SNOW DAYS- Coming to a theater near you (or on Mr. Schick's driveway)

                Today in Western Civilization we continued our PowerPoint on Ancient Greece. We had left off on the slide about Cleisthenes. Cleisthenes came from an elite and rich family, and when he was younger from the ‘hoi polloi’ or the lower class. Cleisthenes was a good ruler, but crafty. Despite being insulated from the hoi polloi Cleisthenes saw value in drawing off of the ideas, talents, and energies of the general public. So, Cleisthenes started a new government that was a democracy, in which citizens of Athens could participate in. Keep in mind though, being a citizen meant you were a white male born in Athens who owned land and was free. After several years Athens practiced direct democracy, where the city-state was ruled by citizens and majority rules decided all arguments in politics. This is where the agora style debates come from, where people would come up and present their ideas to the population and when all was said that needed to be said there would be a vote. These votes were taken extremely seriously and not showing up would result in possible rejection of most of society, as almost everyone attended. Votes were counted by each person putting a black or white officially inscribed stone into an urn, and afterwards they were counted. This was the first true democracy, and was made around five hundred BCE. There were a couple of slides afterwards on Greek gods, but I’ve learned those in school multiple times in depth as well as read books on my own time about them, so I didn’t copy these down.