Year 5 - A smashing History lesson

Date: 14th Jul 2022 @ 4:32pm

As part of our journey to Ancient Greece, we have been learning about the system of democratic government in Athens. Each year, the citizens could vote to remove a public servant if they felt they were becoming too powerful or if they were not doing a good job. A meeting was held in the agora (market), and people voted by scratching a name into a shard of broken pottery. If enough votes were cast, that individual was thrown out of Athens, or 'ostracised' for 10 years. The word 'ostracised' literally means 'judgement by shards'. We had a go at writing our own name into a shard of pottery using the Greek alphabet.