Ostracism
Ostracism (Greek: ὀστρακισμός, ostrakismos) was an Athenian democratic procedure in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years.
The term "ostracism" is derived from the pottery shards that were used as voting tokens, called ostraka (singular: ostrakon ὄστρακον) in Greek.
[1] 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 too costly to be disposable).
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).
[5][4] It was possible for the assembly to recall an ostracized 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.
The standard account, found in Aristotle's Constitution of the Athenians 22.3,[20] attributes the establishment to Cleisthenes, a pivotal reformer in the creation of the democracy.
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.
[25] A further distinction between these two modes (and 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.
When dealing with politicians held to be acting against the interests of the people, Athenian juries could inflict severe penalties such as death,[28] unpayably large fines, confiscation of property, permanent exile, or loss of citizens' rights through atimia.
[4] 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 the anti-democratic thought common in elite sources, people might be recalled early, thus being an example of the inconsistency of majoritarianism characteristic of Athenian democracy.
[29] 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.
[4] 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.
[citation needed] 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.
It 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.
Ostracism may have been intended to work in the same to similar ends: by temporarily decapitating a faction, it could help defuse confrontations that threatened the order of the State.
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.
Ostracism rituals could have also been an attempt to dissuade people from covertly committing murder or assassination of intolerable or emerging individuals of power so as to create an open arena or outlet for those harbouring primal frustrations and urges or political motivations.
Other cities are known to have set up forms of ostracism on the Athenian model, namely Megara, Miletos, Argos and Syracuse, Sicily.
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.
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.
[37] Williams suggests that the most common form of ostracism is silent treatment,[37]: 2 wherein refusing to communicate with a person effectively ignores and excludes them.
[49] While modern Western concepts of ostracism are based upon enforcing conformity within a societally-recognized group, qahr is a private (batini), family-orientated affair of conflict or display of anger[50] that is never disclosed to the public at large, as to do so would be a breach of social etiquette.
[49] Gozasht means 'tolerance, understanding and a desire or willingness to forgive'[52] and is an essential component of Qahr and Ashti[52] for the 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)[53] and du'a (supplication).
