lot of different kinds of governments, because there were many differentcity-states in ancient Greece, and they each had their own government.People's ideas about what made a good government changed over time, too.
LATER GOVERNMENTOLIGARCHYTYRANNYDEMOCRACYMONARCHYGREEK COURTSATHENSSPARTACORINTHTHEBESANCIENT GREECE
The Greek philosopher Aristotle divided Greek governments into monarchies, oligarchies, tyrannies and democracies, and most historians still use these same divisions. For the most part, Greece began by having monarchies, then oligarchies, then tyrannies and then democracies, but at each period there were plenty of city-states using a different system, and there were many city-states which never did become democracies or tyrannies at all.
In the Late Bronze Age (the Mycenean period), between about 2000 and 1200 BC, all Greek city-states seem to have beenmonarchies, ruled by kings. Homer's Iliad, and Greek mythology in general, shows us a whole series of kings likeAgamemnon and Theseus, and some of their palaces have survived for archaeologists to dig up.
After the Dark Age, though, only a few Greek city-states still had kings. Sparta is the most famous of these, though actually Sparta had two kings, usually brothers or cousins, at the same time. One would stay home and the other go off to fight wars.
Most city-states in the Archaic period were ruled byoligarchies, which is a group of aristocrats (rich men) who tell everyone else what to do. Then in the 600s and 500s BC a lot of city-states were taken over by tyrants. Tyrants were usually one of the aristocrats who got power over the others by getting the support of the poor people. They ruled kind of like kings, but without any legal right to rule.
