Athenian democracy

To send a politician away for ten years, Athenians scratched his name on a broken pot, and the vote counted only if at least 6,000 were cast.

Debt, laws and a lawgiver

Around 600 BCE Athens was close to civil war. Small farmers who fell into debt could be sold as slaves, and a few noble families held most of the power. The first written laws, set down by Draco around 621 BCE, were so harsh that "draconian" still means severe. In about 594 BCE the Athenians gave an aristocrat named Solon special powers to reform the city. He cancelled debts that used a person’s own body as security, so no Athenian could be enslaved for debt again, and he divided citizens into four classes by the size of their harvest. The richest could hold the top offices, but even the poorest could attend the Assembly. Solon called his reform the "shaking off of burdens".

Cleisthenes reshuffles the city

Solon did not end the feuds. The tyrant Peisistratos and then his sons ruled Athens for much of the later 6th century, until the last of them, Hippias, was driven out in 510 BCE. In 508 to 507 BCE a noble named Cleisthenes sided with the ordinary people and pushed through a deeper change. Britannica describes his basic reform as reorganising the whole citizen body into ten new tribes, each made of pieces from every part of Attica: the city, the coast and the inland hills. Each tribe sent 50 men, chosen by lot, to a new Council of 500, which prepared business for the Assembly. Political identity now came from your village, or deme, rather than your clan.

How the system worked

The Assembly met on a hillside called the Pnyx, and any adult male citizen could speak and vote, usually by a show of hands. It decided war and peace, passed decrees and chose generals, who were elected because the job needed skill. Most other offices were filled by lot for one year, on the idea that any citizen could do them. Courts used large juries drawn by lot, often several hundred men, with no professional judges. In the 450s Pericles introduced pay for jurors, two obols a day, later raised to three, so that poorer citizens could afford to serve. A law of 451 BCE limited citizenship to those with an Athenian mother as well as an Athenian father.

Ostracism

Ostracism was a vote to send someone away. Once a year the Assembly decided whether to hold one. If it did, citizens came to a fenced-off part of the agora and each scratched a name on an ostrakon, a piece of broken pottery. Plutarch says the vote was valid only if at least 6,000 ballots were cast; the man with the most had to leave Attica for ten years, though he kept his property and returned with full rights. Archaeologists have found thousands of ostraka. One group of about 190 sherds naming Themistocles, the hero of Salamis, was found in a well on the north slope of the Acropolis. Oscar Broneer, who published them in 1938, identified only 14 different hands, which suggests ballots were prepared in advance and handed out to voters.

Who was left out

Athenian democracy was direct, but narrow. Women, slaves and resident foreigners, called metics, could not vote, and slaves were a large part of the population. Modern estimates put adult male citizens at perhaps 30,000 in the 4th century BCE. Critics at the time, including Plato, thought rule by the many was rule by the ignorant. Even so, the Athenian idea that ordinary citizens could take turns ruling and judging was copied, argued over and revived for the next 2,500 years.