What's in a word?

What's in a word? We may live in a very different and much more complex world, but without the ancient Greeks we wouldn't even have the words to talk about many of the things we care most about. Take politics for example: apart from the word itself (frompolis, 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'. But who were the people to whom the power belonged? Was it all the people - the 'masses'? Or only some of the people - the duly qualified citizens? The Greek word demos could mean either. There's a theory that the word demokratia was coined by democracy's enemies, members of the rich and aristocratic elite who did not like being outvoted by the common herd, their social and economic inferiors. If this theory is right, democracy must originally have meant something like 'mob rule' or 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

By Professor Paul Cartledge

University of Cambridge