Kleroterion

A kleroterion (Ancient Greek: κληρωτήριον, romanized: klērōtērion) was a randomization device used by the Athenian polis during the period of democracy to select citizens to the boule, to most state offices, to the nomothetai, and to court juries.

There was a pipe attached to the stone which could then be fed dice that were coloured differently (assumed to be black and white) and could be released individually by a mechanism that has not survived to posterity (but is speculated to be by two nails; one used to block the open end and another to separate the next die to fall from the rest of the dice above it, like an airlock.

Prior to 403 BCE, the courts published a schedule and the number of dikastes required for the day.

If the die was black, the archon moved on to the next row down from the top and repeated the process until all juror positions were filled for the day.

[3][4] The first significant examination of Athenian allotment procedures was James Wycliffe Headlam's Election by Lot, first published in 1891.

In Aristotle, the Kleroteria, and the Courts (1939), Sterling Dow gave an overview and analysis of the discovered machines.