|
|
http://agathe.gr/democracy/democracy.html Introduction Classical Athens saw the rise of an achievement unparalleled in history. Perikles, Aischylos, Sophokles, Plato, Demosthenes, and Praxiteles represent just a few of the statesmen and philosophers, ... The last decades of the century saw them engaged in a terrible and costly war with Sparta, a war that was the democracy's harshest test. |
http://agathe.gr/democracy/the_ekklesia.html The Ekklesia (Citizens' Assembly) All Athenian citizens had the right to attend and vote in the Ekklesia, a full popular assembly which met about every 10 days. All decrees (psephismata) were ratified ... The second phase is dated to about 404/3 B.C., a time after the Peloponnesian War, when the democracy was abolished and Athens was under the control of the Thirty Tyrants, installed by Sparta. According to Plutarch, the Thirty had a specific political reason for shifting the orientation of the seating: The Thirty afterwards turned the bema [stand for speakers] in the Pnyx, which was made to look at the sea, toward the land, because they thought that naval supremacy had been the origin of democracy but that tillers of the soil were less ill disposed toward oligarchy (Life of Themistokles 4). |
|
|