Greek Dbq Analysis

Greek democracy is defined as the power of the people. In the following paragraphs, pieces of documents will be provided to help understand how democracy worked in Ancient Greece. The first paragraph will be about document one. In document one, Aristotle states that," All states have three parts: rich, poor, and middle class." For example, in the modern world people are split up as if they have money then they must be rich and should be the person to have the most power, but the government still thinks the middle class should be able to rule as well because they are right I'm the middle of being poor and rich. The little piece from the document is saying that they are split in the stereotype that if a person is wealthy and stuck up, they

In document two Pericles is also aiming to showing that they did not copy another country and they are more interested in having many people rule. Pericles is staying very clearly that they created democracy without copying another countries idea and he feels proud of the rule with many people instead of just one person making a final decision. Bringing Cleisthene's reforms into the mix, document seven states, " Cleisthene's reforms were important in breaking down old allegiances and jealousies." Putting this together makes sense because Cleisthenes is the father of modern day democracy. Even thought the reforms were important, document four states, "While the hoplite phalanx could not guarantee the development of democracy, neither could economic change no matter how persuasive, nor political philosophy no matter how profound." This mean while the reforms were meant to help, they can't just change the way democracy was developing. Athenian democracy wasn't power of all of the people but the majority rule was that most citizens would vote together. The development of democracy was partly thanks to Cleisthenes and his reforms keeping everything in order. If democracy did not continue to develop in Athens, them today's world would be very chaotic in governing