Notes

         You are home after a busy day and a four and a half hour drive from Cleveland. Taping your favorite shows tonight to watch tomorrow. You have been wondering about this next chapter and so I will fill you in a bit tonight and after a good sleep we can work on it tomorrow. Though first, voice edit the first two scenes in chapter two.

         And, you need to research and review the raw ingredients of democracy in Plato and Aristotle – a sort of definition or list of objectives as to how the city state should be set up (originally) – at least some of the basics. Let’s go to it.

         You have downloaded twenty-five pages of material, mostly from Wikipedia on Ancient Democracy. From this let’s take a couple of paragraphs. This is slightly edited from Wikipedia “Democracy”:    [From: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy]

'Democracy is a political government either carried out directly by the people (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (Representative democracy). The term is derived from the Greek: - (dēmokratía) "rule of the people",[1] which was coined from "people" and "power", in the middle of the fifth-fourth century BC to denote the political systems then existing in some Greek city-states, notably Athens following a popular uprising in 508 BC.[2] Even though there is no specific, universally accepted definition of 'democracy',[3] there are two principles that any definition of democracy includes, equality and freedom.[4] These principles are reflected by all citizens being equal before the law, and having equal access to power,[5] and freedom is secured by legitimized rights and liberties, which are generally protected by a constitution.[6][7]

Ancient origins

The term democracy first appeared in ancient Greek political and philosophical thought. The philosopher Plato contrasted democracy, the system of "rule by the governed", with the alternative systems of monarchy (rule by one individual), oligarchy (rule by a small élite class) and timocracy (ruling class of property owners).[22] Although Athenian democracy is today considered by many to have been a form of direct democracy, originally it had two distinguishing features: firstly the allotment (selection by lot) of ordinary citizens to government offices and courts,[23] and secondarily the assembly of all the citizens[24].

All citizens were eligible to speak and vote in the Assembly, which set the laws of the city-state. However, the Athenian citizenship was only for males born from a father who was citizen and who had been doing their "military service" between 18 and 20 years old; this excluded women, slaves, foreigners and males under 20 years old. Of the 250,000 inhabitants only some 30,000 on average were citizens. Of those 30,000 perhaps 5,000 might regularly attend one or more meetings of the popular Assembly. Most of the officers and magistrates of Athenian government were allotted; only the generals and a few other officers were elected.[2]'

           After CSI-NY you are ready for bed. Of the twenty-five pages you captured this is all you will need. Tomorrow, I will go into more detail into the sociological aspects of the Place of the Dead in the story. – Amorella.