At first glance, the Pnyx is nothing special: a rocky cliff with a few steps cut into it. But the Pnyx is a place where you can literally walk in the footsteps of giants. Athens is known the world over for being the birthplace of democracy. And whereas the nearby Ancient Agora had its elegant temples to democracy – the law courts, the senate meeting hall and the council assembly – this limestone bluff is something else. It's where the business end of democracy happened.
6,000 or more Athenians would gather here at least once a month to listen, debate and harangue the leaders of Athens, during its Golden Age of the 5th - 4th centuries BC. Each debate was put to the vote, passed by a simple show of hands, or the dropping of stones into a vase. Pericles, the famed leader of Athens in its wars with Sparta, brought his plans before the citizens gathered here. So too did Aristides the Just, and Demosthenes, the powerful speaker who rallied the Athenians against the Macedonians, and their King Phillip II.
The Pnyx lies on a hill west of the Acropolis, and south of the Agora, part of the rocky tree-strewn park that was once ancient Athens. The bench of rock carved into the cliff is called the 'bema' and anyone could speak there – just as anyone could be elected into office. That's as long as you were a free-born Athenian man, of course. Slaves, foreigners and women were excluded from this first experiment in democracy.
The Athenians also struggled with the modern-day affliction of 'voter apathy'. In order for votes to be passed, at least 6,000 citizens needed to be present at the Pnyx. The council had to resort to using slaves, wielding red-dyed ropes, to drive Athenians to the assemblies anyone with red on their clothing would be fined. When they later changed the stick to a carrot – by paying voters to attend – the numbers swelled, and those same slaves had to be used to hold the citizens back. An innovation in democracy worth repeating, perhaps?
