ABSTRACT
The first efforts to replace monarchy and aristocracy by popular self-government were made among the ancient Greeks, who invented both the word "democracy" and the constitution it signified. The Athenians, who brought democracy to its highest early development, understood it to mean the self-government or autonomy of the community or polis. The earliest period of Greek history of which there is any record appears to have been a long era in which tribal societies were transformed into monarchical states, in the anthropological sense of the term state, but states that did not succeed in creating a truly unitary system of rule. The social structure of democratic Athens was hierarchical. In the mature Athenian democracy of the late fifth and early fourth centuries, authority rested in an Assembly open to all citizens of a certain age which was a governing body, not merely one that selected and controlled those who governed.
