The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [33]
Selection for jury service was considered a thrill, a privilege, the mark of a democrat. A number of Athenians chose to be buried with their personal metal name-disc; so while we’ll never know their faces, we know what these first democrats were called: Alexander, Draco, Georgios. Having been selected, there was still some administration to do: each juror would reach into an urn and pull out a ball marked with different letters. Depending on whether you got a ‘lamda’ (an L) or an ‘omicron’ (an O), you would end up serving that day in one particular courtroom. There was no chance of cheating – the moment your ball was inspected by a magistrate you were handed a coloured baton that corresponded with the paint daubed over the entrance to ‘your’ court, and this you had to show as you arrived.
And the engineering of democratic equity didn’t stop at the kleroterion and tinted sticks.
Each tribe had its own entrance, its own machine, its own zone. Society might still be fiercely tribal, but families, friends, allies, conspirators were not allowed to sit together. Everyone suspected of a close connection, a vested interest that might cloud judgements, was given a place in separate stone blocks, lettered like our theatres and cinemas. It is no coincidence that Plato even refers to those listening to trials as ‘the audience’.8
Picture that audience. All middle-aged or old men, many settling down for the day with a cushion or reed-mat to stop their buttocks getting cold-stone sore. Each one has sworn to be impartial. No well-dressed, punctilious clerks organising things here. This is a direct democracy – individuals are actively, immediately involved in the administration and decision-making of their polis. You might have been a sheep-stinking farmer or a merchant of perfumed oils; in this land everyone was a politician. Each is to be paid three obols for his pains.9 In the glory days of the Athenian democracy, money had not been a key motive. Sure, in the Assembly ideas could be formed, laws created; but it is in the law-courts that Athenian self-government could be put into play.10 It was both a duty and a privilege to be here.11
But by the time of Socrates’ trial so many citizen-judges of Athens have been killed, in defence of the city or by rival Athenian cliques. Today it is the disabled, the aged, the lucky few who have survived. The majority of the jurors are poor, they need the essential money that a day of justice will bring.
The minimum number of jurors allowed at a graphe – a public law-suit – is 500/501; Socrates’ trial fell into this category. His crimes were believed to be of public concern; serious matters. By bringing Socrates to trial, Meletus was preventing religious outrage, he was doing Athens a favour. But, oddly, this was not a popular trial to attend. Juries could easily reach up to 1,000 or 2,000 men. Perhaps Athenians were already uneasy about what they might have to do – they came measured by the hekaton (hundred), not the khilioi (thousand).
The 500 jurors on that May morning, as always, are held in by a nominal security fence – a lattice of wood punctuated by gates – a symbolic ringing in of civilised practice. Because although events here were impassioned and powerful, law-courts were not particularly pretty places. Victorious prosecutors could exact punishment then and there, beating their victims to a pulp.12 The accounts of Socrates’ trial describe jurors in an uproar, gurning and groaning when they hear something that displeases them.13 Socrates himself complains that thorubos – tumult, baying, shouting, the acclamation of the rabble – disrupts the course of justice. But now, one presumes, there is just murmuring, as the chosen men – the ragbag judges – file in to take their place to enact the business of democracy. Once the entire panel is assembled