Latest / Sleepy Facts About History / What Happened When Athens Selected Its Leaders by Chance? - Sortition and the Stone Machine of Classical Athens | Sleepy Facts About History

Transcript

What Happened When Athens Selected Its Leaders by Chance? - Sortition and the Stone Machine of Classical Athens | Sleepy Facts About History · Sleepy Facts About History

0:00
Welcome to Sleepy Facts About History. Modern
0:12
democracies rely almost entirely on elections,
0:16
treating the ballot box as the ultimate symbol
0:19
of political legitimacy. But the most famous
0:22
democracy of the ancient world did something
0:25
very different for most of its government offices.
0:28
In classical Athens, citizens did not elect their
0:32
council members, magistrates or juries. They
0:36
selected them by lot, using a stone machine called
0:39
a claritarion, bronze identity tickets, and colored
0:43
dice. This practice, known as sortition, was
0:47
a deliberate institutional design meant to distribute
0:50
power equally and prevent the rise of a permanent
0:53
political class. This episode examines how the
0:57
Athenian lottery actually worked, from the local
1:00
dam registers to the physical mechanics of the
1:03
allotment machine. It also explores the safeguards
1:07
the Athenians used to manage random selection,
1:10
including the documasia, a pre -office public
1:13
scrutiny, and the euthanii, a strict post -office
1:18
audit. While elections were reserved for positions
1:21
requiring specialized expertise, such as military
1:24
generals, Sotitian guided the daily administration
1:27
of the state. I wanted to understand why a society
1:32
would trust chance with something as important
1:34
as civic responsibility. Some questions sound
1:38
simple until you try to answer them. And the
1:41
more I looked at the Claritarian, the more I
1:44
realized how different the Athenian definition
1:46
of democracy was from our own. This episode explores
1:51
that different democratic logic. looking at how
1:54
random selection functioned within a highly structured
1:57
system of civic qualification, and what it reveals
2:00
about the limits and possibilities of political
2:03
equality. The Athenians built a democracy that
2:09
distributed power not by choosing the best person,
2:12
but by giving every qualified citizen an equal
2:15
chance to serve. They did this using a stone
2:19
machine with bronze tickets and colored dice.
2:22
When we think about democracy today, We almost
2:26
always think about voting. We vote for presidents,
2:29
for parliaments, for mayors, for school boards.
2:34
The ballot box is the symbol of democratic legitimacy.
2:39
Elections are how we choose who holds power.
2:43
But there was a democracy, the most famous in
2:46
the ancient world, that did something very different
2:50
for most of its offices. In classical Athens,
2:54
from roughly the middle of the 5th century BCE
2:56
onward, the citizens did not elect most of their
3:00
officials. They drew them by lot. They used a
3:04
machine, a stone slab with rows of slots, bronze
3:08
tickets, and a tube for colored dice to select
3:12
who would serve on their most important council.
3:15
The same machine selected who would staff their
3:18
courts and who would fill most of their magistracies.
3:22
This was not a game. It was not a festival entertainment.
3:27
It was how the democracy distributed political
3:30
responsibility. The machine was called a plerotarian.
3:35
The small bronze tickets that citizens carried
3:38
were called pinnakia, and the practice itself,
3:42
selection by lottery, was called sortition, to
3:46
understand why the Athenians trusted random selection
3:49
and how they made it work. we need to look at
3:52
the machine itself. We also need to look at the
3:55
lists of citizens it operated from, the safeguards
3:59
that surrounded it, and the very different idea
4:02
of democracy that it represented. Classical Athens
4:07
was a direct democracy of adult male citizens.
4:10
After a citizenship law passed in 451 or 450
4:15
BCE under the leadership of Pericles, Citizenship
4:19
required that both parents be Athenian. This
4:23
excluded women, slaves, resident foreigners called
4:26
metics, and anyone of mixed parentage. The citizen
4:30
body probably numbered between 30 and 60 ,000
4:34
in the 5th century, somewhat fewer in the 4th.
4:37
These citizens gathered in the assembly, the
4:40
ecclesia, to debate and vote on major decisions.
4:44
These decisions included war and peace. alliances
4:48
and laws. But the daily work of government, the
4:53
preparation of agendas, the administration of
4:56
finances, the staffing of courts was done by
4:59
councils, magistracies and juries filled largely
5:03
by lottery. The democracy had developed gradually.
5:07
The reforms of Clestines in 508 or 507 BCE had
5:13
reorganized the citizen body into ten tribes.
