1. Although Greek democracy has been justly celebrated as the first great effort to promote popular participation in government and personal liberty, even its admirers acknowledge that its underlying ideals were not the same as those of modern democracy. Thus G. H. Sabine points out that Greek democracy was based not on the modern notion of “a citizen as a man to whom certain rights are legally guaranteed” but on a belief in citizenship “as something shared, much like membership in family”. For just this reason, citizenship could be denied to those classified as slaves and resident aliens, and restricted to the relatively small proportion of inhabitants who qualified by reason of ethnicity and class. G. H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory (New York: Holt, 1950), p. 4.
2. The Roman Republic was no different. As F. R. Cowell remarks, the Romans never achieved real democracy because they “never achieved self-government in the modern sense”. Even the Lex Hortensia, which greatly expanded participation, retained the division into plebeian and patrician classes and kept this division the basis of representation. F. R. Cowell, Cicero and the Roman Republic (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1964), p. 154.
3. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 184.
4. Richard E. Flathman, The Practice of Rights (Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 33.
5. OxfordEnglish Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), Vol. VIII, p. 669.