Drawing Lots From Egalitarianism to Democracy in Ancient Greece 1st Edition by Irad Malkin, Josine Blok ISBN 0197753493 9780197753491

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ISBN 10: 0197753493 

ISBN 13: 9780197753491

Author:  Irad Malkin, Josine Blok 

For the first time, this volume by two leading historians offers a comprehensive study of drawing lots as a central institution of ancient Greek society. Drawing lots expressed an egalitarian mindset that guided selection, procedure, and distribution by lot and was eventually introduced for polis governance, a Greek innovation that appears to be of increasing relevance today.

The authors explore the egalitarian, “horizonal,” mindset expressed in using the lot instead of a top-down vision of authority and sovereignty. Drawing lots presupposed equality among participants deserving equal “portions” and was used for distributing land, inheritance, booty, sacrificial meat, selecting individuals, setting turns, mixing and reorganizing groups, and divining the will of the gods. Lot-oracles were used for divination; otherwise, the gods guarded the justice of the procedure but only rarely determined the outcome. It was a self-evident method broadly and ubiquitously applied. Drawing lots would crystallize community boundaries and emphasize its sovereignty. The book further investigates the transposition of the drawing of lots to the governance of the polis. The implied egalitarianism of the lot often conflicted with top-down perceptions of society and the values of inequality, status, and merit. Drawing lots was introduced into oligarchies and democracies at an uneven pace and scale. Its wide use in the democracy of classical Athens was an exceptional case, eye-catching both in antiquity and today.

The book concludes with a discussion about the meaning of the Greek examples for drawing lots today and the increasing interest in using random selection in politics as a possibility for modern democracies around the world. The appendix surveys the Greek vocabulary of lottery practices.

Table of contents:

1. Greeks Drawing Lots: The Practice and the Mindset of Egalitarianism

2. From Egalitarianism to Democracy

3. What Is New About This Book? The Previous Discussion of the Field of Inquiry

4. A Mindset for Drawing Lots

5. Vocabulary and Mindset

6. Portions and Fairness

7. Equality and the Middle

8. Mixture Lotteries and the Egalitarian Mindset

9. Mixture Equivalence and Interchangeability

10. Did Greeks Draw Lots to Divine the Will of the Gods?

11. The Lot and Democracy Ancient and Modern

12. Parts I and II

13. Religion and Society

14. Drawing Lots Today: Fair Distribution and a Stronger Democracy

15. A Lexicographical Survey of Lottery Practices in the Archaic and Classical Periods

16. Bibliography

17. Index of Names and Places

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Tags: Irad Malkin, Josine Blok, Drawing Lots, Egalitarianism, Democracy, Ancient Greece