the east to Spain in the west. But expansion
created problems for the republic.
For decades, Rome alternated between the chaos
of civil war & the authoritarian rule of a series of
dictators. Eventually the republic collapsed and
Augustus became emperor in 27 B.C.
Roman Expansion
Roman Legacy
•Rome gave the world the idea of a republic
•Rome’s written legal code – a collection of Roman laws called the 12
Tables that assured that all citizens had a right to the protection of the
law. This is important because once laws are written down & agreed
upon, the laws cannot be simply made up at the whim of a dictator.
•Roman Law – The Romans tried to create a system of laws that could be
universally applied throughout the Roman Empire. They believed that
laws should be based on principles of reason & justice & should protect
citizens & their property.
•All citizens had the right to equal treatment under the law
•A person was considered innocent until proven guilty
•The burden of proof rested with the accuser rather than the accused