Democracy Vs Athenian Democracy Essay

Introduction
The birth of democracy in Sparta and Athens was a long, painful journey, created by wars, cruel leaders, and heroic figures. Although many of democracy’s ideas came from Athenian government, it was very different from the democracy in the United States, for example. In general, wealthy aristocrats had the most power. But without the ideas that this time period created, who knows where we would be now. In this paper, I’m going to outline how democracy came to be in early Athenian and Spartan governments, the structure of said governments, and compare the two city-states. Discussion
Athens was original ruled by a group of wealthy aristocrats, who, because they owned land, made all political decisions. The rest of the population was subject to the aristocrats’ cruel rule, and unrest began to rise. The wealthy landowners themselves fought among themselves, and between this and the unrest, the group of aristocrats finally appointed a man name Solon to reorganize the political system. Solon made some headway: he
They both had multiple branches that spread out the responsibility of governing. Each had branch for executive and war decisions, and each had an assembly of free men. In both city-states, there was a system for checks and balances, though each had a different balance. However, this is where the similarities end. Where Athens was considered a democracy, Sparta was not. The checks and balances in Athens actually took away from the rich’s power and distributed governmental power to all wealth groups. (Fleck, 2006) The checks and balances in Sparta were more just within the two higher branches, the Gerousia and Ephors. The Gerousia checked the the Ephors decisions and laws. As far as branches go, the Athens differed from Sparta by having a completely separate branch for judicial decisions. The Spartans wrapped legislature and judicial all up in the Ephors branch. (Brand,