Ancient Greek Government

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	Ancient Greek Government
	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.
	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.