#athdem

Aeschines attacks Ctesiphon for honouring Demosthenes with a crown—thus making the interesting historical point that orators might be awarded crowns at all:

“But that part of my accusation remains upon which I lay greatest stress: the pretext upon which he claims that the crown is deserved. It reads thus in his motion: “And the herald shall proclaim in the theatre in the presence of the Hellenes that the Athenian people crown him for his merit and uprightness,” and that monstrous assertion, “because he continually speaks and does what is best for the people.” You see how entirely simple the remainder of our argument becomes, and how easy for you, my hearers, to weigh. For it is obviously incumbent upon me, the complainant, to show this to you, that the praise given to Demosthenes is false, and that he never began to “speak what was best,” nor now “continues to do what is good for the people.””

first woman

But how can a congregation of women, with women’s minds, expect to address the people?

praxagora

Much better than anybody, that’s how. They say that the young men who’ve been reamed the most are also the most effective orators. And as luck would have it, that’s exactly what nature suits us for!

Use of performance of liturgies as a defence and demonstration of civic participation: 

“I have equipped a warship five times, fought in four sea-battles, contributed to many war levies, and performed my other public services as amply as any citizen. But my purpose in spending more than was enjoined upon me by the city was to raise myself the higher in your opinion, so that if any misfortune should chance to befall me I might defend myself on better terms. Of all this credit I was deprived under the oligarchy…”

One of the peculiarities of the democracy in Athens was its heavy use of chance, through the taking of lots, in filling state offices. (Socrates seems to have railed against this practice at some length.) The author of the Athēnaiōn Polīteia describes one milestone in the evolution of election by lot in Athens as happening in the era of Cleisthenes, 487/86 BC: 

“For the first time since the tyranny the nine archones were appointed by lot on a tribal basis, from a short list of five hundred elected by the members of the demes: all the archons before this were elected.”

Cleisthenes’ other constitutional reforms included:

the practice of ostracising citizens (honourable banishment for 10 years)

reorganising the citizen population into 10 demes (previously 4 tribes) (”so that more men should have a share in running the state”)

expanded the boulē from 400 to 500, with 50 citizens from each tribe