Dikasterion
The dikastērion was the system of popular jury courts in Classical Athens during the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Alongside the Assembly and the Council of 500, it formed one of the three central pillars of Athenian democracy. The dikastēria heard the vast majority of private suits and public prosecutions —excluding homicide. The term Heliaia, properly the name of the largest court venue, came to be used by some ancient sources as a synonym for the system as a whole. Modern English-language scholarship predominantly uses dikasterion for the institutional system.
The courts operated without professional judges, prosecutors, or lawyers. Instead, legal functions were done by panels of ordinary citizens known as dikastai, chosen by lot from an annual pool of 6,000 males aged thirty or over. Juries were large, numbering 201, 401, or 501 men, and reaching up to 1,500 or more for major political trials. From the mid-5th century BCE, jurors received a daily wage, a reform intended to ensure that poorer citizens could afford to take part.
A defining characteristic of the dikasterion was that it was not a deliberative body; unlike modern juries, jurors were prohibited from discussing the case among themselves. After hearing strictly timed speeches from the litigants, they immediately cast their verdicts by secret ballot with no possibility of appeal.
Beyond resolving legal disputes, the dikasteria exercised a form of constitutional oversight. Through procedures such as the graphe paranomo
Courts and citizenship
in Politics details that citizenship in ancient democracies was tied to voting in courts whose majority vote decided justice:one factor of liberty is to govern and be governed in turn; for the popular principle of justice is to have equality according to number … the decision of the majority must be final and must constitute justice … whatever is decided by the majority is sovereign.In his discussion of citizenship, Aristotle noted that in democracies, a citizen was distinguished by the right to participate in both the Assembly and the courts, reflecting the democratic principle that citizens should share in deliberation and judgment. His Constitution of Athens notes that:
the people has made itself master of everything, and administers everything by decrees and by jury courts in which the people is the ruling power.Such court votes held political importance, as unlike modern courts, the dikasteria were not only legal bodies. Through procedures such as the graphe paranomon, citizens could challenge Assembly laws and decrees before the courts. This procedure allowed courts to annul decrees and penalize proposers, a role some scholars compare to constitutional review. As Christopher Carey notes:
Since the courts could reverse decisions of the Assembly, through the operation of graphe paranomon, and through the graphe nomon me epitedeion theinai, it could be maintained that the courts were the supreme authority in the state; and in fact this claim is sometimes made by speakers addressing the courts.Such action depended entirely on ordinary citizens as there were no professional judges, prosecutors, or advocates. This made the law courts central to civic participation in ancient Greek democracy.
Jurors (dikastes)
Numbers
Each year, 6,000 men were chosen by lot to form the pool of potential jurors who might turn up and be jurors on days when courts sat. On a court day, multiple courts might sit. For private suits involving less than 1,000 drachmas, juries numbered 201; for larger amounts, 401 jurors were used. Public prosecutions had juries of 501. Important political trials, particularly graphe paranomon and eisangelia cases, could have combined juries of 1,001, 1,501, 2,001 or even 2,501 citizens.Selection
Jury service was open to all male citizens aged thirty or over who had not lost their civic rights through atimia.Before serving in the pool of jurors, they swore the Heliastic Oath, promising to judge according to the laws and decrees of the Assembly and Council, or, where no law existed, according to their own sense of justice. Many jurors travelled to the city, and the opportunity for paid service encouraged participation by citizens of all social classes.
Each juror received a personal identification plaque and was assigned to one of ten sections of 600 men, corresponding to the ten Athenian tribes. Daily court assignments were determined by a system of lotteries to prevent bribery and manipulation. On any given day, several thousand citizens could be serving as jurors across multiple courts.
Contemporary sources, particularly Old Comedy such as Aristophanes' Wasps, often depict jurors as older and poorer citizens, but surviving plaques shows broad participation from across Attica, including rural and coastal demes as noted by Mogens Herman Hansen.
In many cases the plaques are so well preserved that we can read the deme-names of the successive holders; and, astonishingly, it turns out that people from the coastal demes and the inland demes actually prevail over people from the city demes.
