davis.athenian democracy vs. todays representative democracy

How would an Athenian of the 5th Century BCE criticize our present-day representative democracy? (or.... how would they approve of it?)

There are many things the Athenians could say that are problematic about our representative democracy today. For the Athenians, all eligible citizens get a chance to be a part of the government and get a say first-handedly, because free male citizens rotated every two years. Not only did this make government not feel so far away to the citizens, like it would with representative democracy, but this helped limit peoples' power so they wouldn't get carried away. They also wanted more people to have a chance to have a political position at one point in their lives. The more people making decisions, the larger and more sophisticated the government could be. If just one person represents all votes, there would not be a distribution of power and one person in power could be dangerous, such as if  an untrustworthy person was to represent the ideas of the people. Another shaky thing about a representative democracy is that it is mainly based on majority rule. This could slip into a popularity contest, and majority rule could result in a bad decision as easily as a good one.

Seeing these disadvantages must make our representative democracy seem inferior to the Athenian democracy, although there are many pros that the Athenians would likely approve of in the present day democracy. Mainly, our system is more organized. It is much easier to offer a large population a more convenient way to get ideas across with a short vote rather than to interrupt  jobs constantly to rotate. Then, the few congressmen who are chosen to represent the ideas can get paid, so it becomes a full time job rather than an interruption from a job they continue to have. Not only does this interrupt the flow of the citizen's job, but it interrupts the flow of the government. Once the new council member gets used the change and catches up with the decisions, they just have to rotate again. Our modern society now lets people over 18 years of age of all genders and races  vote, rather than the Athenian democracy which only lets free men over 30 years old, whose mothers and fathers both were Athenian, vote. The men who were not free, the slaves, would manage the jobs while the men were gone. This reliance on slaves was the only way the men could leave and become a council member for the two years of their rotation, but was very unjust.