 Among equals, however defined, the space of the political was the space of participation in decision-making concerning public affairs and actions. That invention of the political (what Meier 1990 calls The Greek Discovery of Politics) was the hallmark of the classical Greek world. Citizens, whether the few (usually the rich) or the many (including the poorer and perhaps the poorest free adult men), gathered together to conduct public affairs, sharing either by custom, by election, or by lot—the latter seen in Athens as the most democratic, though it was never the sole mechanism used in any Greek democracy—in holding, or holding accountable, the offices for carrying them out. Rhetoric played an important role in shaping those decisions, especially, though not only, in democracies, where discursive norms shaped by the poor majority were hegemonic in public even over the rich (Ober 1989).