Ostracism (Greek: ὀστρακισμός, ostrakismos) was a procedure under the Athenian democracy in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens
for ten years. While some instances clearly expressed popular anger at
the citizen, ostracism was often used preemptively. It was used as a way
of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to the state or
potential tyrant. The word "ostracism" continues to be used for various cases of social shunning.
Procedure
The name is derived from the ostraka (singular ostrakon, ὄστρακον), referring to the pottery shards that were used as voting tokens. Broken pottery, abundant and virtually free, served as a kind of scrap paper (in contrast to papyrus, which was imported from Egypt as a high-quality writing surface, and was thus too costly to be disposable).
Each year the Athenians were asked in the assembly whether they wished to hold an ostracism. The question was put in the sixth of the ten months used for state business under the democracy (January or February in the modern Gregorian Calendar). If they voted "yes", then an ostracism would be held two months later. In a section of the agora set off and suitably barriered,
citizens gave the name of those they wished to be ostracised to a
scribe, as many of them were illiterate, and they then scratched the
name on pottery shards, and deposited them in urns. The presiding officials counted the ostraka submitted and sorted the names into separate piles. The person whose pile contained the most ostraka would be banished, provided that an additional criterion of a quorum was met, about which there are two principal sources:
- According to Plutarch, the ostracism was considered valid if the total number of votes cast was at least 6000.
- According to a fragment of Philochorus, the "winner" of the ostracism must have obtained at least 6000 votes.
Plutarch's evidence for a quorum of 6000, on a priori
grounds a necessity for ostracism also per the account of Philochorus,
accords with the number required for grants of citizenship in the
following century and is generally preferred.
The person nominated had ten days to leave the city. If he attempted to return, the penalty was death.
Notably, the property of the man banished was not confiscated and there
was no loss of status. After the ten years, he was allowed to return
without stigma. It was possible for the assembly to recall an ostracised
person ahead of time; before the Persian invasion of 479 BC, an amnesty was declared under which at least two ostracised leaders—Pericles' father Xanthippus and Aristides 'the Just'—are known to have returned. Similarly, Cimon, ostracised in 461 BC, was recalled during an emergency.
Distinction from other Athenian democratic processes
Ostracism was crucially different from Athenian law
at the time; there was no charge, and no defence could be mounted by
the person expelled. The two stages of the procedure ran in the reverse
order from that used under almost any trial system—here it is as if a
jury are first asked "Do you want to find someone guilty?", and subsequently asked "Whom do you wish to accuse?".
Equally out of place in a judicial framework is perhaps the
institution's most peculiar feature: that it can take place at most once
a year, and only for one person. In this it resembles the Greek pharmakos or scapegoat—though in contrast, pharmakos generally ejected a lowly member of the community.
A further distinction between these two modes (and one not
obvious from a modern perspective) is that ostracism was an automatic
procedure that required no initiative from any individual, with the vote
simply occurring on the wish of the electorate—a diffuse exercise of
power. By contrast, an Athenian trial needed the initiative of a
particular citizen-prosecutor. While prosecution often led to a
counterattack (or was a counterattack itself), no such response was
possible in the case of ostracism as responsibility lay with the polity
as a whole. In contrast to a trial, ostracism generally reduced
political tension rather than increased it.
Although ten years of exile would have been difficult for an
Athenian to face, it was relatively mild in comparison to the kind of
sentences inflicted by courts; when dealing with politicians held to be
acting against the interests of the people, Athenian juries could
inflict very severe penalties such as death, unpayably large fines,
confiscation of property, permanent exile and loss of citizens' rights
through atimia. Further, the elite Athenians who suffered ostracism were rich or noble men who had connections or xenoi in the wider Greek world and who, unlike genuine exiles, were able to access their income in Attica from abroad. In Plutarch,
following as he does the anti-democratic line common in elite sources,
the fact that people might be recalled early appears to be another
example of the inconsistency of majoritarianism
that was characteristic of Athenian democracy. However, ten years of
exile usually resolved whatever had prompted the expulsion. Ostracism
was simply a pragmatic measure; the concept of serving out the full
sentence did not apply as it was a preventative measure, not a punitive
one.
One curious window on the practicalities of ostracism comes from the cache of 190 ostraka discovered dumped in a well next to the acropolis. From the handwriting, they appear to have been written by fourteen individuals and bear the name of Themistocles, ostracised before 471 BC and were evidently meant for distribution to voters. This was not necessarily evidence of electoral fraud
(being no worse than modern voting instruction cards), but their being
dumped in the well may suggest that their creators wished to hide them.
If so, these ostraka provide an example of organized groups attempting
to influence the outcome of ostracisms. The two-month gap between the
first and second phases would have easily allowed for such a campaign.
There is another interpretation, however, according to which
these ostraka were prepared beforehand by enterprising businessmen who
offered them for sale to citizens who could not easily inscribe the
desired names for themselves or who simply wished to save time.
The two-month gap is a key feature in the institution, much as in elections under modern liberal democracies.
