When the founding fathers of the United States created the world’s first modern democracy they claimed to take their inspiration from the classical Greek demokratia – ‘a government of the people, by the people, for the people’, as Abraham Lincoln described it. But even though the United States would use the democracy of ancient Greece for inspiration, it is important to remember that there are many differences between our government in the U.S. and the government of Athens over 2000 years ago. The three main differences between our modern democracy and the Greek’s democracy are: