Jury Duty
This machine was used in Ancient Athens to determine who was chosen for jury duty. The Athenians introduced the idea of trial by jury. Jury selection was random using a white ball and a black ball. The explanation is below.
posted by jennifer howland at 8:24 AM
2 Comments:
How many people were eligible for jury duty in ancient Athens? Would a machine like this have been used for Socrates's trial?
Ok to answer my first question, here is a seemingly reliable source, The Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University:
www.chs.harvard.edu/discussion_series.sec/
athenian_law.ssp/archaeological_finds.pg
They say that "Jury service was restricted to male citizens at least thirty years old, and was never mandatory. At the beginning of each year, a jury panel of 6000 was selected — we do not know how — and sworn in. On any of the 150 to 200 days of the year that the courts were in session, anyone on the jury panel who wanted to serve (and collect jury pay) could report to the lawcourts. The process of assigning jurors to cases differed in various periods. For a detailed description of jury selection and court procedures in three periods of Athenian history, see Alan Boegehold’s Three Court Days." They also describe the workings of the kleroteria in more detail.
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