Dialogues D'histoire Ancienne 2023 - Les Lieux de Savoir Dans L'athènes Démocratique - Ostracism As A Lieu de Savoir

Ostracism as a lieu de savoir
Alex Gottesman
Dans Dialogues d'histoire ancienne 2023/Supplément27 (S 27), pages 67 à 87
Éditions Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté
ISSN 0755-7256
DOI 10.3917/dha.hs27.0067
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Dialogues d’ histoire ancienne, supplément 27, 2023, 67‑87 – CC-BY
Ostracism as a lieu de savoir
Alex Gottesman
ORCID : 0000-0002-8646-1371
Temple University, USA
gottesman@temple.edu

I- Introduction: between the institutional and the extra-institutional
As several contributors to this volume show, Athenians were not unusual, before
the invention of paper and printing, in relying primarily on forms of talk to create
and spread information.1 As Siron shows, legal knowledge, facts, and even truth itself
were produced in the courts primarily not through documents but through a specific
apparatus of agonistic, rhetorical and syllogistic practices and techniques, which is
reflected, albeit indirectly, in the written versions of the orations that have come down
to us.2 As Gallego shows, in the assemblies, listening to rhetorical debate and argument
were also the means by which a mass of citizens became a decision-making subject.3
Beyond the courts and assembly, as Fauchier shows, the agora was another major
arena for the production and circulation of knowledge. With its workshops, stalls, and
central location, talk flowed through the agora in the form of phèmè, gossip or rumor.4
Aeschines calls this kind of talk an impersonal and unerring opinion that circulates in
the city, turning secret facts about people into public knowledge.5 In my book, Politics
and the Street in Democratic Athens, I was especially interested in how these two spaces,
the institutional and the extra-institutional as I called them there, intersected, and how
1
On writing in official contexts, see Sickinger 1999; more generally, Pébarthe 2006.
2
N. Siron, “Les tribunaux athéniens sont-ils un lieu de savoir ?”, p. 103-124.
3
J. Gallego, “Debates en la Pnix”, p. 47-66.
4
L. Fauchier, “Les espaces marchands dans l’Athènes classique,” p. 167-190. See also Matuszewski 2019,
p. 276-289.
5
Aeschines, Against Timarchus (I), 125-131.
DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

68 Alex Gottesman
talk in one space influenced the other.6 Contrary to Aeschines’ claim that phèmè was
unerring and spread “automatically” (automaton) throughout the city, it was his use
of extra-institutional gossip within the court, without any witnesses or evidence, that
turned it into an efficacious social fact.7 It is impossible to say what the jurors knew
about the handsome Timarchus before his trial. After his trial, everyone knew that he
was a pornos who squandered his inheritance, and thus had no place in political life.
The “knowledge” about Timarchus’ prostitution might seem a far cry from the
kinds of knowledge that Jacob’s lieux de savoir project aims to study, but I suggest that
it is related. For Jacob, places of knowledge help participants to “provide the world they
live in with meaning and to act upon it.”8 In a similar vein, anthropologist Niko Besnier
argues, “Through gossip, people make sense of what surrounds them, interpreting events,
people, and the dynamics of history.”9 Gossip is how ordinary people ascribe worth to

people and to behaviors, and negotiate hierarchy and values.10 It requires significant
skill and know-how: when to do it, how to gather an audience and set the mood, how
to have an impact. What makes gossip especially interesting from this perspective is a
(universal?) tendency to categorize it as marginal and in some sense problematic. “As
a social activity,” Besnier notes, “gossip is often dismissed as lacking in importance and
is equally often regarded as a reprehensible activity to be avoided or feared.”11 Many
cultures categorize it as a feminine activity, even though men engage in it just as much,
if not more (e. g. commérage, “old wives’ tales,” “fishwife”). Most Athenians probably
did not characterize phèmè as a feminine practice.12 But they did see it as especially
characteristic of the agora.13 As Fauchier shows, it was normal for Athenian men to
hang out and gossip in the agora, but there was a certain ambivalence about it. For
example, Theophrastus jests about “rumor-mongers (logopoioi)”: “In what stoa, what
workshop (ergasterion), what part of the agora don’t they spend their days, making their
6
Gottesman 2014.
7
Aeschines, Against Timarchus (I), 80-85; 130; cf. Demosthenes, On the False Embassy (XIX), 243-
244.
8
Jacob 2017, p. 86.
9
Besnier 2009, p. 3.
10
For Athens, see especially Hunter 1990; 1994, p. 96-119; Gottesman 2014, p. 59-61.
11
Besnier 2009, p. 13.
12
Plato, Laws, XI, 934e-935a is an exception.
13
See Matuszewski 2019, p. 57-63.