It first prevented the candidate for expulsion being chosen out of
immediate anger, although an Athenian general such as Cimon would have
not wanted to lose a battle the week before such a second vote. Secondly, it opened up a period for discussion (or perhaps agitation), whether informally in daily talk or public speeches before the Athenian assembly or Athenian courts.*
In this process a consensus, or rival consensuses, might emerge.
Further, in that time of waiting, ordinary Athenian citizens must have
felt a certain power over the greatest members of their city;
conversely, the most prominent citizens had an incentive to worry how
their social inferiors regarded them.
Period of operation
Ostracism
was not in use throughout the whole period of Athenian democracy (circa
506–322 BC), but only occurred in the fifth century BC. The standard
account, found in Aristotle's Constitution of the Athenians 22.3, attributes the establishment to Cleisthenes,
a pivotal reformer in the creation of the democracy. In that case,
ostracism would have been in place from around 506 BC. The first victim
of the practice, however, was not expelled until 487 BC—nearly 20 years
later. Over the course of the next 60 years some 12 or more individuals
followed him. The list may not be complete, but there is good reason to
believe the Athenians did not feel the need to eject someone in this way
every year. The list of known ostracisms runs as follows:
Ostraca from 482 BC
- 487 Hipparchos son of Charmos, a relative of the tyrant Peisistratos
- 486 Megacles son of Hippocrates; Cleisthenes' nephew (possibly ostracised twice)
- 485 Kallixenos nephew of Cleisthenes and head of the Alcmaeonids at the time (not known for certain)
- 484 Xanthippus son of Ariphron; Pericles' father
- 482 Aristides son of Lysimachus
- 471 Themistocles son of Neocles (last possible year)
- 461 Cimon son of Miltiades
- 460 Alcibiades son of Kleinias (possibly ostracised twice)
- 457 Menon son of Meneclides [less certain]
- 442 Thucydides son of Melesias
- 440s Callias son of Didymos [less certain]
- 440s Damon son of Damonides [less certain]
- 416 Hyperbolus son of Antiphanes (±1 year)
Around 12,000 political ostraka have been excavated in the Athenian agora and in the Kerameikos.
The second victim, Cleisthenes' nephew Megacles, is named by 4647 of
these, but for a second undated ostracism not listed above. The known
ostracisms seem to fall into three distinct phases: the 480s BC,
mid-century 461–443 BC and finally the years 417–415: this matches
fairly well with the clustering of known expulsions, although
Themistocles before 471 may count as an exception. This suggests that
ostracism fell in and out of fashion.
The last known ostracism was that of Hyperbolus in circa 417 BC. There is no sign of its use after the Peloponnesian War, when democracy was restored after the oligarchic coup of the Thirty
had collapsed in 403 BC. However, while ostracism was not an active
feature of the fourth-century version of democracy, it remained; the
question was put to the assembly each year, but they did not wish to
hold one.
Purpose
Because
ostracism was carried out by thousands of people over many decades of
an evolving political situation and culture, it did not serve a single
monolithic purpose. Observations can be made about the outcomes, as well
as the initial purpose for which it was created.
The first rash of people ostracised in the decade after the defeat of the first Persian invasion at Marathon in 490 BC were all related or connected to the tyrant Peisistratos, who had controlled Athens for 36 years up to 527 BC. After his son Hippias was deposed with Spartan
help in 510 BC, the family sought refuge with the Persians, and nearly
twenty years later Hippias landed with their invasion force at Marathon.
Tyranny and Persian aggression were paired threats facing the new democratic regime at Athens, and ostracism was used against both.
Tyranny and democracy had arisen at Athens out of clashes between
regional and factional groups organised around politicians, including
Cleisthenes. As a reaction, in many of its features the democracy strove
to reduce the role of factions as the focus of citizen loyalties.
Ostracism, too, may have been intended to work in the same direction: by
temporarily decapitating a faction, it could help to defuse
confrontations that threatened the order of the State.
In later decades when the threat of tyranny was remote, ostracism
seems to have been used as a way to decide between radically opposed
policies. For instance, in 443 BC Thucydides, son of Melesias (not to be confused with the historian of the same name) was ostracised. He led an aristocratic opposition to Athenian imperialism and in particular to Pericles' building program on the acropolis, which was funded by taxes created for the wars against the Achaemenid Empire. By expelling Thucydides the Athenian people sent a clear message about the direction of Athenian policy. Similar but more controversial claims have been made about the ostracism of Cimon in 461 BC.
The motives of individual voting citizens cannot, of course, be
known. Many of the surviving ostraka name people otherwise unattested.
They may well be just someone the submitter disliked, and voted for in
moment of private spite. As such, it may be seen as a secular, civic
variant of Athenian curse tablets, studied in scholarly literature under the Latin name defixiones,
where small dolls were wrapped in lead sheets written with curses and
then buried, sometimes stuck through with nails for good measure.
In one anecdote about Aristides, known as "the Just", who was
ostracised in 482, an illiterate citizen, not recognising him, came up
to ask him to write the name Aristides on his ostrakon. When Aristides
asked why, the man replied it was because he was sick of hearing him
being called "the Just".
