Chapter 2-Warring City-States

Today we started a new chapter, Warring City-States. This chapter will deal with different government forms used to rule Ancient Greece. We also covered some new vocabulary words. They are polis: fundamental political unit made up of a city and the surrounding countryside. This word is the root of many words we know today like politics, politician, political, and poll. A monarchy is a government which is ruled by a single person, usually a king. Governments like this still exist today. An aristocracy is a government ruled by a small group of noble, very rich people. This does not usually include a single leader who is more important than the rest but rather a group. The members of this group must be, again, noble, very rich, and landowning people. An oligarchy is wealthy groups of people, dissatisfied with aristocratic rule. They seize power of the government usually by military control. The final word is tyrant. A tyrant, based on the Ancient Greece definition, is someone who is a powerful individual who seized control by appealing to the common people for support. Today we have tyrants but we usually think of them as bad people when they are. Back in Ancient Greece, A tyrant is not always a terrible thing.

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