How Did Athens Promote Democracy?

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Was the great city of Athens really accountable for the spread of democracy to other Greek cities in the dawn of the 4th and 5th centuries? This question seems absurd to most people today, even if they don’t posses an extensive knowledge about the empire. After all, the great majority of personal accounts of Greece in that period allege that the Athenian empire was the first to promote the establishment of democracy. When the word “democracy” is mentioned, we automatically think of Athens as the leader of the diffusion of democracy throughout Europe. However, when you look back at history seeking out for a specific case where Athens encouraged democracy you will find that they are insubstantial and disconnected from one another. Therefore, it’d be most prudent of us to further analyze some of the numerous sources that claim that Athens…show more content…
However, this assertion is merely used to cast in an unfavorable light, since later writings suggest that Athens and Sparta did not have a monopoly of constitutional interference. Aristotle then strengthens this argument in his book Politics that Thebes, not Sparta, was Athens’ external agency during the first stage of the Peloponnesian War. That brings us to 5th century texts that further reinforce Athens’ inconsistency towards democracy. For instance, Thucydides affirms in Old Oligarch that in allied affairs the Athenians “chose the worst people in cities affected by stasis and do it deliberately… for in no city is the better element favorable to the demos”. This view is prejudiced because in practice the “worse people” or democratic leaders would have been as privileged as their counterparts, and this support for “democracy” is only being referred to under the context of the Peloponnesian War, which dramatically changes its
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