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The Athenian experiment with democracy, including the Greek state’s rise to prominence and its eventual fall, provides valuable lessons for Americans today.Athens today is just another mid-sized European city, capital of one of Europe's least-developed countries, tucked away in a southwestern corner of the continent far from the modern power centers in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. But two and a half millennia ago, Athens was, if not the mistress of the world, at least the hegemon of the Mediterranean. The cultural capital of the Aegean, Athens rose to become economically, politically, and culturally dominant among the more than 50 independent city-states that characterized most of classical Greece as a result of two significant events: Athens' reliance on a form of popular government called "democracy," and her defeat of the supposedly invincible Persian military at the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. Although bright, Athens' star was short-lived, and her decline, ably chronicled by Thucydides and Xenophon, who both lived during that period, affords many beneficial lessons to her modern heirs in the Western world, especially the United States.Athens was not always the city of philosophers, playwrights, and sculptors of the modern popular imagination. Her exact origins are unknown, but according to legend, she was first propelled to power by the hero Theseus, who enabled the Athenians to shake off the yoke of the superior control of Crete. Those events are based place sometime before 1,000 B.C., during the Greek Bronze Age, when Greece was a monarchy like all other central states of the era. Following the Bronze Age, however, Greece entered a mysterious dark age of many centuries. The Greek world fragmented into many more minor powers, often differing significantly culturally and politically while being united under a common language. When the curtain rose on the classical age, Greece had become primarily a land of many city-states — Athens, Thebes, Corinth, Megara, Rhodes, and many others — sprinkled across the Aegean islands, the Greek mainland, and western Asia Minor. In this last region, called Ionia, Greece appears to have seen its first major cultural flowering, thanks to pioneering minds such as Thales and Pythagoras. Thales, the "father of science," was a native of the Ionian city of Miletus, the first Greek center of learning and culture.Where did Athenian freedom come from? The idea of Democracy was quite widespread in classical Greece, with dozens of Greek city-states, including Syracuse and Megara, having some form of democratic government at one time or another. The father of Athenian Democracy was Solon, the great statesman, and lawgiver. He first drew up a plan for a government intended to eschew monarchy and represent the people's will by allowing all Athenian male citizens to participate in the workings of the state. Athens at the time was governed by an archon, or supreme ruler, with the advice and consent of the Areopagus, a council of oligarchs. Unfortunately, the code was the rigid code of Draco, one of Athens' most tyrannical leaders. Although he overturned the power of the archon and the Areopagus, Solon was unable to institute a stable democracy, resulting in the rise of the tyrant Pisistratus, who established a dictatorship in Athens that he bequeathed to his son upon his death. His son was overthrown, however, and the Athenian Democracy was restored and rejuvenated under Cleisthenes. The form of the Athenian government, while not a "pure" democracy, was nevertheless far too democratic to produce long-term stability. The chief governing body, the Ekklesia (a Greek word afterward applied also to the Christian church), consisted of up to 6,000 members — in effect, between five and 10 percent of Athens's entire eligible male citizenry. In addition, the Ekklesia voted to enact legislation proposed by the smaller but still substantial Boule, or Council of 500. These two bodies were complemented by the Heliala or Popular Tribunal — essentially an enormous court consisting of another 6,000 Athenian citizens who presided over court cases and had the power to "legislate from the bench." Finally, the traditional offices of Areopagus and archon were maintained for primarily ceremonial functions (like the modern British monarchy), although the Areopagus was tasked with adjudicating all homicide cases.This robust popular government meant that politics and governance were the concern of every Athenian and that political and philosophical ferment were constant and exhilarating features of Athenian society. But, because most branches of the Athenian government were so crowded that measured deliberation was impossible, it also meant that the Athenian government was unstable, prone to periodic attempts both by old Athenian oligarchic families to reestablish the comfortable forms of the past and by ambitious demagogues to usurp leadership. The same openness and fascination with debate and experimentation that made Athens a magnet for idealists and creative minds of every stripe also made her vulnerable to honey-tongued political opportunists, and it was this, more than any other factor, that would lead ultimately to her untimely demise.Ahead of his time: The Greek statesman Solon created an early blueprint for republican government, partly adopted by Athens and carefully studied by the Romans. The Romans established the first Republican form of government as they investigated the failures of Democracy in Greece and rightly decided against Democracy in favor of a Republican government. Democracy is a transitional form of government as is Anarchy.