ostatok 12.12

• Democracy is a political system where the citizens are the source of power.
• Direct democracy is a political system where the citizens participate in the decision-making personally, contrary to relying on intermediaries or representatives, such as referendum, Switzerland.
• Indirect or representative democracy involves the election of government officials by the people being represented, for example, Slovak Republic.
• If the legislative power is in the hands of the people, it is referred to as parliamentary democracy.
• Democracy originally conceived in Classical Athens in the 5th century BC was a form of direct democracy.
• In ancient Greece, there were city-states, called "polis", which had different forms and different political systems, such as Sparta and Athens.
• Polis was the fundamental political unit in ancient Greece, consisting of a city and its surrounding countryside, usually with fewer than 20,000 residents.
• Only citizens could participate in the political life and had political rights in ancient Greece.
• A citizen in ancient Greece was a free adult who was born into a family that had lived in the polis for a long time.
• Slaves, women, children and foreigners could not participate in public life in ancient Greece.
• The two most important places of each polis were acropolis, a fortified hilltop, and agora, a market place.
• Each polis had its own laws and a form of government, which could be monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny, democracy or a mixture of these.
• The most powerful and influential poleis were Athens, Sparta, Corinth and Thebes.
• In ancient Rome, representative democracy was practiced.
• In the Middle Ages, democracy was partially present in city-states such as Florence.
• The modern form of democracy occurs in France at the end of the 18th century, known as The French Revolution.
• Democracy in Athens granted democratic citizenship to around 30,000 free men and excluded foreigners and women from political participation.
• The political system of Classical Athens developed out of a conflict between the rich and the poor.
• Draco, the first recorded lawmaker of Athens in Ancient Greece, replaced the prevailing system of oral law and blood feud by a written law characterized by its unforgiving rules or laws.
• Solon, in 594 - 593 BC, divided citizens into four classes based on their wealth, assigning different duties and rights based on their wealth.
• Tyrants, powerful individuals who gained control of the government by force and weakened the rule of aristocratic families, seized power in Athens after Solon's reforms.
• Cleisthenes, in 508 - 507 BC, organized the citizens of Athens in demes, local units grouped into 10 new tribes, with the heads of these 10 new tribes as strategoi, responsible for handling legal and military matters.
• Citizens created an ecclesia, met regularly in agora, and introduced the idea of ostracism, a form of government in which possession of property is required in order to hold office.
• The Golden Age of Democracy came in the time of Pericles, who was elected as one of the strategoi every year between 443 - 429 BC, and who gave money to poor citizens of Athens, who couldn’t otherwise afford to take part in the government.
• Pericles was a skillful politician and a respected general who was elected one of the strategoi for almost 30 years in a row, supporting direct democracy and increasing the number of paid public officials so even the poor could serve in the government.
• Pericles used the money from the Delian League to build Athens' 200-ship navy into the strongest in the Mediterranean, and the Parthenon was built on the Acropolis.
• Greece is considered to be the birthplace of Western culture and democracy.
• Greek architecture includes the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders, and the Acropolis.
• Greek sculpture is represented by artists like Phidias.
• The Olympics were first held in 776 BC, marking the beginning of the Greek calendar.
• All wars had to be stopped during the Olympic Games.
• The athletes competed in sports like running, boxing, javelin or discus throws.
• The modern Olympic games were first held in 1896, and Pierre de Coubertin is considered the father of the modern Olympic Games.
• Greek theatre includes drama, tragedies, comedies, and famous plays like Antigone by Sophocles.
• Herodotus is known as the father of history.
• Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are famous philosophers from ancient Greece.
• Democracy was a significant part of ancient Greek culture.