Transcript Athens – The Cradle of Democracy

Athens – The Cradle of Democracy
The Assembly
• open to all male citizens
• met four times a month
• laws presented by the council of 500 (chosen
once a year by lot), but every citizen got a vote
• thousands of people involved, so it could get
pretty noisy and unruly at times
• once a year, a vote called an OSTRACISM could
be held, to keep people in line
The Pnyx Where the Assembly Met
The Hill Around the Pynx Today
Tourists Standing on the Pynx
The Athenian Court System
• Courts had six judges but they had very
little power because Athenians believed in
mass participation for trials
• Small trials had 501 jurors
• Medium trials had 1001 jurors
• Large trials – can you guess how many
jurors?
Athenian Democracy –
A Full Time Job
• Most Athenians citizens owned slaves; this is
why they had time to debate and vote on laws at
the Pynx
• A citizen who was not interested in voting on
debating laws was looked down on and called
an “idiot”
• Since every male citizen voted directly on every
decision to be made, Athens is know as a
DIRECT DEMOCRACY (vs. a representative
democracy, which most democracies are today)
A Last Look at the Speaker’s
Platform of the Pnyx
YOU, one day, visiting the Pnyx!
The speaker’s view of the assembly with the
Acropolis above you and the Agora below