The American system of government owes much the governmental structures of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Those systems were different than the one we have today, but the philosophy of governance influenced how the Founding Fathers shaped the government in the New World. They also derived certain ideas from Greek and Roman originals. The government of the Roman Republic was not a democracy, though it did have democratic elements.
In the earliest era of human history, areas were ruled by chieftains or tribal leaders who became leaders by inheritance or raw power. In the earliest civilizations, an all powerful ruler or king governed, and these early rulers like Hammurabi, Sennacherib, Xerxes, and Pharaoh Ramses I held immense power while their subjects had few rights. Many of the Greek city states developed a form of democracy, with Athens being the best-known. The Golden Age of Athenian democracy began about 500 B.C. and lasted for a little more than a century. Other city states, such as Sparta, were ruled by a king.
Rome created the first great world-state and developed an empirewide system of law and citizenship. Rome's genius lay in the development of law and government. The first phase of Rome was the period of the Republic beginning in 509 B.C., and the second phase was the Empire once Rome initiated the trend toward political and legal universalism. The early Romans absorbed the Etruscans, thought to have come from Asia Minor before settling in north-central Italy. By the third century B.C., the Etruscans had ceased to exercise any political power in Italy. Rome became a republic when the landowning aristocrats overthrew the Etruscan king. Religion at this stage ruled the people, dictated the law, and legitimized the rule of the patricians. Growth was spurred by a conflict known as the Struggle of the Orders between the patricians and the commoners, or plebeians stemming from plebeian grievances. ...