ABSTRACT
Plato makes Socrates speak of the shouts of praise or blame that arise (he claims) in assemblies, theaters, military encampments, and dikastēria (law courts) as the instrument whereby the multitude compels young men to accept its debased notion of right and wrong; the word Plato uses to designate this noise is thorubos (literally ‘tumult’). 1 Geoffrey de Ste. Croix inculcates in his students an instinctive skepticism towards remarks of that sort, yet he himself has noted that the substitution of numerical voting for the more primitive method of taking decisions by shouting was an important step in the development of democracy. 2 Athenian juries did, of course, vote by tokens deposited in vessels and then counted, but there is ample reason to believe that some, or much, shouting often erupted during the trial. In this paper, offered to Geoffrey de Ste. Croix with affection and gratitude. I consider some aspects of this apparently disgraceful side of the Athenian courts.
