(στραγγορία, from στράγγος, a tile or shell), a peculiar institution employed by the Athenian people for banishing from the state for a limited period such persons as were deemed dangerous to the republic either from their wealth or personal influence. (Aristotle, Polit. iii. 8.) It is said to have originated with Cleisthenes after the expulsion of the Pisistratide, and differed from the ordinary banishment (ἀπόλησις) in allowing the proscribed to enjoy their estates in a fixed residence, and to return after a term of ten years, subsequently reduced to five. (See EXILE.) Ostracism involved no dishonour, and was so far from casting any taint upon the reputation of a citizen that it was generally regarded as in reality a public compliment paid to conspicuous merit. That some other mode of acknowledging worth would have been preferred by public Ostracism, men is likely enough; yet in the opinion of Mr Grote, who is ingenious in his defence of the policy of ostracism, this institution was necessary as a means of awakening in the multitude, and especially in ambitious men, "that rare and difficult sentiment which we may term a constitutional morality." (History of Greece, vol. iv. p. 205.) It was a general principle of the Athenian constitution that "no law shall be made against any single citizen without the same being made against all Athenian citizens, unless it shall so seem good to 6000 citizens voting secretly;" and under this general provision ostracism was a particular case. Before the vote of ostracism could be taken, the senate and the public assembly had to meet in the sixth prytany of the year, and deliberate upon the propriety of exercising the measure at that particular time. If their decision was in the affirmative, a day was named when the Athenian people assembled in the market-place according to their ten tribes. The agora was raised round, with an entrance left for each tribe, through which the citizens passed, and cast each a shell or potsherd (στρατός), containing the name of the individual designed to be banished, into a cask or vessel which stood in the centre to receive the suffrages. At the close of the day the votes were summed up under the superintendence of the nine archons and the senate; and if any one person was found to have 6000 votes against him, that person was banished; but if the hostile votes did not amount to that number the proceeding ended in nothing. When one happened to be ostracized, he required to depart from Attica in ten days for a period of ten years; this was the sum of the penalty.

With respect to the number of votes necessary to banish a citizen, Plutarch alleges that it was not necessary that 6000 should be given against one individual, but simply that the sum total should not be under that number. (Aristeides, c. 7.) This view is likewise supported by Böckh and Wachsmuth; but Grote, following Philochorus, Pollux, the scholiast on Aristophanes, Platner, and Heumann, maintains that the former opinion is the only one consistent with the design of Cleisthenes in instituting ostracism for the preservation of the nascent democracy.

In order the more thoroughly to render ostracism effective in protecting the constitution, and the better to hinder it from being diverted to any other purpose, whether of private revenge or of the intrigue of faction, Cleisthenes ordained that if the process of ostracizing were opened at all, every citizen of Athens, without a single exception, should be exposed to its sentence, and run the risk of its penalty. Thus the tutelary influence of this privilegeum, as the Romans would have called it, not merely operated when it was actually employed, but the knowledge of its existence is supposed to have exercised a restraining effect upon public leaders or men of ambitious temper. "Care was taken," says Grote, "to divest the ostracism of all painful consequence except what was inseparable from exile; and this is not one of the least proofs of the wisdom with which it was devised. Most certainly it never deprived the public of candidates for political influence; and when we consider the small amount of individual evil which it inflicted,—evil, too, diminished, in the cases of Kimon and Aristeides, by a reactionary sentiment which augmented their subsequent popularity after their return,—two remarks will be quite sufficient to offer in the way of justification.

First, it completely produced its intended effect; for the democracy grew up from infancy to manhood without a single attempt to overthrow it by force; a result upon which no reflecting contemporary of Cleisthenes could have ventured to calculate. Next, through such tranquil working of the democratic forms, a constitutional morality, quite sufficiently complete, was produced among the leading Athenians to enable the people after a certain time to dispense with that exceptional security which the ostracism offered. To the nascent democracy it was absolutely indispensable; to the growing yet militant democracy it was salutary; but the full-grown democracy both could and did stand without it. The ostracism passed upon Hyperbolus about ninety years after Cleisthenes, was the last occasion of its employment." (Hist. of Greece, vol. iv., p. 211.) This demagogue was as low in character as he was humble in birth; and the Athenians, thinking their own dignity, and that of the institution of ostracism, alike degraded by prescribing such a worthless individual, resolved to put an end to the practice. During the reign of ostracism in Athens, we read of about ten different persons as having been banished by that political measure. Among these are to be found some of the most illustrious names that that illustrious city ever knew. Witness Themistocles, Aristeides, Cimon, and Alcibiades. The story of Aristeides, "at all times just but when he signed the shell," recording his own name upon the tablet at the request of the illiterate peasant, is told by Plutarch (Arist., c. 7), and is well known.

With the exception of the statement of Aristotle in his Politics (iii. 8), respecting the abuse of ostracism for party purposes, we have no means of judging of its administration at Argos, Miletus, and Megara, the other democratical states in which the system of the shell prevailed. The Petalism (πετάλιον, a leaf) of the Syracusans was borrowed from the ostracism of the Athenians, which it closely resembled, except that the names were written on olive leaves instead of potsherds, and the term of banishment was only for five years. It should not be omitted, however, especially in connection with the views of Mr Grote, that petalism seems to have proved self-destructive in Syracuse. The fear of this "humbling of the pride and hopes of the exile" deterred the best men among the citizens from taking any part in public affairs, and, as a necessary consequence, elevated the unscrupulous and incompetent to power. Misgovernment and political degeneracy was the obvious result; and petalism had to be repealed, b.c. 452. (See Diodorus, xi. 87.) In reference to this significant fact Grote offers the reflection, that "we cannot safely infer, that because the ostracism worked on the whole well at Athens, it must necessarily have worked well in other states;" a remark quite just in itself, but nevertheless laying bare the weakness of the system; and by no means calculated either to recommend the policy of its adoption or to vindicate the superior wisdom of its institution. Plutarch affirms that ostracism arose from the inherent envy and jealousy of a democracy (Themist. 22, and Arist. 7); and the majority of critics, both in ancient and modern times, have been all but unanimous in denouncing it. And if Grote is chargeable with carrying his vindication of ostracism too far, he has at least the merit of placing in a full and clear light the peculiar excellences in the system which doubtless recommended its adoption to the enthusiastic republicans of Athens.