5:16
Each tribe contained citizens from the city,
5:19
the coast, and the inland areas of Attica. This
5:24
tribal system became the framework for military
5:27
service, for the Council of 500, and for many
5:31
magistracies. Further reforms in 462 or 461 BCE,
5:37
associated with Ephialtes, had shifted powers
5:40
from the aristocratic Council of the Areopagus
5:43
to the Council of 500, the Assembly. and the
5:47
courts. By the middle of the 5th century, sortition
5:51
was fully established as a central mechanism
5:53
of democratic government. The council of 500,
5:58
the boule, was the engine of daily administration.
6:01
It prepared the agenda for the assembly. It received
6:05
ambassadors. It oversaw magistrates. It handled
6:11
much of the routine business that kept the state
6:13
functioning, and its members. 50 from each of
6:17
the 10 tribes, was selected by lot. A citizen
6:21
could serve on the council twice in his lifetime,
6:24
but not in consecutive years. Most other magistracies
6:28
were annual and non -repeatable. The principle
6:32
was rotation, not careerism. To understand how
6:37
this works in practice, we need to look at the
6:39
machinery. The claritarian was a physical device.
6:43
and fragments of these machines have been found
6:46
in the Athenian Agora, the civic center of the
6:49
city. The best preserved descriptions come from
6:53
a treatise called the Constitution of the Athenians,
6:56
attributed to Aristotle or his school, written
6:59
probably in the 330s or 320s BCE. This text gives
7:05
a detailed step -by -step account of how jurors
7:08
were selected for the courts. Here is what happened.
7:13
Each year, 6 ,000 citizens volunteered to serve
7:17
as jurors for the coming year. They had to be
7:20
citizens of at least 30 years of age. They swore
7:24
an oath, the Heliastic Oath, promising to vote
7:28
according to the laws and their best judgment.
7:31
Their names were entered on the dem registers,
7:34
the Lexiacica Grammatia. These were the local
7:38
lists maintained by each of the 139 deems. the
7:42
village or district units of attica these registers
7:46
were the foundation of all civic participation
7:48
without being on your deems list you could not
7:53
be selected for anything each juror possessed
7:56
a pinocchio a small bronze ticket about 11 centimeters
8:00
long and 2 centimeters wide it was inscribed
8:04
with his name his father's name and histamine
8:07
this was a durable object something a citizen
8:11
would carry with him and present repeatedly.
8:14
It was a tangible marker of civic identity. It
8:19
was a physical proof that he belonged to the
8:21
political community. On the mornings when courts
8:25
were to sit, the jurors gathered in the agora.
8:28
The clerotarian was set up. It was a stone slab,
8:33
perhaps a meter or so wide, with five vertical
8:36
columns of horizontal slots. Each slot was just
8:40
wide enough to receive a pinnacle. The jurors
8:43
from each tribe would insert their tickets into
8:46
the slot of one column. Then a magistrate, using
8:50
a tube attached to the side of the machine, would
8:52
pour in colored dice. According to the best reconstruction,
8:57
the dice were black and white. The dice fell
9:00
through the tube and emerged one by one. If a
9:04
white die came out, the entire row of tickets
9:07
in that horizontal position was selected. If
9:10
black, that row was passed over. The process
9:14
continued until enough jurors had been selected
9:17
for that day's courts. The selected jurors then
9:21
received a second token, a Symbolon. This token
9:25
assigned them to a specific court and entitled
9:27
them to payment for the day's servers. This payment
9:32
established by Pericles in the mid -5th century
9:35
and later increased, was crucial. It meant that
9:39
even poorer citizens could afford to take a day
9:41
away from their work to serve on a jury. Without
9:45
it, the pool of volunteers would have been skewed
9:48
heavily toward the wealthy. The selection of
9:51
the Council of 500 followed a similar logic,
9:54
though the details are less fully described.
9:57
HDMI was allotted a quota of councillors based
10:00
on its population. Citizens put themselves forward
10:04
and the lot determined who would serve. The tribal
10:08
quotas ensured geographic and social distribution.
