A citizen-juror in ancient Athens who was part of the Heliaea, a large popular court that judged legal cases.
From Greek 'Heliaea,' the name of the Athenian popular court, likely derived from 'helios' (sun) because it may have met in the sun. The suffix '-ast' means a practitioner or participant.
Ancient Athens invented democracy by having ordinary citizens judge trials instead of professional judges—heliasts were essentially the first citizen-jurors in history, sometimes numbering in the hundreds for a single case!
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