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Dear National Geographic members, I have called you all here today to present a Life Time Achievement Award to a great leader of the Ancient Greece world. In Ancient Greece, the people made great achievement in technology, government, writings, and much, much more. The person I am about to present the award to has created a spectacular form of government we still use today. I will tell you about his achievements later, but let me tell you some background information about this leader. His name is Cleisthenes and was a noble Athenian.
His family had greatly influenced Cleisthenes on leadership and forms of government. Many of his relatives were powerful leaders of some sort. His father was Megacles. Megacles was the leader of the powerful Almeonid clan in Athens. His mother was the daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon. Cleisthenes was destined for a career like the one he had. He came to power in 507 B. C.. May I present to you, the great Cleisthenes, the maker of democracy. A democracy is a government by the people. Cleisthenes made this type of government because there was a huge demand of change from the people.
Some Athenians were very powerful with wealth and from the form of government, aristocracy. Aristocracy is a form of government ruled by the landholding people. Ordinary people were not happy about this since many people did not have any rights or citizenship. Farmers had to sell their land to the wealthy nobles and themselves into slavery. Cleisthenes made the power available to every citizen. Cleisthenes expanded the role of ordinary citizens in the government. He increased the number of people in the Council to 500 and the members were chosen by lottery so everyone had a equal chance to be in the government.
The council prepared laws for the assembly and supervised the daily work of the government. National Geographic members, what Cleisthenes has done here by increasing the number of people in the council, made the government stronger. His actions also made people happy, since every citizen was treated the same matter what social class they are in. Even though this only affected twenty percent of the population that were citizens, it improved the government back then and the government now.
This is an achievement in leadership because the people wanted a change in government and he listened to their demands. Cleisthenes also made a legislature which is a lawmaking body. They debate the laws before approving or rejecting them. This was good idea, fellow members, because if the law was not approved by the legislature then it would not be used. People no longer would have to follow useless laws that do not benefit the greatest amount of people. For example, if the law was made to pay ridiculous taxes, then poor people would suffer from this.
Democracy also had a jury system to decide court cases. Juries contained 201 to 1001 members with a majority vote needed to reach a decision. Cleisthenes concluded that if the number of juries was larger then other people can not easily threaten or bribe them. Clearly people, this leader was one smart guy. He planned for fairness in the laws and made it available to everyone to participate in the government. The government Cleisthenes made had a huge impact on the government we have now. People get to vote for the leader they want