10:12
The principle was the same. Random selection
10:15
operated within a structured system of lists
10:18
and quotas. This was organized randomness, not
10:22
chaos. The Athenians did not simply draw names
10:26
from a hat. the tribal quotas the age requirements
10:36
the annual oath all of this created a framework
10:40
within which chance operated the lottery distributed
10:44
opportunity but it did so within a carefully
10:47
constructed system of civic qualification but
10:51
the athenians knew that chance alone could not
10:54
guarantee good government they surrounded sortition
10:57
with two critical safeguards These were scrutiny
11:01
before office and audit after. The pre -office
11:06
scrutiny was called dokimasia. Before a selected
11:10
citizen could take up his position, he had to
11:13
undergo a public examination. The constitution
11:16
of the Athenians describes this in detail for
11:19
the nine archons, the chief magistrates. The
11:23
candidate was asked to name his father and his
11:26
father's father. He was asked to name his deem
11:29
and point out his family tombs. He was asked
11:33
to declare whether he treated his parents well,
11:36
whether he paid his taxes, and whether he had
11:39
performed his military service. For some officers,
11:43
there was also an examination of moral character.
11:46
This included whether he had been violent toward
11:49
his parents, whether he had squandered his inheritance,
11:53
and whether he had been a drunkard or a gambler.
11:57
The documasia was not a mere formality. It could
12:01
disqualify a candidate, and it was public, conducted
12:06
before the council or a court. This meant that
12:10
any citizen could challenge the candidate's fitters.
12:13
The scrutiny served as a filter. It ensured that
12:17
the random selection operated only among those
12:20
who met the basic qualifications of citizenship,
12:23
age, military service, and civic responsibility.
12:27
After office, every official underwent euthanai,
12:31
an audit and accounting. The outgoing magistrate
12:35
presented his financial records to a board of
12:37
auditors, the logisti, then followed a ten -day
12:41
period during which any citizen could bring a
12:44
complaint against him. The complaint could concern
12:47
embezzlement, misconduct, or any abuse of power.
12:51
The euthanai were real and consequential. Even
12:55
Pericles, the most powerful elected general of
12:58
the 5th century, was subjected to audit and temporarily
13:01
removed from office. The sources tell us this
13:05
was a serious moment, not a ceremonial gesture.
13:09
These safeguards, dokimasia and euthanai, together
13:13
with the short terms and the principle of non
13:16
-repeatability, created a system of accountability
13:19
that complemented the randomness of selection.
13:22
Athenians did not trust chance blindly. They
13:26
trusted it as one element in a larger design
13:29
of rotation, scrutiny, and audit. So why did
13:33
they prefer lottery to election for most offices?
13:36
The answer lies in how they understood democracy
13:39
itself. The Aristotelian constitution of the
13:43
Athenians and Aristotle's own politics articulate
13:47
a clear theoretical distinction. Election, they
13:51
say, is oligarchic or aristocratic. It favors
13:56
the wealthy, the well -known, the well -spoken.
13:59
In an election, citizens choose whom they prefer,
14:03
and they naturally prefer those who are prominent,
14:06
persuasive, and already powerful. Sortition,
14:10
by contrast, is democratic. It gives equal chances
14:15
to all qualified citizens. It prevents the emergence
14:19
of a permanent political class. It limits the
14:22
ability of elite families to monopolize office
14:25
generation after generation. This was not abstract
14:29
theory. It was institutional design with a specific
14:33
purpose. The Athenians had experienced oligarchy
14:38
and tyranny. They knew that concentrated power
14:41
could be dangerous. Sortition was a mechanism
14:45
to disperse power widely through the citizen
14:48
body. It ensured that office holding was a temporary
14:52
civic duty rather than a career. It made it difficult
14:56
for any individual or faction to capture the
14:59
state. But the Athenians were not naive about
15:03
expertise. They did not believe that any citizen
15:07
was equally capable of any task. They distinguished
15:10
between offices that required general civic competence
15:13
and offices that required specialized knowledge.
15:16
For the former, Counselors, jurors, most magistrates
15:20
saw Titian was appropriate. For the latter, they
15:25
used election. The most important elected officers
15:29
were the ten strategoi, the generals. Military
15:34
command required recognized expertise, experience
15:38
in warfare, knowledge of tactics, ability to
15:41
manage campaigns and alliances. These were not
15:44
distributed randomly through the population.
15:47
The Athenians elected their generals in the assembly,
15:51
and they could re -elect them indefinitely. Pericles
15:55
held the generalship repeatedly for nearly two
15:57
decades. Nicias and Alcibiades, later in the
16:02
5th century, also held the office multiple times.
16:06
This was the exception that proved the rule.
16:09
Where expertise mattered, the Athenians chose
16:13
election and accepted the concentration of power
16:15
that it entailed. Certain financial offices were
16:19
also elected, particularly those involving large
16:22
-scale public expenditure or complex accounting.