Perhaps merely the sense that someone had become too arrogant or
prominent was enough to get someone's name onto an ostrakon. Ostracism
rituals could have also been an attempt to dissuade people from covertly
committing murder or assassination for intolerable or emerging
individuals of power so as to create an open arena or outlet for those
harboring primal frustrations and urges or political motivations. The
solution for murder, in Gregory H. Padowitz's theory, would then be
"ostracism" which would ultimately be beneficial for all parties—the
unfortunate individual would live and get a second chance and society
would be spared the ugliness of feuds, civil war, political jams and
murder.
Fall into disuse
The last ostracism, that of Hyperbolos in or near 417 BC, is elaborately narrated by Plutarch in three separate lives: Hyperbolos is pictured urging the people to expel one of his rivals, but they, Nicias and Alcibiades,
laying aside their own hostility for a moment, use their combined
influence to have him ostracised instead. According to Plutarch, the
people then become disgusted with ostracism and abandoned the procedure
forever.
In part ostracism lapsed as a procedure at the end of the fifth century because it was replaced by the graphe paranomon,
a regular court action under which a much larger number of politicians
might be targeted, instead of just one a year as with ostracism, and
with greater severity. But it may already have come to seem like an
anachronism as factional alliances organised around important men became
increasingly less significant in the later period, and power was more
specifically located in the interaction of the individual speaker with
the power of the assembly and the courts. The threat to the democratic
system in the late fifth century came not from tyranny but from oligarchic coups, threats of which became prominent after two brief seizures of power, in 411 BC by "the Four Hundred" and in 404 BC by "the Thirty",
which were not dependent on single powerful individuals. Ostracism was
not an effective defence against the oligarchic threat and it was not so
used.
Analogues
Other cities are known to have set up forms of ostracism on the Athenian model, namely Megara, Miletos, Argos and Syracuse, Sicily. In the last of these it was referred to as petalismos, because the names were written on olive leaves. Little is known about these institutions. Furthermore, pottery shards identified as ostraka have been found in Chersonesos Taurica,
leading historians to the conclusion that a similar institution existed
there as well, in spite of the silence of the ancient records on that
count.
A similar modern practice is the recall election, in which the electoral body removes its representation from an elected officer.
Unlike under modern voting procedures, the Athenians did not have to adhere to a strict format for the inscribing of ostraka. Many extant ostraka
show that it was possible to write expletives, short epigrams or
cryptic injunctions beside the name of the candidate without
invalidating the vote. For example:
- Kallixenes, son of Aristonimos, "the traitor"
- Archen, "lover of foreigners"
- Agasias, "the donkey"
- Megacles, "the adulterer"
Modern usage
The social psychologist Kipling Williams
has written extensively on ostracism as a modern phenomenon. Williams
defines ostracism as "any act or acts of ignoring and excluding of an
individual or groups by an individual or a group".
Williams suggests that the most common form of ostracism in a modern
context is refusing to communicate with a person. By refusing to
communicate with a person, that person is effectively ignored and
excluded.
The advent of the internet has made ostracism much easier to engage in,
and conversely much more difficult to detect, with Williams and others
describing this online ostracism as "cyberostracism". In email
communication, in particular, it is relatively easy for a person or
organization to ignore and exclude a specific person, through simply
refusing to communicate with the person. Karen Douglas thus describes
"unanswered emails" as constituting a form of cyberostracism, and similarly Eric Wesselmann and Kipling Williams describe "ignored emails" as a form of cyberostracism.
Williams and his colleagues have charted responses to ostracism
in some five thousand cases, and found two distinctive patterns of
response. The first is increased group-conformity, in a quest for re-admittance; the second is to become more provocative and hostile to the group, seeking attention rather than acceptance.
As it researched as well by many social psychologists, (Williams,
2007) research has demonstrated that being rejected from groups can
have profound effects on a person (Smith, E. R., Macki, D. M., &
Claypool, H. M., (2014) social psychology. Psychology Press. p. 409)
Whistleblowing
Research suggests that ostracism is a common reprisal strategy used by organizations in response to whistleblowing. Kipling Williams, in a survey on US whistleblowers, found that 100 percent reported post-whistleblowing ostracism.
Alexander Brown similarly found that post-whistleblowing ostracism is a
common response, and indeed describes ostracism as form of "covert"
reprisal, as it is normally so difficult to identify and investigate.
Qahr and ashti
Qahr and ashti is a culture-specific Iranian form of personal shunning, most frequently of another family member in Iran.
While modern Western concepts of ostracism are based upon enforcing
conformity within a societally-recognized group, qahr is a private
(batin), family-oriented affair of conflict or display of anger that is never disclosed to the public at large, as to do would be a breach of social etiquette.
Qahr is avoidance of a lower-ranking family member who has
committed a perceived insult. It is one of several ritualized social
customs of Iranian culture.
Gozasht means 'tolerance, understanding and a desire or willingness to forgive' and is an essential componant of Qahr and Ashti for both psychological needs of closure and cognition, as well as a culturally accepted source for practicing necessary religious requirements of tawbah (repentance, see Koran 2:222) and du'a (supplication).
