Остракизм в Афинах

— the author suggests new interpretations and solutions for a number of problems: historical roots of Athenian ostracism, its chronological and substantial relation to analogous procedures in other Greek cities, reconstruction of wording in the law that introduced ostracism, means of political propaganda during the periods of ostracism, the dates of some ostrakophoriai, factors that favoured cessation of ostracism.

Therefore, both statement of questions and principal conclusions are new in scholarly respect.

5. The monograph consists of the introduction, surveys of sources and literature on ostracism, five chapters that are subdivided into sections, the conclusion, six appendices (three textual excurses, collection of narrative testimonies on ostracism in Russian translation, statistical catalogue of ostraka, and chronological table), bibliography and a list of abbreviations.

In the Introduction the author grounds the choice of the research theme and its importance, emphasizes the subject, purposes and tasks of the study, its structure and methodological base. In addition, a preliminary working definition of ostracism is given.

6. Then there follows a section on «Source base of the study». First, the narrative tradition on ostracism is considered. This tradition (ancient and continuing it Byzantine) may be characterized in the following way. The source complex in question is very extensive in all respects: chronological (it embraces texts from 5 century B.C. to 15 century A.D., that is, stretches for two millenniums), genre and thematic (we have works of historians, philosophers, philologists, orators, poets, dramatists, on the whole representatives of virtually all genres of ancient literature), and, what is especially significant, in substantial respect: it treats in one or another degree of most key problems of ostracism history.

We included 181 texts by 68 writers in the collection of testimonies that is supplemented to the book. Naturally, among numerous authors who refer to ostracism there are the most important ones: they preserved particularly valuable information. Of the Classical Greek writers, historians Herodotus, Thucydides, Androtion and Theopompus, playwrights Aristophanes and Plato, the orator Andocides, philosophers Aristotle and Theophrastus should be mentioned; of the Hellenistic and Roman ones — historians Philochorus and Diodorus, biographers Nepos and Plutarch, lexicographers Pollux, Harpocration and others. Among the latest sources, belonging to Late Antiquity and Byzantine times, we should mention anonymous scholiasts and authors of glossaries (Hesychius, the patriarch Photius, the Suda and others), who rest upon works of earlier writers that are by now lost.

So narrative sources in our possession are representative for the range of problems we are dealing with. They allow to exercise a full-scale investigation and to come to responsible and reasoned conclusions. At the same time, the complex of those sources is not boundless, and there is in fact no hope of any considerable increase. However, this circumstance can be also added to positive factors that favour successful work. Of course, it is a pity that much is lost, but now we have a clearly outlined circle of testimonies, and this allows not to "sink" in an immense sea of facts and opinions.

On the other hand, there are factors that impede research. Fragmentary character of the tradition on ostracism should be mentioned. Unfortunately, that tradition came to us by no means in all its links, and it has many gaps. In the present condition of sources, we cannot draw full and comprehensive picture of haw Greek notions about ostracism were developing. On some details of ostracism history we have no or almost no information; on others we have some information, but it is too general and scanty; on still others information in our possession does not seem to be quite authentic. Therefore, we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that on some aspects of our topic only hypothetical judgments are possible, which do not claim to be final and unreserved and which may always be questioned. Fortunately, it does not apply to most important and fundamental aspects of ostracism, its essence, functioning and evolution; such aspects are elucidated by tradition, as a rule, more or less sufficiently.