What was Athenian democracy and why is it important today?

Athenian democracy was all adult male citizens meeting in assembly each fortnight and discussed and voted on the running of the state.

It is not important today other than as interesting history, as democracies today are representative democracies - that is citizens elect representatives to he assembly, who vote on decisions. This present system gives power to the representative politicians who often have different views and are held accountable at elections after several years.

The Athenian direct democracy model sounds attractive but most countries are too large for people to assemble regularly, so we have to have representatives to do this for us. The question is 'would you trust a politician?'