In fact this classical Greek democracy is totally different from the modern western one. In a way, namely regarding the idea, it even turns out to be far more mature. However in practice of course it didn't amount to much, just because of the circumstance that only a minority of officially free men had the right to participate in the government. In spite of the fact that the essence of the western culture is the realization of man as a free and independent individual, its democracy isn't based upon that conception, but contrarily upon the collective. While the ancient Greek thinking went from the individual to the collective, western thinking goes in the opposite way, from the collective to the individual, so that the latter is defined by the standards of this collective.
Individual man is deduced from it.
He is considered to be it's smallest element. And of course also his democratic rights stay restricted between these standards. Already before the western Middle Ages the knighthood and the clergy started to wipe out the original rural democracies which existed all over Europe. Independent free people were unwanted. People had to be classed in collectives and their rights as individuals deprived.