Glossary – Assembly Democracy

Contemporary archaeologists have unearthed much evidence that shows that the custom of popular self-government was born of the ‘East’, of peoples and lands that geographically correspond to contemporary Syria, Iraq and Iran. Assemblies were later transplanted eastwards, towards the Indian sub-continent; they travelled westwards as well, first to city states like Byblos and Sidon, then to Athens, where during the fifth century BCE they were claimed as something unique to the West, as a sign of its superiority over the ‘barbarism’ of the East. By the 5th century BCE, in Athens and scores of other Greek city states, democracy meant self-government through an assembly of equal male citizens who gathered in a marketplace or town district for the purpose of discussing some matter, putting different opinions to the vote and deciding, often by a majority of raised hands, what course of action was to be taken. According to the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE), democracy was self-government among equals, who rule and are ruled in turn. Democracy was the lawful rule of an assembly of male citizens – women, slaves and foreigners were normally excluded – whose sovereign power to decide things was no longer to be given over to imaginary gods, or an aristocracy, or to tyrants.