Ancient Democracy: What is Democracy and Where Did it Start?

Did you know that democracy was invented at the beginning of the 5th century BCE at almost the same time in both Athens and Rome, without one copying the other? Hello and welcome to World History Encyclopedia. My name is Kelly and today's video is all about democracy in honour of World Democracy Day on September 15th. Don't forget, the easiest way to support us is by giving this video a thumbs up, subscribing to our channel and hitting that bell icon for notifications so you don't miss out on any new uploads. World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organisation, so if you'd like to support our work you can head to our Patreon via the link in the top corner of the screen or via the Patreon link down below. Let's start off with explaining what democracy is in a nutshell, before diving into its Greek and Roman origins. The word democracy comes from the Greek word δημοκρατία, with δήμος meaning the people and κράτος meaning power or rule, so put that together and you essentially get the rule of the people. Today's idea of democracy is a representative democracy, which means the people have the power to choose their representative, whereas the democracy of Athens was a direct democracy, which we will get to very soon. Keep in mind, throughout this discussion of democracy and the citizens of Athens and Rome, this only refers to the adult male citizens, so not women, slaves or foreigners that lived in the region. Ancient Greece was never politically unified as a country, but was made up of city-states. Since we have far more information on the history of Athens than any other city-state in Greece, that's the one we'll be focusing on. So, let's get some context before we jump into the many layers of Athenian democracy. We're looking at the 5th century BCE, which is known as both the Classical Period and the Golden Age of Athens. It is this period between around 490 and 404 BCE that Athens produced its famous art, architecture, pottery, theatre and political institutions. That's right, democracy. So, in 507 BCE, Cleisthenes was elected as archon, a high position of public office, and he started introducing some reforms to the earlier laws of the statesman Solon. His governmental and law reforms saw the beginning of democracy in Athens, and gave Cleisthenes the title of the father of Athenian democracy. At this point, the Athenians thought that they had the best form of government, and they should get it set up elsewhere. They encouraged the Greek colonies of Asia Minor to revolt against the Persians who were controlling them at that time, which sparked the beginning of the Persian Wars, which lasted between 492 and 449 BCE. If you want to learn all about the battles between the Greek city-states and the Achaemenid Persian Empire, you can head to our video all about the Persian Wars right here. After the Greek city-states were victorious, the general and statesman Pericles formed the Delian League, which was an alliance of city-states that would defend Greece against any other Persian aggression. The treasury for the League was held in Athens, and Pericles used the money to make his city beautiful with funds going to the arts and architecture. Pericles was the man who advocated for what is known as radical democracy, and developed Athenian democracy until his death from the plague in 429 BCE. So what did democracy in Athens look like? Well, Cleisthenes made some radical changes to the Athenian landscape by changing the four tribes of Attica into ten. He changed the traditional king-group classification to a new one, where each member of the demos, or citizen body, would belong to one of the 139 local units, or deans. Each dean would belong to one of the 30 trites, and each tritus would belong to one of 10 phylae. Membership into a dean was hereditary, and each dean had its own political structure with a demarc chosen each year by the people to lead them. In Athens, any male citizen could participate in the assembly, or ecclesia, which would meet at least once a month on the Pinnix hill that had a dedicated space for 6,000 citizens to participate. Specific issues discussed in the assembly included deciding on military and financial issues, organising and maintaining food supplies, initiating legislation and political trials, deciding to send envoys, deciding whether or not to sign treaties, voting to raise or spend funds, and debating military matters. At these assemblies, you could also participate in the ostracism of a citizen, which took place once a year. Everyone would write a name on an ostracon, or shirt of pottery, and vote one person into exile for 10 years. This person could come back as a citizen, and they didn't lose their property during their 10 years away. Aristotle claims that the actual institution of the process was made in around 508 BCE under Cleisthenes, in order to prevent tyranny by a single individual. Why else would you want to vote someone out of Athens for 10 years? Well, perhaps someone was suggesting policies that you didn't like, or perhaps they were unliked as a person, as claimed by Plutarch in his Aristides, who says that a fellow member of the assembly wanted to vote out Aristides because he was sick of hearing the politician constantly referred to as the just. Ostracism was also used to exile Themistocles, who was accused of bribery. Cimon was ostracised because he was suspected of being a bit too friendly with Sparta. And Thucydides, not the historian, was a victim of Pericles, who used ostracism as a way to remove his political rival from the arena. Rather than being identified by your father, you were identified by your deme. So for example, Pericles, son of Xanthippus, would be identified instead as Pericles of the deme Collargos. Any male in a deme automatically became a citizen, and they could participate in the boulet, which was a council of 500 men, 50 from each tribe chosen by lot. From the boulet, 50 pritonates were elected on a rotation basis for a one-month service in the pritony, where they would oversee day-to-day operations and were like an executive committee of the boulet. How were they chosen by lot? Well, there was a specially designed machine known as a cloroteria, which dispensed colourful tokens, cloroterion, to ensure those selected were chosen randomly, a process magistrates had to go through twice. Choosing people by lot was to ensure that even the most powerful or convincing politicians were unable to influence all parts of political life. Since no one knew who would be selected, it made it difficult for one person or a small group to dominate the political arena. And so, those people randomly chosen, without any vested political interests, could counterbalance those who did. Later when Pericles became the foremost politician after the death of his mentor Ephialtes in 461 BCE, he ushered in what is known as radical democracy, which is essentially power in the hands of all of the citizens, especially the lowest and largest class. His reforms meant that people who took part in the civic duties of Athens were paid, which allowed the poor to have a voice and not risk losing money. This then meant that the lower class of Athenian citizens, called thetes, could own land and participate as full citizens. As Thucydides says in his funerary oration of Pericles, We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless but as a useless character. Pericles was at the forefront of Athenian democracy until his death, and in 411 BCE an oligarchy was established in the region and replaced the democratic system. Roman democracy arose independently at pretty much the same time as in Greece. Rome was ruled by a monarchy between 753 and 509 BCE. When it abandoned that model and instituted the democracy of the Roman Republic. Instead of a king and his councillors, Rome had a representative government of three branches. The Senate, or the legislative branch, of 300 upper class men who held the position for life. The consuls, or the executive branch, of two upper class men who held office for one year, and the judges, or the judicial branch, of eight upper class men who served for one year terms. The Senate created the laws which the consuls then acted on. The people of Rome elected the consuls in their assembly, and these consuls could block laws from the Senate if they felt they were unfair. The English word veto comes from the Latin for I forbid it, and a consul could veto an unjust law in the interests of the majority of the lower classes of Rome, and then suggest, though not create, a new one. A just law was defined by the law code known as the Twelve Tables, written in 449 BCE, and posted publicly so everyone knew what the laws were, and could vote for a consul they felt would represent those laws best. Only male citizens, defined as someone born in the city over the age of 15, could vote. Women had no political voice, but could influence their husbands or sons to vote in a way that would serve their interests. The Roman Republic, although it can't be considered a true democracy, did give its citizens a voice in the way their city was governed. This same basic form would continue during the Roman Empire, with the emperor taking the place of the consuls. The people of the lower classes could not elect the emperor, who was chosen by the Senate, but could elect tribunes, who served about the same purpose as consuls had. The government of the United States of America is based on the Roman model of democracy, but since 1920, when women were allowed the vote, has been far more inclusive. Looking at these forms of democracy, neither women or foreigners, not to mention slaves, were considered citizens, and so could not vote. So do you think we can still consider them democracies? Let us know what you think down in the comments below. 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