Equality by lot

By Mirko Canevaro

[This post is a response to a post by Keith Sutherland and to the discussion that followed in the comments thread.]

Dear all,

Thank you very much for your interest in my work! I’m afraid I’ve come here after too many messages, and although I’ve skimmed through all of this, it seems impractical to reply to everyone. But I hope by replying to the first three questions posed by Keith, I’ll offer some clarification.

Given that your claim (from the perspective of the sortinistas on this forum) is analogous to Holocaust denial, have I misunderstood you?

You haven’t — your presentation is basically accurate. I see that some find it strange that the same body would just be relabelled — yes, but not unparalleled. We have even an example of a city Assembly (in Halaisa, Sicily) that for particular purposes relabels itself (with the same numbers and procedures) as the Association of Priests of Apollo (and just yesterday I attended a Edinburgh Classics Departmental Meeting that mid-way through, for particular purposes, relabelled itself Board of Studies, to go back to Classics Departmental Meeting for the next item on the agenda).

Note also that even according to Hansen’s reconstruction (as he believes the decree of Teisamenos is authentic — I don’t), at the end of the fifth-century the Assembly did indeed choose to call itself nomothetai for the specific purpose of lawmaking. Ultimately, I think the long continuity of a nomothetic ideology (as I argue in a long piece of 2015) made sure that even when lawmaking (as making nomoi) was ‘democratised’, still they had to keep, nominally but also ideologically, a distinction between lawmaking and decree-making, because traditionally nomoi were made by nomothetai, not by a random assembly, as it were.

That said, my argument is that this is the most economical interpretation of the evidence, not that it’s safe. I think there is no evidence whatsoever that the nomothetai were selected by lot from those who have sworn the Heliastic Oath, and some evidence that they might be a relabelled Assembly. Lambert (doyen of Greek epigraphists), for instance, agrees on the first proposition, and finds the second possible and even likely, but notes that the nomothetai could also potentially be a subcommittee of the Assembly (selected god knows how) — he’s right, that’s also possible, if a bit less economical.
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Filed under: Academia, Athens, History, Sortition | 25 Comments »