The Assembly

In Ancient Athens, assembly meetings took place about every 8 to 10 days. This gave citizens a frequent amount of time to bring up issues to the council. Thousands of citizens would attend meetings

• About 6000 citizens had to attend a meeting. Why so much? So they get accurate results and more perspectives
• The assembly's main job was to resolve issues, or problems from many fields. They had to make decisions on many issues, whether big or small
• Citizens could bring personal issues to assembly (complain against the person/group). If the issue was very concerning. it would be taken to court for further trial
• The assembly would meet at the Pnyx, where the members would make speeches, debate, listen, discuss, and then vote. This same order of appendices applies in our governments today
• A Greek leader, named Aeschines, made a rule that all members of assembly received an equal amount of time to speak
• Voting was often by a show of hands, and all votes counted equally, it did not matter if the voter was poor or wealthy, smart or not smart, etc...
• Members/citizens could support others based on their side of the argument. The supporting member would use a white stone to indicate his decision. A brown stone indicated that the member/citizen disagrees with that particular member