Athenian Democracy Essay

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During the classical period of Greece, Athens introduced a new era of Government named “Athenian Democracy” led by long time leader and father of democracy Pericles. During this time with constant change of Government and monumental change within Athens, there were positive and Negative aspects of this new democracy, positive aspects such as giving the people a share in government politics and having citizens hold office were all positive aspects which made Athenian Democracy a long standing government, but some negative aspects such as using the caste system against laborers and having a stereotype against woman made Athenian Democracy lack of what it stood for and damaged Athenian Democracy to its demise. On what was known as the “Greek…show more content…
Athens Radical democracy wanted to balanced two goals; one goal was to make male citizens play a role in democracy and the second role was to be selective in choosing leadership by elite citizens. To accomplish this, there were open assemblies, where a total of five-hundred male citizens were chosen randomly annually and just ten elected “generals” were chosen (Hunt 81-82) One of the most popular case to resemble Radical Democracy was the Mitylenian Debate where Mitylene ( a city) was apart of the Delian League (controlled by Athens) but during the Peloponnesian War changed sides and went against the Delian League and joined the Peloponnesian League. The Athenian citizens had to vote on what punishment the Mitylenian people should receive for their actions, during this trial there were two stances on the issue one with going against the Mitylenians fully with force argued by Cleon and another stance which was a Clemency by Doidotus. Cleon argued that the Mitylenian Citizens deserved to be punished and all the women and children to be slaves saying that “punish them as they deserve and teach your other allies by a striking example that the penalty of rebellion is death”

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