As the Athens tourist board seldom mentions, their fair city was not just the cradle but also the mausoleum of democracy. The ancients defined “rule by the people” with a literalism that has mostly not endured: direct votes in mass gatherings, issue-by-issue, eyeball-to-eyeball. When the US founders balked at the D-word (it is not in the constitution) it was because the meaning was still the Greek one. The indirect vote that now governs their republic and much of the world is as far from that as modern architecture is from the Doric order.
正如雅典旅遊局很少提到的，他們的美麗城市不僅是民主(democracy)的搖籃，也是民主的陵墓。古人以字面含義來定義「民治」（這種定義在很大程度上未能延續下來）：舉行羣衆集會，一個議題接一個議題，面對面地直接投票。美國的國父們迴避了這個字母「D」開頭的詞語（美國憲法裏並不包含這個詞），那是因爲當時這個詞仍然採用古希臘的那種定義。時至今日，美利堅合衆國和世界許多其他地區採用的間接投票制度與古希臘民主之間的差異，就像現代建築與多立克柱式(Doric order)的差異一樣大。