might consider it) of assisting in the performance of some part of public business. Nineteen hundred places of office, if the lot worked as we believe it was meant to do, would circulate among the whole body of citizens about once in sixteen years.[1]
Now if we take this in connection with the universal right of citizens to take part in the Ecclesia, and of those over thirty years of age to sit as jurors in the courts, it becomes at once plain that the Athenian people did actually conduct its own government, and that the State was a true δημοκρατία. Here is no privileged class, no class of skilled politicians, no bureaucracy; no body of men, like the Roman Senate, who alone understood the secrets of State, and were looked up to and trusted as the gathered wisdom of the whole community. At Athens there was no disposition, and in fact no need, to trust the experience of any one; each man entered intelligently into the details of his own temporary duties, and discharged them, as far as we can tell, with industry and integrity. Like the players in a well-trained orchestra, all contrived to learn their parts and to be satisfied with the share allotted to them.
Nor was there any serious chance that this system of government by the people should lead to want of respect for law and tradition. The Athenian of the best days of Athens never dreamed of thinking loosely about the law. Much of his time, as
- ↑ Read Aristotle's account of the general characteristics of democracy, Pol. 1317 B; noting especially those passages which are evidently a reflection from the practice at Athens.
