What kind of government did ancient Greece have?

Question

Was it effective?

Answer 1

Lots of different kinds:

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The Greeks had a lot of different kinds of governments, because there were many different city-states in ancient Greece, and they each had their own government. In addition, people's ideas about what made a good government changed over time.
Aristotle divided Greek governments into monarchies, oligarchies, tyrannies and democracies, and most historians still use these same divisions. For the most part, Greece began by having monarchies, then oligarchies, then tyrannies and then democracies, but at each period there were plenty of city-states using a different system, and there were many which never did become democracies or tyrannies at all.

In the Late Bronze Age (the Mycenean period), between about 2000 and 1200 BC, all Greek city-states seem to have been monarchies, ruled by kings. Homer's Iliad, and Greek mythology in general, shows us a whole series of kings like Agamemnon and Theseus, and some of their palaces have survived for archaeologists to dig up.
After the Dark Age, though, only a few Greek city-states still had kings. Sparta is the most famous of these, though actually Sparta had two kings, usually brothers or cousins, at the same time. One would stay home and the other go off to fight wars.
Most city-states in the Archaic period were ruled by oligarchies, which is a group of aristocrats (rich men) who tell everyone else what to do. Then in the 600's and 500's BC a lot of city-states were taken over by tyrants. Tyrants were usually one of the aristocrats who got power over the others by getting the support of the poor people. They ruled kind of like kings, but without any legal right to rule.

In 510 BC, the city-state of Athens created the first democratic government, and soon other Greek city-states imitated them. Even city-states that weren't Greek, like Carthage and Rome, experimented with giving the poor people more power at this time. But Athenian democracy did not really give power to everyone. Most of the people in Athens couldn't vote - no women, no slaves, no foreigners (even Greeks from other city-states), no children. And also, Athens at this time had an empire, ruling over many other Greek city-states, and none of those people living in the other city-states could vote either. Of course it is a lot easier to have a democratic government when you are only deciding what other people should do.

(And many Greek city-states kept oligarchic government, or tyrannies, or monarchies, through this whole time).
Then in the 300's BC, Greece was conquered by Philip of Macedon, and all of Greece began to be ruled by him as their king (in theory he was only leading a league of Greek city-states, but really he acted like a king). Athens and other Greek city-states still kept their local democracies or oligarchies for local government, but bigger decisions were made by Philip, and then by Philip's son Alexander the Great.

After Alexander died in 323 BC, Greece became a kingdom ruled by a series of Macedonian kings, until it was gradually taken over by the Romans between 200 and 146 BC. From 146 BC on, Greece was a province of the Roman Empire. Even after the Roman Empire in the West collapsed, Greece was still part of the Eastern Empire."

Answer 2

Ancient Greece Government

Answer 3

Ancient Greek Government

Answer 4

There were basically three types of Ancient Greek Government.

Ready?

1) Nobles - they ruled from 750 B.C. - 6:50 B.C. They held the most power because they were the land owners. They belittled the merchant class and the traders. They also refused to give the farmers political voice. Eventually the traders and the merchants became tired of this. They helped to bring the Tyrants into power.
2) The Tyrants - 650 B.C. - 500 B.C. The Tyrants did a lot of good for the Ancient Greeks. They helped to end debt - slavery, assisted in great land reforms, and they also helped to keep peace between the Poleis ( Ancient Greek City-States). However, after the first and second generations the Tyrants ( which originally meant rule by one) became corrupt. After several revolts, they were finally over thrown. Democracy was established.
3) Democracy - 500B.C. - 338 B.C. While some city - states, like Athens had Democracy some were still oligarchy's. Sparta never became a Democracy. Democracy brought some excellent changes to Ancient Greece, but it never did solve their two main problems ( War and Social Classes). Eventually Greece fell after 338 B.C. It was severely weakened by the Peloponnesian War ( 431 - 404 B.C.) and Philip of Macedon and then his son, Alexander the Great moved in for the kill.

Were these types of government affective? They served their purpose for the time being. None were really stable, not like the Romans anyway.

Answer 5

Ancient Greece had two types of governments, and then one.

Athens was the first society on Earth to have participatory democracy. The Athenian Empire was called "The Delian League". Athens' rival, Sparta, was a military dictatorship. The Spartan Empire was known as "The Peloponnesian League".

Athens and Sparta warred in the Peloponnesian War, finally won by Sparta, but exhausting for both sides. Greece was so weakened by the war that a Macedonian, Alexander ("The Great") was able to solidify rule over all Greece and to turn Greece into an extensive Empire.

Answer 6

Greece was not unified for most of antiquity. It was composed of a multitude of independent city-states. Many were democracies, albeit with widely differing rules. Some Greek cities, like those of Asia Minor were in fact ruled by Persian satrapes for most of their history.

Greece did not become more or less unified (as a monarchic league under Macedonia) until the reign of Philip II of Macedon. Even then, however, it did not include Sparta, which always kinda did its own thing.

Answer 7

The Greeks were one of the first civilizations as we have come to define the term. This society produced a large number of free-thinking philosophers given the over-all population of the day. These philosophers did a lot of religious, political and societal 'navel gazing' and worked at finding the answers to cosmic questions and working out solutions to many questions they raised. Some of these philosophies produced different forms of governments at a time when Greece was simply a string of city-states and not a single political/demographic entity.

Answer 8

Grecian Formula....