Ancient Greece was divided into many poleis, or “city-states”, that were all small countries

Hey, I'm Mil and I live in Canada. I work as a financial analyst for a company that provides an online business management program. I hope to remember some of the aspects I studied in school with this course, and hopefully, elaborate even further to discover other things that may be interesting.

One of the most studied and idealized societies of the past seems to be Ancient Greek. We have all studied their philosophers, literature and even seen many of the movies that portray such a society. The truth is that the Ancient Greek provided humanity with monumental architecture and policies which influenced other societies throughout human history to this very day; the best example being the democracy.

Ancient Greece was divided into many poleis, or “city-states”, that were all small countries by themselves, all of them with their own and distinctive rules; the most famous of them being Athens and Sparta (Brand, n.d.). The two were opposites in terms of political and social structure, but both of them had one thing in common, they served as role models for the succeeding societies.

Sparta was a strong military society, with most of its citizens comprised of soldiers and they were all males because the function of the Spartan women was to give birth to as many “worthy” male Spartans as possible. The Spartans were very authoritarian, even killing people that they did not consider worthy; a feature that would, later on, inspire the German Nazi (Brand, n.d.).

The Spartans had two kings, but the decisions were voted by two specific groups comprised of males that were usually 60 years old or above. There was no democracy; the society was comprised of slaves that often rebelled against Spartans, the women, the soldiers, and the oligarchy. They had more problems among themselves than with other societies, mostly because they were very good at defeating their opponents (Brand, n.d.).

Now, the Athenians, on the other hand, had a direct democracy in which everyone who is considered a citizen can vote for any law being voted. The problem was that slaves and women were not considered citizens; only specific males were considered citizens. The Athenians were very concerned with their architecture, philosophy, and literature, producing pieces of work that humanity studies and admires to this day. It is one of the reasons why we are having this class, by the way (Brand, n.d.). The democracy they started also became predominant in Western societies nowadays, being improved throughout many years. I would say it had achieved its highest peak thus far.

References

Brand, P. J. (n.d.). Athens & Sparta: Democracy vs. dictatorship. Retrieved from https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/770336/mod_book/chapter/228561/Athens%20%20Sparta%20dictatorship%20%20democracy.pdf?time=1582319035433