The "dark age of ancient Greece" is not much different from other ancient civilizations, and it is also ruled by kingship in political system. The kingship is based on theocracy. Although there were institutions such as the Senate and the citizens' assembly in ancient Greek society, they were still attached in function, which was not enough to restrain the monarchy and even indirectly became supporters of the monarchy. Obviously, it is not based on the sovereignty of the people. Around 750 BC, many political combinations appeared in ancient Greece, which we called polis. The formation of the city-state may be related to the mountainous and relatively closed geographical conditions along the Aegean Sea, the development of commercial trade around the eighth century BC, and the "split reproduction" and free colonization formed to solve internal social contradictions and land scarcity. Although the development of many city-states has its own characteristics, the political, economic and social changes in Athens during that period can basically be regarded as the representatives of most city-states (Sparta is of course an exception).
In Athens around the seventh century BC, the kingship has been basically replaced by a few nobles, and nine consuls elected by the 400-member aristocratic house actually mastered and manipulated the king's administrative, military and religious powers. This aristocratic rule inevitably led to the embarrassment of most farmers with underground social status. In order to solve the increasingly acute social class conflict, consul Solon began to implement moderate reform measures at the beginning of the sixth century BC, including canceling farmers' debts and giving them some important political rights. The citizens' assembly also has the right to examine and amend laws drafted by the House of Lords, and can listen to and supervise the Chief Executive. Unfortunately, Solon's reform did not completely satisfy the rich and the poor, and the reform policy was not well implemented. In 560 BC, the aristocratic regime in Athens, which was plagued by social contradictions, was finally overthrown by a tyrant. At first, the tyrant was warmly supported by most poor people and emerging businessmen. However, with the increasing brutality of the landlords, the aristocrats in Athens regained power at the end of 6th century BC and carried out effective reforms under the leadership of aristocrat Cristini. The power of the nobility was weakened, and the 500-member parliament elected by lottery became the highest authority and made laws. By about 500 BC, the Athens city-state had established the first democratic regime in human society.
For a long time, ancient Greece experienced a relatively independent period of political and cultural development, and was not invaded by powerful neighboring empires. Ionia, which lived in Asia Minor and Attica Peninsula, was the most prosperous, and Athens was one of the important cities. By the 6th century BC, although the states of Iolia had surrendered to the kingdom of Lydia, apart from paying tribute to Lydia, the relationship between them was not tense, and there were frequent population and cultural exchanges. In 547 BC, the powerful Persian Empire conquered Lydia, and the Greek city-state Iolia, which surrendered to Lydia, suffered greatly. Their maritime trade has been greatly impacted and their economic situation is deteriorating day by day. Their dissatisfaction with Persian rule and the tyrant appointed by Persia gradually deepened. Finally, in 499 BC, the Eolian Uprising against Persian rule broke out, and the Greek city-states in Asia Minor established democratic regimes and sought the support of Athens. Unfortunately, Darius, king of Persia, led an army to defeat the Ionian rebels in 494 BC and destroyed Miletus, the capital of the Ionian Greeks.
Although the rebellion subsided, Darius knew that Athens and other Greek city-states in the west were still potential threats. So in 490 BC, Persian troops crossed the Aegean Sea and invaded Athens and other surrounding Greek city-states on a large scale. The famous marathon battle in the history of Athens happened at this time. The victory of Athens in this war greatly enhanced the military strength of Athens and broke the myth that the Persian army was invincible. Ten years later, in 480 BC, Persian troops led by Xue Xisi invaded Greece again by land and sea. After the Battle of Maupile and the Battle of Artemision, Persian troops continued to attack and capture Attica, and Athens was evacuated from Athens, which was subsequently destroyed. Since then, the Greek cities with the Athenian navy as the main force have won a great victory in the famous Salamis naval battle, and the Persian navy has completely retreated back to Asia Minor. In 479 BC, the Greek army repelled the Persian heavy infantry in the battle of Plataea, and the Greek mainland was liberated. This belongs to Herodotus. The Greek-Persian war was recorded in. Athens became the leader of Greece together with Sparta because of its leading role and great sacrifice in this war to defend Greece.
