Practice question · Estimate
An ostracism only counted if enough citizens showed up to scratch a name on a potsherd. Set the quorum.
Estimate on a scale from 0 to 20,000 (20000).
Hints
- A fifth of the citizen body, roughly.
- The same number required for grants of citizenship, the big-decision threshold.
Show the answer
6000 (answers within ±1000 count)
Why
6,000, about a fifth of the ~30,000 citizens. The quorum guaranteed that exiling a man was the verdict of the demos, not the ambush of a faction.
Practise Classical Greece and the Polis
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Classical Greece and the Polis
- Athenian democracy paid citizens to attend the assembly and to serve on juries. What problem was the payment…
- Complete the description of ostracism.
- Order the construction (and stress-testing) of the Athenian experiment.
- Sort each feature: filled by lottery or by election in classical Athens?
- Why did Aristotle call the lottery democratic and election aristocratic?
- Most Athenian public offices were filled by lottery rather than election.