<Location> Agora Museum (Stoa of Attalos), Athens, Greece
<Also Known As> Allotment machines
Kleroteria was a maschine used to assign the duty of jury to ancient Athenian citizens. It was also used to nominate the city magistrates.
Now only a part of it remains, but it was probably used as follows. Ten vertical lines correspond to the ten Athenian tribes. In each hole were inserted small tablets (pinakia) bearing the names of the persons nominated as juries of the year. In the frame (not extant) of this slab there was a kind of bronze tube with a funnel at the top, and from the funnel many white and black small balls were thrown into. If a white ball came out from the end of the tube, the juries of the first horizontal row was called to seat, and if a black ball came out, they were dismissed. This procedure continued until when they got the number of juries needed. Camp's book, indicated below, explains better with an adequate illustration.
Such a procedure was adopted to avoid the corruption of the jury, and to have equal number of juries from each tribe.
