Was Athens A True Democracy?
Athens considered themselves a democratic state of government but in more ways than none it is not a true democracy. The definition of democracy is “a system of government by the whole population.” There were some ways that Athens was democratic in some ways because they had representatives for the government but overall it was still undemocratic because representatives in the courts and council were chosen randomly. The only ones allowed to vote were males that made up a very small amount of the population,
Democracy is supposed to be everyone has the right to vote, but Athens had different ideas of what democracy truly meant. Meaning that they took different ideas from an oligarchy and a democracy type of of government and combined the two together and make their own version of a government which they called democracy, isn't fully true they believed what they had was a democracy and in many ways it was. try to say they didn't really give the power to the people so it wasn't really a democracy, rather it was more of an oligarchy. The men acted as the governing group. Professor Hanson states, “...by our standards it was oligarchy not democracy. Second, rule was exercised directly by the people, …show more content…
They would meet once a year to ask the question to see if anyone is angling for a tyranny, meaning a threat to democracy. Professor Camp states, “...If a simple majority voted yes, then they dispersed and reassembled two months later. They brought with them their ostracon (a fragment of pottery), on which they had scratched the name of they thought represented a threat. The man with most votes lost. He was exiled for 10 years, and this was thought to calm any anti-democratic leanings he might have.” This didn’t exactly get rid of the problem, this is because even though they got rid of the potential threat they might not have gotten rid of the real
Democracy is supposed to be everyone has the right to vote, but Athens had different ideas of what democracy truly meant. Meaning that they took different ideas from an oligarchy and a democracy type of of government and combined the two together and make their own version of a government which they called democracy, isn't fully true they believed what they had was a democracy and in many ways it was. try to say they didn't really give the power to the people so it wasn't really a democracy, rather it was more of an oligarchy. The men acted as the governing group. Professor Hanson states, “...by our standards it was oligarchy not democracy. Second, rule was exercised directly by the people, …show more content…
They would meet once a year to ask the question to see if anyone is angling for a tyranny, meaning a threat to democracy. Professor Camp states, “...If a simple majority voted yes, then they dispersed and reassembled two months later. They brought with them their ostracon (a fragment of pottery), on which they had scratched the name of they thought represented a threat. The man with most votes lost. He was exiled for 10 years, and this was thought to calm any anti-democratic leanings he might have.” This didn’t exactly get rid of the problem, this is because even though they got rid of the potential threat they might not have gotten rid of the real