Ancient Greece practiced five different government types, which were Monarchy, Aristocracy, Tyranny, Oligarchy and Democracy. This paper shall attempt to described these different forms of government in Ancient in order to clearly demonstrate their similarities and differences.
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We will begin by talking about Monarchy, which comes from the Greek terms Monos and Arkhein (meaning “one” and “to rule”) and is a form of government in which the people are led by a king. While the king takes power legally, his sovereignty is hereditary, meaning, it usually stays in the same family and goes from generation to generation. Thus, the ruler is ruler for life. Corinth is a Greek city state that practiced this type of governance.
Democracy …show more content…
Highly practiced by Sparta, it was a form of government that saw the masses at a disadvantage. Retired military men above sixty, were usually chosen to serve in the Ephor and Gerousia, a group with immense power and control.
Tyranny was a form of government that was a lot like Monarchy and was known to grow out of Oligarchies. The difference however was that tyrants, did not take power legally, and had no claim to the throne, and could not pass down power to future generations. It is worth noting that, despite modern day stereotypes, not all tyrants were bad leaders, and some actually ushered in prosperity and growth for its people.
Conclusion
As has been examines above, ancient Greek cities practiced different forms of governance, usually provoked by the culture, the needs of the society and even the type of people who found themselves in seats of power at the time. Though all Greek cities, they were not bound by any type of central control of power, and as such, were free to experiment and use different techniques of governance, independent of each other. It is also for this reason that types of governance in different cities were known to change, either in order to provoke a certain type of result noticed in another city state, or to quell and