Stories such as the `Iliad' tells how Greeks from many city-states - among them, Sparta, Athens, Thebes, and Argos - joined forces to fight their common foe Troy in Asia Minor. Later the Greek city-states were again able to combine when the power of Persia threatened them. However, ancient Greece never became a nation - it was always a group of city-states where loyalty was directed toward a city. This seems particularly strange in a way since these cities were all very small. Athens was probably the only Greek city-state with more than 20,000 citizens. In contrast to other parts of the world at the time, this is tiny.

Greece was divided into many small nations rather than a larger political units and cities competed fiercely with each other. The Greek city-states tended to be separated by mountain ranges and thereby isolated and independent. Often, however, a single plain contained several city-states, each surrounding its acropolis, or citadel. In these cases, the cities remained independent.

Separated by barriers of sea and mountain, by local pride and jealousy, the various independent city-states never conceived the idea of uniting the Greek-speaking world into a larger political unit.

They formed alliances only when threatened by conquest from internal or external sources. However, even in these times city-states often took independent means to defend Greece. Many influences made for unity - a common language, a common religion, a common literature, similar customs, the religious leagues and festivals, the Olympic Games - but even in time of foreign invasion it was difficult to induce the cities to act together.

The government of many city-states, notably Athens, passed through four stages from the time of Homer to historical times. During the 8th and 7th centuries BC the kings who originally ruled cities disappeared. Monarchy gave way to oligarchy--that is, rule by a few. The oligarchic successors of the kings were the wealthy landowning nobles, the "eupatridae," or wellborn. However, the rivalry among these nobles and the discontent of the oppressed masses was so great that soon a third stage appeared.

The third type of government was known as tyranny. Some powerful figure would seize absolute power, usually by promising the people to right the wrongs inflicted upon them by the other landholding eupatridae. He was known as a "tyrant." Among the Greeks this was not a term of reproach but merely meant one who had seized kingly power without the qualification of royal descent.

The tyrants of the 7th century were a stepping-stone to democracy, a broader sense of the rule of the people. By the beginning of the 5th century BC, Athens had gone through these stages and emerged as the first democracy in the history of the world. Between two and three centuries before this, the Athenian kings had made way for officials called "archons," elected by the nobles. Thus an aristocratic form of government was established.

About 621 BC an important step in the direction of democracy was taken, when the first written laws in Greece were compiled from the existing laws. This reform resulted in an effort to relieve peasants from the oppression of the nobles. The new code was so severe that the adjective "draconic," derived from the name of its compiler, Draco, is still a synonym for "harsh." Unfortunately, Draco 's code did not give the peasants sufficient relief. A revolution was averted only by the wise reforms of a ruler named Solon.

Solon's reforms only delayed the overthrow of the aristocracy, and about 561 BC Pisistratus, supported by the discontented populace, made himself tyrant. By about 509 BC, the rule of the people was firmly established under the vision of Pericles. This was to be the golden age of Greece that would last only a few hundred years. This is when the Parthenon is constructed and the acopolis became the magnificent place in the Aegean. In a way it was an age of enlightenment in which the Greeks of Athens invented many of the notions of medicine and science that we know today such as the hypocratic oath, biology, geography, etc. Athens had been victorious is battle against the Persians and had wealth in silver that gave it an edge over other city-states at the time. However, it was the vision of a few individuals who led to the flourishing of Athens in history.

For more on Greek History and Culture: Ancient Greece