Women and slaves had no political rights, even in the democracies. The most successful democracy of ancient Greece was Athens. Every male Athenian citizen had the right to serve in an assembly. An assembly passed laws and determined government policies. .
Sparta was the only city state which had a full time army among all. The Spartan men were well known for being brave and fierce, and they spent their whole lives training and fighting. Other city states called on their citizens to form armies when they needed them, and all men had to be ready to take part in a war. In Sparta, citizens made up only about 8,000 of the population which was 400,000. The majority of the people were serfs who farmed the land. Sparta was governed by five officials. This was a council, made up of twenty-eight men and the kings. Sparta had a citizen assembly, yet they could not bring up issues for debate. Most city-states trained young men for war and required all able-bodied male citizens to fight during a time of war. Their government has many similarities to our government today. We both utilize a democracy and govern in similar ways. A great Greek Philosopher named Plato wrote a book about different ways of governing countries. And we can easily find the modern democracies and their roots in the Athenian idea of democracy. Greek society was made up of and non-citizens just like any other modern countries. In Athens it was decided that all citizens could choose the government officials, and vote for or against new laws and every citizen was allowed to speak, and tell the government what it should be doing. Now it's clear that the idea of government and democracy came from the people who lived during Greek civilization. .
Along with the democracy, Greek people started to feel the need of exchanging goods in between city-states as well as other origins. That's when the trading became so important and they started developing different methods for that.
