Government

Government was not so much invented, like the wheel, or discovered, like fire; rather, it evolved in response to the needs of humans living in groups larger than a single nuclear family and later in [Page 259] much larger permanent settlements made possible by the development of agriculture. The governments of the first great civilizations in the Middle East, India, China, and the Western Hemisphere shared several features. All were hierarchical: rulers ruled from the top down. They tended to be dynastic; barring conquests from outside or coups from within, the right to rule descended generally from father to son or to another family member. Finally, all rulers were in some way connected with the spirit world, seen as intercessors between the people and the gods or as having divine powers attributed to them.

Two new forms of government, significantly different from the standard monarchical model, began around the end of the sixth century B.C.E. Democracy in ancient Athens (ca. 510–322 B.C.E.) placed government in the hands of adult male citizens, who could vote on government decisions, elect public officials to serve for set terms of office, and hold public office by appointment or election (see Elections). The republic of ancient Rome (ca. 509–27 B.C.E.) was established when the last Roman king was expelled. There government became the business of the public (in Latin, res publica) directed by an aristocratic senate, to which government officials were responsible; major decisions required approval by political bodies that represented elements of the citizenry. Greece’s democracy and Rome’s republic each lasted several hundred years.

The government model for the modern state developed in Europe at the beginning of the Renaissance in the fourteenth century. The foundations were laid by St. Augustine (354–430), an early Christian scholar who wrote of the spiritual and temporal realms of authority that set the stage for the development of the secular state. In the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1224–74) drew on the works of Aristotle to conclude that secular government was necessary but asserted that it should be based on the superior morality and wisdom of the ruler for the benefit of those ruled. He also developed the concept of natural law given by God, by which the competence of secular rulers could be judged.

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