Running Head ROMANS AND GREEKS

Roman and Greek ideas about State, Citizenship, and Participation in State



Roman and Greek ideas about State, Citizenship, and Participation in State

Concept of citizenship has evolved over a period of time. Current concept of citizenship differs greatly from historical evolution of citizenship concept. Citizen status, whether the holder of the fullness of subjective public rights of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights is granted by the legal system. Citizenship mainly covers three elements which include political, civil, and social domains. 

Great difference has been observed in the ideas of Romans and Greeks towards state, citizenship, participation in the state matters. Citizenship was imperative in the Ancient Greek and Roman empires. Renowned Greek philosopher, Plato, described citizen as "one who has a share in the privileges of rule”. In Greeks, participation in state affairs was only limited to the Greek citizens. Citizenship was an inherited concept among Greeks and was passed down to descendants through a direct family lineage, i.e. from father to children. Women, peasants, slaves, and foreigners were not eligible to be categorized as citizen (Robinson, 2004).

State concept is distributed in Greek history. There was not a particular leading system in early history periods of Greek and local communities formed their separate state system, each differing across the cities in its rules and policies. This resulted in formation of differentiated government structure. In some states, monarchy system was leading the government, however, in some parts of country aristocracy & oligarchy was present. For example, Corinth was having oligarchy state system as their state system was being headed by selective powerful leaders. Contrastingly, Spartans were being leaded by two kings, members of the state council comprising of 30 nobles, and assembly of Spartan males (Budin, 2004). This resulted in formation of democracy state system in Greeks.

There is a considerable difference in the state system of Romans and Greeks. Greeks had direct democracy structure which was based on the participation rights only by the Greek citizens (Robinson, 2004). In contrast to that, Romans established a republic system to run their state matters. Romans focused on forming a state government in which state runners are selected through a voting mechanism given to selective Roman citizens which varied across time. This voting right was based on the origin, gender role, and services role for the state. Mainly, male citizens were given privilege and protection under their role in society. ...