SURVIVING THE ATHENIAN COURTS & ASSEMBLY
It may be surprising to note that in this direct or radical democracy, the audience were sometimes reluctant participants. The fifth-century BC comic writer, Aristophanes, describes a peasant farmer named Dicaeo-polis, impatiently waiting at the Pnyx for the Assembly to open. He is disappointed: “The Assembly’s scheduled for a regular dawn meeting, and here’s an empty Pnyx: everybody’s gossiping in the [agora] as up and down they dodge the [reddened] rope”. These ochre-stained ropes were used by a ‘police force’ of Scythian archers to encourage attendance, by herding stragglers from the marketplace to the Pnyx. Anyone observed with red stains on their clothing could be fined. What was Dicaeopolis planning to do at the Assembly? “Well, here I am, and darn well ready to shout and heckle and insult the speakers” (Acharnians, 15-25).
Many assume that attendees were ‘sophisticated’ city dwellers from Athens or the Piraeus, but, by the fourth century, particularly due to the allocation of a payment for participation, a greater variety of citizens attended. Aristotle stated that such a stipend enabled ‘even the poor’ to take part. Payment also proved crucial for peasant farmers living outside, 40-52).
