Athenian Assembly Research Paper

Firstly, in order to gain a clear understanding of what the Athenian Assembly would have been like, it is important to look at who would attend the assemblies, as obviously, one would not be able to propose a motion without first gaining to right to attend. From reading speeches by Demosthenes, we can see that there was a process you had to go through in order to gain permission to attend. As part of his speech Against Leochares, Demosthenes comments that ‘he had the audacity to go and enrol himself on the assembly list. ’ This is evidence of there being a list of specific people who were allowed to attend and partake in the assembly. Aristotle goes into much more detail, telling of the process of gaining access to the assembly. When a boy …show more content…
The assembly met at the Pnyx, as is cited in many ancient sources; Thucydides writes that the Athenians ‘called an assembly, one then presently in the place called Pnyx. ’ The Pnyx is on top of a hill in the centre of Athens; it has a tremendous view of the rest of Athens and would have been known as the meeting place for assemblies. There are no ancient sources that document the exact amount of people who would have attended as assembly at the Pnyx. However, ‘excavations of the Pnyx have shown that in the period down to 400BC, it could have held about 6,000 men. ’ Excavations of it also have shown a top point, where it seems the speaker would have stood and been able to address the entire audience. Hansen concentrates heavily on the amount of people who would have been in attendance; he completely disregards the traditional viewpoint that between 2,000 and 3,000 would have attended any given assembly. Hansen prefers to state that after the second re-building of the Pnyx, around the 340’s, attendance would have been around 6,000 for each assembly . This seems to be an agreeable view due to the fact that many motions that were put forward needed 6,000 votes in order to be accepted, and even more reputable when considering the earlier mention archaeological findings of how large the Pnyx was. It seems that around 400BC, there were issues in attendance of the assembly however. Not enough people were attending the assemblies, assumedly due to the earlier mentioned reasons such as distance and not being able to afford to not work for a day. A red painted rope was introduced and was meant as a means to annex citizens towards the Pnyx, not giving them a choice in whether they attended or not. Later, pay was introduced for attendance, ‘at first one obol, then two, then three. ’ This shows contemporaries that lack of attendance in the assembly must have