THE RECORD
What changed
Adult male citizens voted in the assembly and filled some offices by lot; women, enslaved people and resident foreigners were excluded.
EVIDENCE
What remains
Aristotle's Athenian Constitution, inscriptions, ostraka and assembly spaces document the system.
WHY IT MATTERS
Why it matters
It offered a powerful precedent for treating government as citizens' deliberation and responsibility.
OPEN QUESTION
Where interpretation begins
It was unlike modern representative democracy and narrowly inclusive; democracy did not appear in a single moment.