ABSTRACT
Entry to the Ecclesia was limited by two conditions:
One must be an Athenian, that is to say a citizen. Until the middle of the fifth century this title belonged to anyone born of an Athenian father. But in 451–0 Pericles ordained that to be regarded as an Athenian a man must have both an Athenian mother and an Athenian father: 1 children born of a foreign mother (fitjTpo^evoi) were henceforth in public law “ bastards ” (v60oi) The privilege of citizenship might be won, and likewise lost, in exceptional cases: it was granted by decree of the people for outstanding services; it could be withdrawn by atimia or civic degradation, either provisionally or permanently.
One must have attained one's majority. Majority was attained at eighteen years of age, by enrolment on the registers of the deme ; but, since usually two years of military service had first to be done, it was seldom that a man appeared in the Assembly before he was twenty.
Control was easily exercised by referring to the iriva^ ifCfcXnaictGTucos which was the copy of the registers posted in the demes. But the registers themselves were not always trustworthy. Metics contrived to get themselves enrolled and so slipped into the Assembly. It was in vain that the terrible action against aliens was brought against them (ypacprj gevias) which entailed condemnation to slavery; the “ illegally registered ” (ol irapeyypairjoi) were so numerous as to necessitate from time to time a general revision of the lists (Siayfrrjfaa/Aos). Very rarely was the Assembly composed, to use Aristophanes' words, of “ pure grain ” without intermixture of “ bran.”
