The Historians' History of the World 03

It was, in truth, a product altogether of fear and insecurity, on the part both of the democracy and its best friends—fear perfectly well-grounded, and only appearing needless because the precautions taken prevented attack. So soon as the diffusion of a constitutional morality had placed the mass of the citizens above all serious fear of an aggressive usurper the ostracism was discontinued. And doubtless the feeling, that it might safely be dispensed with, must have been strengthened by the long ascendancy of Pericles, by the spectacle of the greatest statesman whom Athens ever produced, acting steadily within the limits of the constitution; as well as by the ill-success of his two opponents, Cimon and Thucydides,—aided by numerous partisans and by the great comic writers, at a period when comedy was a power in the state such as it has never been before or since,—in their attempts to get him ostracised. They succeeded in fanning up the ordinary antipathy of the citizens towards philosophers, so far as to procure the ostracism of his friend and teacher Damon: but Pericles himself, to repeat the complaint of his bitter enemy, the comic poet Cratinus, “was out of the reach of the oyster-shell.” If Pericles was not conceived to be dangerous to the constitution, none of his successors were at all likely to be so regarded. Damon and Hyperbolus were the two last persons ostracised: both of them were cases, and the only cases, of an unequivocal abuse of the institution, because, whatever the grounds of displeasure against them may have been, it is impossible to conceive either of them as menacing to the state—whereas all the other known sufferers were men of such position and power, that the six or eight thousand citizens who inscribed each name on the shell, or at least a large proportion of them, may well have done so under the most conscientious belief that they were guarding the constitution against real danger. Such a change in the character of the persons ostracised plainly evinces that the ostracism had become dissevered from that genuine patriotic prudence which originally rendered it both legitimate and popular. It had served for two generations an inestimable tutelary purpose,—it lived to be twice dishonoured,—and then passed, by universal acquiescence, into matter of history.

STATUE OF MINERVA

A process analogous to the ostracism subsisted at Argos, at Syracuse, and in some other Grecian democracies. Aristotle states that it was abused for factious purposes: and at Syracuse, where it was introduced after the expulsion of the Gelonian dynasty, Diodorus affirms that it was so unjustly and profusely applied, as to deter persons of wealth and station from taking any part in public affairs; for which reason it was speedily discontinued. We have no particulars to enable us to appreciate this general statement. But we cannot safely infer that because the ostracism worked on the whole well at Athens, it must necessarily have worked well in other states—the more so, as we do not know whether it was surrounded with the same precautionary formalities, nor whether it even required the same large minimum of votes to make it effective. This latter guarantee, so valuable in regard to an institution essentially easy to abuse, is not noticed by Diodorus in his brief account of the petalism—so the process was denominated at Syracuse.

THE DEMOCRACY ESTABLISHED