>>46982326It may sound silly to us modern where we are taught democracy is better than monarchy but that is a recent phenomenon.
In Ancient Hellas Demokratia was very different than our modern democracies. In the archaic age there was a lot of in-group fighting between the leisure class in trying to secure power. Demokratia was born out this class struggle by granting power to all *male* citizens. Instituions like election by lot, set terms for magisters, and ostracism (voting to exile citizens) were made in mind to stop one man from gathering all the power. Voting people into power was seen as the hallmark of an oligarchy and to Aristotle the fact that the Gerousia of Sparta were voted into their position of power put Sparta firmly in the oligarchy side of the political spectrum. In demokratia political power was shared by all the male citizen body, from the poor to the very rich.
All of our surviving sources, Thukydides, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, etc. are very hostile to this political system because they were rich Greek men and they had a disdain to what they described as mob rule. They depict them as being responsible for the execution of Sokrates for example. In Aristotle and Plato you see the idea of the philosopher king, a virtues and just man who holds absolute power. It was this ideals that held the political thought of Western thinkers for thousands of years, even the founding fathers of the United States implemented institutions to limit 'mob rule'. Monarchy was seen as a just way to rule given that the king, in theory, was to be raised to be a virtuous leader of men and since his he held his station for life also be accountable for his actions in comparison to a leader who is only elected for a set period of time and could use his powers for his own good rather than the people.