Payment
Payment for jury service was introduced under Perikles in the mid-fifth century BCE, to enable poor citizens to serve. Initially two obols per day, the rate was later increased to three obols. The pay was modest compared to an ordinary day's wage but provided income for the elderly or unemployed.… who among intelligent men can fail to be chagrined at what goes on, when we see many of our fellow-citizens drawing lots in front of the law-courts to determine whether they themselves shall have the necessaries of life.The state's annual expenditure on jury pay was considerable but remained small compared to military costs.
The annual cost to the state of jury pay must have been between 22 and 37 talents; one cannot be more precise, but that is enough to give an idea of its significance in the Athenian budget. The courts cost more than the Council but less than the Assembly, and the whole jury pay for a year was only a fraction of the cost of a single campaign of a few months.Even in periods of financial strain, jury pay was viewed as a cornerstone of democratic equality.
Personnel and public access
Beyond the jurors themselves, the operation of the dikasteria required various magistrates and administrative personnel.Magistrates
The administration of the courts was the duty of the thesmothetai while the daily allotment of juries was controlled by the nine archons plus the secretary of the thesmothetai.Receiving charges and presiding over the courts depended on legal area. Family and inheritance came under the archons, homicide and sacrilege under the King archon; issues involving metics and other non-Athenians under the Polemarch; political trials under the six thesmothetai; most private suits to the Forty ; and military law under the strategoi.
No public prosecutor
There was no public prosecutor—all actions were initiated and pursued by private citizens:At Athens in classical times there was no public prosecutor: the system was "accusatorial", i.e. based on accusations by private individuals. The political leader Lykourgos openly states that illegalities would go unpunished unless some citizen took it upon himself to bring a case: "without an accuser the laws and the courts are worth nothing". Such an "accusatorial" system could only function because an astoundingly large number of citizens took an active part in the law, not only as jurors but also as prosecutors or plaintiffs.
No lawyers
Paid representatives in court were illegal.a singular feature of the Athenian courts is the complete absence from their working of professionals or experts. It arose, doubtless, from the wish to make the administration of justice democratic: if all citizens were to be able to take part, the whole legal system must be designed to be run by amateurs, and, if all citizens were in principle to have equal influence, it was necessary to inhibit the growth of a professional corps of advocates or magistrates, since if some are amateurs and others professionals the professionals will always get the upper hand and your democracy will turn into an oligarchy.However, people could pay speech writers known as logographers to prepare what to say in court. Many of these speeches survive such as those written by Antiphon, Lysias, Isaeus, Demosthenes, Dinarchus and Hyperides and provide details about the running of the dikasterion. People could also be represented in court by unpaid friends called synegoros.
Randomly assigned tasks
Jurors did not only sit in judgment. Ten of them were randomly assigned before the court started to aid its working.within each court a final selection by lot took place, to choose one juror to control the water-clock, four to carry out the counting of votes, and five to carry out the payment of the jurors when the day’s business was over.
Public
Proceedings were open to the public as spectators as noted in comedies such as Aristophanes' Acharnians. However, for cases involving the Mysteries, a rope barrier was set at a distance of fifty feet kept the uninitiated from hearing their secrets.Court workings
Locations
The Athenian court system was extensive. The largest and most famous was the Heliaia, though many other courts handled specialized types of cases. The location of the Heliaia remains unknown, but most courts were near the Athenian Agora.Court schedule
Based on surviving evidence about festival calendars and assembly meetings, scholars estimate they met approximately 175–225 days per year. Several could occur simultaneously.Court days were fixed to the length of the shortest day of the year to ensure fair treatment regardless of season. For public prosecutions, this was divided into three equal parts: three hours for the prosecution, three for the defense, and three for administrative matters including jury selection, voting, and, if needed, penalty determination.
Private suits had time limits based on the amount in dispute, with the shortest cases taking less than an hour and the longest about two hours. A panel of 401 jurors could hear and judge about four private suits in a day.