http://agathe.gr/democracy/judiciary_and_lawcourts.html
Judiciary and Lawcourts The lawcourts of Athens, a city notorious throughout Greece for the litigiousness of her citizens, were both numerous and large. Several of these lawcourts were in the immediate ... The archon in charge, having learned how many courts were to be filled and wishing to fill his tribe’s quota of the total number of jurors, put into the funnels at the top of the kleroteria as many balls (white for the number to be allotted and the remainder black for those to be dismissed) as there were tickets in the shortest column. ... There would have been some simple mechanical contrivance at the lower end of the tube for letting the balls out one at a time.
