> democratic Calling it a 'democracy' is a somewhat of a stretch though (both according to modern and ancient definitions). It was a weird (from a modern persp

> democratic Calling it a 'democracy' is a somewhat of a stretch though (both according to modern and ancient definitions). It was a weird (from a modern perspective) form of a flawed direct democracy (the people's assembly had absolute power in theory but passing any laws was very difficult due to a dozen or so public officials being able to effectively/directly veto any legislation). Mixed with an unambiguously oligarchical executive branch (all the top public official who controlled the army and the treasury were elected by a tiny proportion of the population). It certainly wasn't democratic in the same sense as Athens and some other Greek cities were (and afterall Greek authors considered it to be a mixed system).