In the ancient world, political life was structured in many different ways: in the East, we encounter monarchies and territorial empires, such as the Persian Empire. In the Greek-speaking world, there were still some monarchs to be found: Macedon, Sparta, and Epirus are the obvious examples. In the peripheral areas of the Mediterranean world, and of course beyond it, there existed many forms of tribal organization. Very prominent in
The Mediterranean heartlands were the city-states, which we find in the Greek world, in the Levant, along the African coast (Carthage) and in Italy, among the Etruscans, and the Latins (the Roman Republic being one of them). The role of the citizen body, however that was defined, in governing their community, differed from the one city-state to the next. We find radical democracy, absolute oligarchy, and everything in between. The Athenian democracy was imitated elsewhere in the Greek World, and other poleis turned to democracy of their own accord. It was only in the days of Alexander the Great that democracy became the dominant polity among Greek poleis. Before that, at least as far as our rather scanty sources allow us to tell, tyrannies, oligarchies, and democracies occurred in more or less equal numbers. Especially outside the Greek motherland, tyrannies remained a common phenomenon even after the end of the Archaic period; as late as the 4th century, their numbers increased. The power of 5th-century and certainly of 4th-century turannoi depended on the presence of mercenaries. The rulers of the Hellenistic period were in many respects the heirs of these tyrants.
World History
