University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, Volume 1: The Greek Polis Volume 1

Not everything in Athens was by a vote, they also cast lots for city jobs. The law and customs are given in reading from classic texts and poems. The idea of a citizen having "rights" in the running of the city-state goes back to Athens. Before in ancient that ordinary people pretty much had the right to pay taxes and serve in the military, except in smaller villages that had some representation or elective leadership? That Greek society was as successful as it was made the Roman model their system partly on it. We got the ideas of democracy and representation from an English distortion of these classic laws. Like most texts of this sort the reading is really pretty dull compared to a novel or a history, but it shows that the rule of law had begun in Ancient Greece.