Meeting of the Athenian Assembly

Last week we reenacted a meeting of the Assembly in Athens. Ancient Athens was a direct democracy, which means the citizens had to vote to make decisions. Don't be fooled! In order to vote you had to be:

• Free (not a slave)
• A MAN! (Girls in our class were not too happy about this.)

The Assembly met on Friday to decide whether the boy who cried wolf was innocent or guilty. 

The Crime: A shepherd boy was watching sheep in Athens when he called out two times to the villagers to help him with a wolf. But there really wasn't any wolf and he laughed when they came to help. The last time he called there really was a wolf but the villagers didn't come to help him because he had already lied to them two times. All of the sheep were killed by the wolf. Is the boy guilty or innocent?

We made replicas of the disks that Athenian men used to cast their votes. The disk with the hole meant "innocent" and the disk with the bar through the center meant "guilty." When the votes were cast by all of the members of our class, the boy was found innocent! However, when the votes were cast by the true "citizens" of Athens (the free men) it was a tie!

 

Our homemade Guilty and Not Guilty Athenian voting disks