OSTRACISM, in Grecian antiquity, denotes the banishment of such persons as by their merit or their influence gave umbrage to the people of Athens, lest they should attempt any thing against the public liberty. This punishment was called ostracism, from the Greek word ὀστράκον, which properly signifies a shell; but when applied to this object, it is used to signify the billet upon which the Athenians wrote the names of the citizens they intended to banish. The learned are divided with regard to the substance of which this billet was formed. Some insist that it was a small stone, or a piece of brick; others hold that it was a piece of bark; and others assert that it was a
shell. The word admits of all these interpretations; but what determines its true sense, is the epithet applied to it by ancient authors, signifying "the punishment of potter's clay;" and this expression seems to prove, that the word ὀστράκον, when applied on this occasion, signified a "piece of baked earth, in the form of a shell;" an idea which the Latin authors had undoubtedly in their heads when they translated it by testula. The ancients are likewise divided respecting the time at which ostracism was instituted, but they all agree that the person who moved the law was its first victim. As to the name of its patron, and the time of its establishment, however, they differ extremely. Many are of opinion that ostracism originated at a very remote period in the history of Athens.
But however this may be, the punishment of ostracism was inflicted by the Athenians when their liberty was believed to be in danger. If, for instance, jealousy or ambition had sowed discord amongst the chiefs of the republic, and if different parties were formed, which threatened some revolution in the state, the people assembled to propose measures proper to be taken for preventing the consequences of a division which in the end might be fatal to freedom. Ostracism was the remedy to which they usually had recourse upon these occasions; and the consultations of the people generally terminated in a decree, by which a day was fixed for a particular assembly, when they were to proceed to the sentence of ostracism. The persons who were threatened with banishment then omitted no assiduity or art calculated to gain them the favour of the people. They made harangues to evince their innocence, and the great injustice which would be done them if they were banished. They solicited, in person, the interest of every citizen; and all their party exerted themselves on their behalf. They also procured informers to vilify the chiefs of the opposite faction. Some time before the meeting of the assembly, a wooden enclosure was raised in the forum, with ten doors, that is, with as many as there were tribes in the republic; and when the appointed day came, the citizens of each tribe entered at their respective door, and threw into the middle of the enclosure the small brick upon which the citizen's name was written whose banishment they voted. The archons and the senate presided at this assembly, and counted the billets. He who was condemned by 6000 of his fellow-citizens was obliged to quit the city within ten days; for 6000 voices, at least, were requisite to banish an Athenian by the ostracism.
The Athenians, without doubt, foresaw the inconveniences to which this law was subject; but they sometimes preferred exposing the innocent to an unjust censure, to living in continual alarms. Yet as they were sensible that the injustice of confounding virtue and vice would be too flagrant, they softened, as much as they could, the rigour of ostracism. It was not aggravated by the circumstances which were most dishonourable and shocking in the ordinary mode of exile, and the goods of those who were banished by ostracism were not confiscated. Such persons enjoyed the produce of their effects in the places to which they were banished, and their banishment was only for a certain time. But in common banishment, the goods of the exiles were always confiscated, and no hopes were given them of ever returning to Athens.
The scholiast of Aristophanes informs us of a third difference between ostracism and the common banishment, namely, that a particular place of retirement was assigned to those who were banished by ostracism, which was not appointed to the other exiles. There is reason, however, to suspect the truth of this observation. Themistocles was certainly not limited in his banishment. That great man, as we are told by Thucydides, though his chief residence was at Argos, travelled over all the Peloponnese. This punishment, far from conveying any stigma of infam-
my, became, by the objects on whom it was inflicted, a proof of merit. Aristides the sophist, in his second declamation against the Gorgias of Plato, justly observes, that ostracism was not an effect of the vindictive spirit of the people against those whom it condemned; that the law, whether good or bad, was only meant to prune the luxuriant growth of transcendent merit; that it condemned to a banishment of ten years only those illustrious men who were accused of being exalted far above other citizens by their conspicuous virtue; and that none of that public indignation was shown to those exiled by ostracism, which commonly breaks out against criminals.
Such were the mitigations with which this law was introduced amongst the Athenians; and from them we perceive that the people were sensible of all the inconveniences to which it was subject. They were indeed too enlightened not to foresee that in many instances it might produce injustice; that if, in some respects, it would be favourable to liberty, in others it would be its enemy, by condemning citizens without allowing them a previous defence, and by making a capricious and envious people arbiters of the fate of great men; and that it might even become pernicious to the state, by depriving it of its best subjects, and rendering the administration of public affairs an odious employment to men of talents and virtue.