religion, dockyards, and every other department, great and small, of public administration. One important board, the Logistæ or chief accountants, were even thirty in number. The whole number of individuals serving the State in this way in any one year cannot be computed for the age I am speaking of; but for the age of Aristides the author of the "Athenian Constitution" reckoned them at 1400.[1] If we take the same number for the age of Pericles, and add to it the 500 councillors, we get a total of 1900, out of an adult male population of about 30,000.[2]
3. All these officials, with a very few exceptions, of which the Strategi are the most important, were elected by lot, and to the best of our knowledge were rarely if ever re-elected.[3] The exact details of the method of election by lot are still unknown to us; but there can be no reasonable doubt that this method, which to us seems so strange on account of our very different conception of democracy, was meant to secure that every Athenian should at some time in his life have the right or bear the burden (in whichever way he
- ↑ Ath. Pol. 24. Half of these were ἔνδημοι and half ὑπερόριοι; but it is not clear who are meant by the latter, — the magistrates "beyond the borders." If we were to exclude these, the 1900 would be reduced to 1200.
- ↑ This number represents the general impression of the Athenians themselves in the fifth century: Beloch, Bevölkerung, p. 59. The same author, at p. 99, concludes that it was 35,000 at the opening of the Peloponnesian war.
- ↑ See Headlam, op. cit. p. 90, note 1. But the author of the Ath. Pol. states that in his own day membership of the Council could be held twice, and military offices any number of times.
