What is in a word? We may live in a very different and much more complex world, but without the ancient Greeks, we would not even have the words to talk about many of the things we care most about. Take politics for example: apart from the word itself (from polis, meaning city-state or community), many of the other basic political terms in our everyday vocabulary are borrowed from the ancient Greeks: monarchy, aristocracy, tyranny, oligarchy and - of course - democracy.
The ancient Greek word demokratia was ambiguous. It meant literally 'people-power'. However, who were the people to whom…