The victory of the Greek-Persian war greatly inspired the Athenians. In the rest of the fifth century BC, the Athenians "tried more and achieved more than any other country, big or small, in the same time." During the reign of Perikles (46 BC1-429 BC), Athens continued to promote democracy. Ten elected generals replaced the government officials elected by lottery, and the policies formulated by them were discussed and passed by the citizens' assembly. In order to enable the poorest citizens in Athens to participate in government activities, Perikles proposed measures to pay the jurors and members of the citizens' assembly elected by lottery, and explained: "Our political system is called democracy because the government is in the hands of the majority, not a few. Athenians are not allowed to be busy with private affairs to interfere with their attention to urban public affairs. We think that people who don't pay attention to public life are useless, while other countries think that such people are just quiet. The reason why we argue face to face and participate in all public policy decisions is because we know that if we don't do this, the policy is likely to fail. " It should be pointed out that democracy in Athens is not universal. On the one hand, from the inside of Athens, most residents of Athens, including women, slaves and foreigners, are not citizens of Athens, so they cannot participate in the democratic political life of Athens. On the other hand, after the Sino-Persian War, Athens established a defensive "German Alliance" with other cities along the Aegean Sea for fear of Persian invasion again. At the beginning of the alliance, all the city-states may have equal rights, but with the passage of time, in order to safeguard their own commercial interests, Athens did not want to see the alliance gradually disintegrate, but hoped to become an Athenian empire with sovereignty over other city-States. Athens often helped suppress aristocratic rebellions in other city-states and forced democracy. In fact, Athens has become a tyrannical city that tramples on Greek freedom. But Perikles explained it this way: "We (Athens) are defending the security of our allies. . . We are not for our own benefit, but to save our allies from fear. In short, our city is a model for the whole of Greece. " Gu Zhun summarized this political evolution as "the contradiction between city-state autonomy and national unity".
After the Persian War, the rapid expansion of Athens and its allies eventually led to the war between Athens and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Thucydides in:> I think the real reason of [Peloponnesian War] lies in the expansion of Athens' power, which makes Sparta alert and war inevitable.
The war broke out in 43 1 year BC. Sparta tried to surround and destroy Athens with a powerful army, while Athens relied on its maritime superiority for supplies and constantly attacked the coastal areas of Sparta. In the second year of the war, a plague broke out in Athens, killing one third of Athens residents, which may be the turning point of the whole war. Athens not only lost its national strength, but also lost its most respected and capable leader, Perikles. Since then, the contradictions within the leadership of Athens have caused a series of decision-making mistakes, which not only missed the opportunity of armistice, but also blindly sent troops to Sicily, and they were defeated. Finally, the Athenian navy was defeated by Sparta in 404 BC, and the war ended in the defeat of Athens and the collapse of the Athenian empire. Thucydides summed it up like this: "An empire cannot be operated by a democratic system."
After the Peloponnesian War, Sparta supported the Athenian nobles to establish oligarchy and exercised extremely bloody tyranny over Athens. The freedom-loving Athenians could not bear such rule and quickly re-established the democratic regime in a revolutionary way. Unfortunately, the political instability and anarchy caused by the long-term war have led to a comprehensive economic, social and moral crisis in Greece. Unemployed people who did not take part in the war became a powerful social foundation for totalitarians, and they demanded the redistribution of social wealth. The rich are more fiercely opposed to the democratic rule of the majority, and social contradictions have become extremely acute. The defeat of Athens also made other Greek city-states deeply suspicious of democracy, and they believed that all the mistakes in Athens were caused by democracy. It can be said that the Peloponnesian War was a turning point in the development of Greek politics, because since then, most Greek city-states have changed from democracy to oligarchy. At the same time, with the gradual weakening of Sparta's power, Greece appeared a situation of hegemony, the internal political turmoil of the city-state continued, and external wars often occurred. It was in this social background that most of the intellectual elites in Greece, including Plato and Aristotle, lost confidence in democracy at that time, and their goal was to establish a political system that could bring lasting peace and social security to Greece.
Athens led Greece to the victory of the Greek-Persian War and the complete failure of the Peloponnesian War, thus ending a glorious century. By the fourth century BC, Athens was still the center of Greek thought and culture, and the reflection on democracy by the intellectual elites headed by Plato and Aristotle became the mainstream of thought at that time. During this period, King Alexander of Macedonia unified the Greek city-states until the Romans finally conquered Greece in the second century BC.