 Athenian democracy was invented round about 500 BC. The word democratia means people power and it's a very different sort of democracy from anything you or I would have experienced. The Athpol, as it's known for short, the constitution of the Athenians is attributed to Aristotle. Certainly it emanated from the school that he set up in Athens in the 330s and it's one of 158 such constitutions that he and his pupils compiled. What's extraordinary about this is though we had something like 91 references to the work, we didn't have the work as such which was in the form we have it written down round about 100 AD on a bit of papyrus from Egypt of course which is where papyrus alone pretty much survives from. It contains a work in two halves, so the first half is as it were historical, it's developmental, it traces 11 constitutional changes the last few of which fall within the rubric of democracy. The second half is a systematic account of the various organs of government whereby the Athenians govern themselves democratically in the 330s and 320s and from our point of view what's so striking about ancient Greek democracy is that it was direct. So in other words the Athenians ruled through primary assemblies for which they were helped by the existence of a council chosen by lot as many as 500 of them per annum and in addition to the council and the assembly they had popular law courts and the Athpol brilliantly from our point of view sets out, it distinguishes the various functions in addition to which there were something like 700 officials most of whom were chosen by lot the democratic way not by election. The Athenian democracy was in its own day controversial both amongst Greeks but especially the Romans who actually weren't very keen on what they saw as rather unreliable, fickle, difficult to manage popular assemblies in particular and that actually oddly to our way of thinking we're all democrats in some sense today I mean most of us but in the ancient world and right through the medieval period right up to the 19th century democracy of the ancient Greek sort that is direct popular self-rule was regarded as little better than mass well almost mob rule. The People's Charter of 1838 was part of the movement since the great reform act of 1832 to widen the franchise I mean even by ancient standards it was still pretty narrow there were property qualifications and so one of the things the People's Charter advocated was no property qualifications and Athenian democrat would have said hooray exactly right one shouldn't have they also believed in balloting of course they didn't think of the lot as the principal means of choosing members of parliament they thought of election this was absolutely standard and still is standard though some people argue that now is the time to return more to the lottery and the People's Charter advocated interestingly the secret ballot and this was a novelty so equality and freedom and election for as many people as possible and voting rights for as many as possible with all people elected accountable responsible the ancient Athenians if they were to have been brought back to the 1830s they might have said yes we agree with sort of 80% of that but we do think also you should have more lottery to allocate people to office