The Athenians would have understood democracy much differently than we do today. For us, democracy that the people vote for their own lawmakers, to whom those lawmakers are responsible. (This, of course, is not a true democracy, but rather a republic. The US Constitution even refers to it as such.) For the Athenians during their Golden Age, it meant that the government was the citizens, and the citizens were the government. All Athenian citizens (free-born males only) were entitled and expected to participate in the government of the city, and were part of the governing assembly. The assembly met on the Pynx hill at least monthly in a space that accommodate thousands according to the writing of Herodotus and Thucydides. Any citizen could speak to the assembly and all could vote, often by a show of hands. A kind of organizing committee called the boule consisted of 500 citizens chosen by lot for one year terms. The boule decided items to vote on and their priority. They could also act independently in times of war or crisis. The boule had a number of subdivisions that had some increasing day to day responsibilities.

So how many voting citizens were there? During the Golden Age of the 5th century BC, Hansen and Nielsen, drawing on the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and others, estimated that there were 50-60,000. By the end of the fifth century, wars and plague had reduced that number to 20-30,000. Not all of these men would have lived in Athens itself, with some being spread out over the Athenian lands in Attica. Even so, a pretty large proportion of citizens would have been attending the assembly on a regular basis, and a decent percentage would have been chosen for the boule. Contrast this to the modern US, where the average citizen goes to the polls once or maybe twice per year (if at all), and the actual lawmaking is done by a very small number of people. Each US Representative comes from a district of around 750,000 people, and two Senators are elected for a state that might have over 5 million. The state of Ohio has 132 members of the General Assembly for a population of nearly 12 million. Even in the small city in which I live, there are 7 city councilors for over 30,000 people. In my 52 years, I have only ever met a handful of people that were directly involved in government. To be sure, the average US resident has nowhere near either the opportunity or responsibility to be involved in government as a Golden Age Athenian.

While we don’t have man-on-the-street type accounts that specifically tell us just how involved and knowledgeable the typical citizen was, we do have many records of speeches given to the assembly by men such as Pericles and Demosthenes. These certainly do not mince words and have not been dumbed down as a modern speech would be. We also have contemporary plays which depict the involvement of citizens in government. It is safe, I think, to say that the typical Athenian knew more about the governance of Athens than the typical American does about any level of their government. (There are certainly exceptions. I have a neighbor that goes to every local city council meeting and frequently speaks there, but she is definitely an outlier. I can name my US representative, both Senators, and the state governor. I am an oddity in that I know who both my state rep and senator are. I couldn’t name more than 2 people on the city council with a gun to my head.)

With a relatively small population in the tens of thousands, the typical Athenian was certainly more involved in government, and stood an excellent chance of being chosen for the boule. The original question asks if he would have been better suited to grasp issues in government than a modern citizen. He was certainly confronted with these issues more, and expected to weigh in on them.

Additional reading:

An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis Mogens Hansen and Thomas Neilsen, 2004