16:26
The Athenians recognized that some tasks required
16:29
skills that not every citizen possessed. Their
16:32
system was not anti -expertise. It was a calibrated
16:37
allocation of selection methods to the nature
16:40
of the office. Yet we must be careful not to
16:44
idealize this system. Sortition did not eliminate
16:47
wealth and influence from Athenian politics.
16:50
It limited them in specific ways, but it did
16:54
not remove them. First and most fundamentally,
16:58
citizenship itself was exclusive. The democracy
17:01
was a community of adult male citizens of Athenian
17:05
parentage. Women, slaves, metics, together perhaps
17:10
80 or 90 % of the adult population had no political
17:15
rights at all. The random selection operated
17:18
only within this privileged minority. When we
17:21
speak of Athenian democracy as broadly participatory,
17:25
we must remember the vast exclusion on which
17:28
it rested. Even within the citizen body, wealth
17:33
and influence still mattered. The poor could
17:36
not afford to participate as easily as the wealthy,
17:39
despite jury pay and later assembly pay. A day
17:43
in court or council was a day away from farming,
17:46
from craftwork, from trade. The wealthy had more
17:50
leisure, better education, and more experience
17:53
in public speaking. They dominated the assembly
17:57
debates, where oratory was the decisive skill.
18:00
They held elected offices, especially the generalship,
18:04
with far greater frequency than the poor. They
18:08
formed social networks, cultivated clients, and
18:11
exercised influence through informal channels
18:14
that no allotment machine could reach. Preparation
18:18
for service was unequal. A citizen who had been
18:22
educated by sophists, who had traveled, who had
18:26
served in multiple campaigns, who had managed
18:28
his family's property, was better prepared for
18:31
deliberation and administration than a citizen
18:34
who had spent his life in manual labor. Sortition
18:38
gave them equal chances to be selected but it
18:41
did not give them equal preparation to serve.
18:45
Scholars debate how representative the allotted
18:48
bodies actually were. Some argue that the poor
18:52
were underrepresented because they could not
18:54
afford to volunteer or to serve. Others argue
18:57
that the system of payment made participation
19:00
genuinely broad. The evidence is insufficient
19:04
to resolve this definitively. What we can say
19:07
with confidence is that sortition limited permanent
19:10
political careers and gave qualified citizens
19:13
roughly equal chances to serve. It did not create
19:17
a perfectly egalitarian society. There is also
19:21
some uncertainty about the precise operation
19:23
of the Claritarium. The literary description
19:27
in the Constitution of the Athenians and the
19:29
physical remains of the machines do not align
19:31
perfectly in every detail. Scholars have reconstructed
19:36
the procedure with reasonable confidence, but
19:39
some questions remain. These include the exact
19:43
number and color of the dice, the precise sequence
19:46
of operations, and the role of the magistrate
19:48
operating the machine. These are not trivial
19:51
details, but they do not undermine our basic
19:54
understanding of the system. The Athenian experiment
19:58
challenges us to think more carefully about what
20:01
democracy can mean. We moderns tend to equate
20:05
democracy with elections. We assume that voting
20:09
is the only legitimate way to distribute political
20:12
office. The Athenians would have found this assumption
20:16
strange. For them, elections were aristocratic.
20:20
They concentrated power in the hands of the prominent
20:24
and the persuasive. Sortition was democratic.
20:29
It dispersed power, rotated responsibility. and
20:33
made office holding a temporary civic duty rather
20:36
than a prize to be won. This was not a system
20:40
without safeguards, and it was not a system without
20:42
limits. The Athenians built a remarkable machinery
20:46
of random selection. This machinery included
20:49
the Claritarian, the Pinakia, the Demi registers,
20:54
and the tribal quotas. They surrounded it with
20:58
scrutiny before office and ordered after. They
21:01
used election where expertise was required. They
21:05
accepted that citizenship was exclusive and that
21:08
wealth and influence would still shape politics.
21:10
But within these limits, they created a democracy
21:14
that trusted random selection as a protection
21:16
against elite monopoly. The Claritarian still
21:20
stands in our imagination as a strange and fascinating
21:23
device. It was a machine for distributing civic
21:27
responsibility. It was a physical embodiment
21:31
of a different democratic logic. When we think
21:34
about democracy today, we might pause to consider
21:37
what the Athenians understood. There is more
21:41
than one way to ensure that power does not become
21:44
permanent. And sometimes the most democratic
21:47
thing you can do is not to choose the best person,
21:50
but to give everyone qualified an equal chance
21:53
to serve.