On this hill all citizens, 18,000 in the Golden Age, sat as the Popular Assembly approving or rejecting the laws "tightly crowded together," hence the name Pnyx. From the rostrum cut into the rock the orators — Solon, Themistocles, Pericles, and Demosthenes — but also a much larger number of demagogues harangued the Athenians in the first attempt at direct democracy.