ABSTRACT
Democratic Argos was the ally of Athens in the 450s, at the time of Mantinea and after, at the time of the Corinthian war. She withstood attempts in 418 and 370, if not on other occasions, to overthrow her system of government and replace it by an oligarchy. She opposed Sparta on these ideological grounds; she actively promoted, in the 390s, the cause of democracy at Corinth. 1 Nevertheless, it is not supposed that her democratic form of government was similar to that at Athens; there were different degrees of democracy in the Greek cities, just as oligarchy could be different in the ways in which it restricted political power.
