Остракизм в Афинах

As far as we can judge, performances of comedies at Dionysiac festivals played especially important part in propaganda campaigns before ostracisms. This idea has already been suggested (by S. Brenne), but only as a guess), and we tried to substantiate it by confronting invectives on ostraka with invectives in comedies. The comparison proved to be fruitful and revealed a number of more or less close correspondences and parallels, which in most cases can scarcely be explained by pure coincidence. The same propaganda cliches that circulated in the public opinion were reflected both on ballots for ostracism and in the works of comedy playwrights. It is natural, as fifth-century B.C. Attic comedy had strongly pronounced political character.

21. The bulk of the monograph is completed by Chapter V «On the cessation of using ostracism». In its section 1 «The last ostrakophoria and reasons for falling of ostracism into disuse» we raise the question: why the ostracism of 415 B.C., as a result of which the demagogue Hyperbolus was exiled, was the last one, and because of what factors Athenians after that ceased to use ostracism in the course of internal political struggle?

Both in ancient and modern scholarly literature numerous explanations for that fact have been suggested. Almost all such explanations, as far as one can judge, have the right to existence and contain some grain of truth, sometimes very considerable one. But each of them emphasizes one-sidedly some this or that factor to the detriment of all others. Accordingly, the fullest understanding and the most conclusive solution of the problem can be reached only through combination of existing explanations and not through opposition of them to each other. The point is that the cessation of using ostracism was conditioned not by any singular cause but by the whole complex of various factors, which operated at different times, in different degree and in different combination.

Just after banishment of Hyperbolus an opinion won in the Athenian citizen body, that the ostracism had failed to accomplish its proper function and to take away the political tension. In addition, the victim of ostracism unexpectedly appeared to be a non-noble demagogue, a person unworthy of such measure. Besides all other things, ostracism proved to be an unreliable weapon for those who used it, like a kind of «boomerang»: Hyperbolus, who had initiated the ostrakophoria, himself became the victim, and subsequently that fact made politicians be cautious. The circumstances mentioned above must have prevented from using ostracism during several years, but they did not yet guarantee final rejection of the institution. Later on, it was already other factors that operated: crucial deterioration of general external and internal situation in late fifth-century B.C. Athens, during the last period of the Peloponnesian war; lack of cases when bipolar opposition of political leaders took place, that is cases when, as we have shown above, Athenians usually resorted to ostracism; contraction to minimal figures of the circle of old aristocracy, whose members were potential victims of the institution; absence from the polis of a considerable percentage of citizens (because of continuous hostilities), which did not allow to provide necessary quantity of voters. Still later on, in the fourth century B.C., notwithstanding obvious stabilization of the situation, ostracism did not revive, for the general character of political life gradually underwent fundamental changes as compared with the previous century.

22. The new political reality required new means that were from that moment on used more intensely in the struggle of factions. We mean legal actions of political character, which are considered in section 2 «After ostracism». However, even after de facto cessation of ostrakophoriai the law on ostracism nominally continued to act. Ostracism, even when in disuse, was in the fourth century B.C. a weapon of the demos. That weapon was «in sheath», but it was yearly demonstrated to the political elite.

But the main and the most efficient means of political struggle in Late Classical Athens became legal actions of certain kinds (in particular, the socalled grapheparanomon). They had some common features with ostracism, such as personal orientation and competitive character. However, they differed from ostracism in that they presented a mechanism less dangerous and destructive, both for the initiator of voting and for its potential «target». In general, such trials eventually adopted some functions of ostracism and also served for stabilization of internal political situation, just as ostracism did before them.