Drawing Lots

Reviews / Votes

There's much talk in western democracies about possible uses of the lot -the random allocation of civic resources and of political offices in the interests of equality and justice. In this prodigiously researched monograph, two historians track back to a culture and a political model in which the lot came to be seen as central and fundamental to the world's first democratic regimes. Politicians of today, please note -and act. * Paul Cartledge, University of Cambridge * This book provides new perspectives on the uses of the lot from the time of Homer to the Hellenistic period. Malkin and Blok show that the Greeks used the lot for a wide range of practices, from the distribution of war booty to divination. They argue that the lot epito?mizes the ancient Greeks' preference for practices that were fair and equitable. Drawing lots thus gains a new significance - and a timely one, given today's interest in randomly selected citizen assemblies to bring a new policy into effect. * Sara Forsdyke, University of Michigan * Drawing Lots was one of the foundations of ancient Greek civic egalitarianism. This book is the first comprehensive survey of the practice. Yet it is more than just that: as well as explain?ing every detail of Greek sortition and the beliefs behind it, the authors also show just how much modern democracy might be improved by borrowing from this ancient system. This is ancient history at its most relevant. * Ian Morris, Stanford University * An extraordinary piece of scholarship, this landmark book on the use of lottery in Ancient Greece reshuffles our understanding of the origins of democracy and injects brilliant insights from the past into today's debate on political innovation. Drawing Lots is an incredible tour de force - and an intellectual feast throughout. * David Van Reybrouck, Bard College * Drawing Lots provides an opportunity to rethink the concept of Greek democracy and its legacy in the politics of today. * Choice * This book is undoubtedly a milestone in the analysis of lot-drawing in ancient Greece. It offers a remarkable panorama, both in its exhaustiveness and coherence, of the uses of chance in Archaic and Classical Greece, thus confirming one of the main hypotheses that opens the introduction: lot-drawing was indeed a familiar and everyday tool, widely used in all Greek community practices, including outside the strictly institutional sphere. * Nina Roux, Scripta Classica Israelica *