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Comment by memling | Hacker News Reader

> Well, at least the Romans that replaced them had a senate?

Not a scholar of the period, but I was under the impression that Greece's democratic system meant that only male land-owners could vote and that the leading philosophers of the day considered slavery the natural order of things, women marginally (if at all) better than slaves, and boys suitable for divine pleasure. It doesn't seem particularly democratic for them?

I do think it's reasonable to see in ancient Greece the seeds for democracy, but modern republican and democratic forms are pretty far removed from those days; and I don't suppose most of us would be very pleased to live under such a system.

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> Not a scholar of the period, but I was under the impression that Greece's democratic system meant that only male land-owners could vote and that the leading philosophers of the day considered slavery the natural order of things, women marginally (if at all) better than slaves, and boys suitable for divine pleasure. It doesn't seem particularly democratic for them?

Except for the thing about boys and divine pleasure that just about sounds like the founding of the United States to me.

> Except for the thing about boys and divine pleasure that just about sounds like the founding of the United States to me.

That's probably not exactly true, but obviously universal-er suffrage has been a very long and fraught road. And it's undoubtedly very complex.

I would offer that the social and political norms of the early modern period do stand in contrast to those of Greece despite their obvious resemblance. As you point out at the founding of the US, the franchise was restricted (States were given the power to determine the franchise), and it wasn't until the early 20th century in the UK that land ownership rules were dropped (creating universal suffrage for males 21 and over).

At the same time, the social norms concerning marriage, pederasty, and slavery were also different. The religious background and perspective were utterly different. It is hard to imagine modern forms of representative democracy arising in Ancient Greece absent an intervention.

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