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.
正如雅典旅游局很少提到的，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(lái)定義“民治”（這種定義在很大程度上未能延續(xù)下來(lái)）：舉行群眾集會(huì)，一個(gè)議題接一個(gè)議題，面對(duì)面地直接投票。美國(guó)的國(guó)父?jìng)兓乇芰诉@個(gè)字母“D”開頭的詞語(yǔ)（美國(guó)憲法里并不包含這個(gè)詞），那是因?yàn)楫?dāng)時(shí)這個(gè)詞仍然采用古希臘的那種定義。時(shí)至今日，美利堅(jiān)合眾國(guó)和世界許多其他地區(qū)采用的間接投票制度與古希臘民主之間的差異，就像現(xiàn)代建筑與多立克柱式(Doric order)的差異一樣大。