democracy in Athens
Also known as Athenian democracy
democratic regime in 5th- and 4th-century-BCE Athens
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Democracy in ancient Athens was a system of government where citizens directly participated in making decisions about the city-state, rather than having a king or small group of rulers make those decisions for them. It matters because Athens' democratic experiment became influential in how later societies thought about government and the idea that ordinary people could have a say in their own governance.
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19th-century painting by Philipp Foltz: Pericles delivers funeral oration before the Assembly. Relief, about 336 BC, depicting personified Demos being crowned by Democracy. Ancient Agora Museum.Athenian democracy developed around the 6th century BC in the Greek city-state (known as a polis) of Athens, comprising the city of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, and focusing on supporting liberty, equality, and security.
Although Athens is the most familiar of the democratic city-states in ancient Greece, it was not the only one, nor was it the first; multiple other city-states adopted similar democratic constitutions before Athens. By the late 4th century BC, as many as half of the over one thousand existing Greek cities might have been democracies.