Popular Courts Ascend as Sovereign Arena (later 5th c.)

The Assembly’s voice was loud, but the courts learned to sing in harmony—and sometimes solo. By the later 5th century, Athenian popular courts staffed by large juries under oath handled not only private disputes but key political cases, audits, and challenges to laws [6]. Sovereignty, once imagined as a shout on the Pnyx, acquired a second venue: the murmur and verdict-rattle of the dikasterion.

The setting, again, was the Agora. Court buildings and improvised spaces near the Royal Stoa hosted sessions. Jurors—drawn by lot from citizens over 30—took an oath to vote according to the laws and decrees. They received small pay, time-limited by the drip of the water-clock. The soundscape was distinctive: a litigant’s rapid speech racing the flow; a witness’s oath; the final clatter of bronze ballots into black and bronze urns [14].

This ascent responded to need. As the city grew and empire tangled Athens in treaties and tributes, disputes multiplied. The Assembly still decided wars and alliances [17], but the courts offered a forum less susceptible to sudden demagoguery in some matters, and more structured by law and oath [6]. Procedurally, the Council’s scrutiny of magistrates fed the courts; the courts’ verdicts fed back into political eligibility and policy.

The juries’ size mattered—hundreds, sometimes 1,500, a number big enough to dilute bribery and to feel like the demos judging itself. Pseudo‑Xenophon grumbled that this empowered the poor, but his complaint underscores the fact: mass juries let people with little property wield decisive legal power [6].

As the Peloponnesian War wore on, these courts became arenas where accountability played out. Generals, treasurers, and law-proposers could be brought to heel. The law against tyranny, inscribed later in 337/6, would stand in this legal culture’s shadow [12]. And when the city restored democracy after 404/3, it refined nomothesia—lawmaking by special panels—building further on this juridical sovereignty [18].

In the nearer term, the shift meant that politics could be staged in two registers. A proposal that passed on the Pnyx might still face a lawsuit; an official appointed by lot might still fear an audit. The people’s power multiplied by moving from one hill to many benches.