Ostracism as a lieu de savoir 69
listeners numb?”14 For Theophrastus, the subjects the logopoioi speak about are things
about which they had no idea, like battles and kings. But the most basic definition of
gossip, as Besnier notes, is “the negatively evaluative and morally laden verbal exchange
concerning the conduct of absent third parties, involving a bounded group of persons
in a private setting.”15 Athenians called that kind of talk loidoria, “insult,” or better,
kakologia, “ill speech.” And there was an idea that in the egalitarian institutional space,
such as the courtroom or the assembly, people should refrain from it; or, if they had to
do it, they should do in an appropriate, elliptical way.16 We are not obligated to believe
that “Cleon was the first to shout and abuse on the podium, to make public speeches
girded, whereas others spoke properly.”17 But the notion that he was the first to break
the Assembly’s code against insulting speech suggests that there was something like
one, even though it was probably more observed in the breach (as Aeschines shows at

length).18 The problem with Cleon, as the detail about his girding his tunic implies, and
as Aristophanes exploits at length in his Knights, is that he was agoraios.19 His abusive
style figured as typical of the agora.20
Now, if we grant that Athenians thought of the agora as a relatively unbounded
“free space”21 in which people interacted in some ways inappropriate to the institutional
space of courts and assemblies, what should we make of the practice of ostracism? As an
official, institutionalized practice that took place in the agora, it seems to have bridged
both spaces. Unlike in the proceedings in the courts and assemblies, there were no
formal speeches, so there was no central frame for the creation and dissemination of
knowledge; no spotlight on the podium. Any citizen who wished could participate,
simultaneously. And we know, from the surviving ostraca, that people brought to bear
14
Theophrastus, Characters, VIII, 14: ποίᾳ γὰρ οὐ στοᾷ, ποίῳ δὲ ἐργαστηρίῳ, ποίῳ δὲ μέρει τῆς ἀγορᾶς οὐκ
ἐνημερεύουσιν ἀπαυδᾶν ποιοῦντες τοὺς ἀκούοντας.
15
Besnier 2009, p. 13.
16
Cf. Aeschines, Against Timarchus (I), 35; Anaximenes, Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, XXXV, 17-19.
17
Ps.-Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 28, 3: πρῶτος ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος ἀνέκραγε καὶ ἐλοιδορήσατο,
καὶ περιζωσάμενος ἐδημηγόρησε, τῶν ἄλλων ἐν κόσμῳ λεγόντων.
18
On the complex relationship between freedom and restraint of Athenian public speech, see Halliwell
2008, p. 215-63.
19
Aristophanes, Knights, 217-19. On the class connotations of the (im)properly worn himation see Lee
2015, p. 115-16.
20
See Halliwell 2008, p. 231-34.
21
Vlassopoulos 2007.

70 Alex Gottesman
a great variety of opinions and ideas about who should be expelled from the city and
why. Some of the ostraca (as I will discuss below) indicate that gossip and kakologia
were very much central to ostracism. Furthermore, the ostraca themselves seem to me
to provide the closest thing we have from Athens to the kinds of materials that Jacob
sees as central to a lieu de savoir. We do not have the tables or notes that philosophers or
geographers used to debate and construct their ideas about the broader world, but we
do have thousands of the sherds that ordinary Athenians used in ostracisms to come to
a decision about the direction their city should take, about the kind of city it should be.
The date of ostracism’s invention is uncertain. According to the Athenian
Constitution, its creator was Cleisthenes, which points to the last decade of the 6th
century. According to Androtion, it was created immediately before it was first used,
in 488/487.22 Each date has its supporters, but there is no way to decide between

them definitively.23 Whichever date we prefer, there does seem to be a great distance
between the practice of ostracism, with its immediate decision by the mass of citizens
without discussion, and 4th century democracy, with its emphasis on judicial review. A
common view of Athenian institutional history is that only in the 4th century did the
Athenians decide that popular power needed curbs, and enshrined the rule of law as the
guarantor of stability and prosperity.24 Others argue that in this respect there was little
substantial difference between 5th and 4th century democracy.25 The debate goes to the
heart of the meaning of Athenian democracy and how it changed over time, and is too
big to tackle here. It obviously hinges on what we mean by the “rule of law.” The main
problem the creators of ostracism had to solve was how to involve large numbers of
citizens from all backgrounds and allegiances while preparing them for the possibility
that they might not like the outcome. As recent events in the US have reminded us,
accepting defeat is certainly a basic meaning of the rule of law. Rather than reject an
ostracism’s outcome as illegitimate, disappointed Athenians had to apply the difficult
but democratically necessary lesson that (as the Rolling Stones say) you can’t always get
what you want – even if everyone you know seems to want the same thing. How did the
Athenians learn that they could not simply ignore a decision they did not agree with, or
worse, whip up their friends into a riot and try to get their way by force?
22
Ps.-Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 21, 4; Androtion, FrGrH 324 F 6.
23
See Forsdyke 2005, p. 281-284.
24
Most notably Ostwald 1986. See, most recently, Carugati 2019.
25
E. g., Sealey 1987.

This is no idle question. Regardless of which date we prefer for the introduction
of ostracism, the threat of violence or force had been a near-constant feature of
Athenian politics throughout the 6th century and into the 5th century.26 We hear of
violence around elections soon after Solon.27 The violence that surrounded Pisistratus’
rise(s) and fall(s), and that of his sons, is familiar, and relevant; as is how it was (mis)
remembered.28 The Spartans’ support of Isagoras’ putsch against the Council is well
documented.29 Cleisthenes’ overtures towards the Persians, in response, are less well
documented, but entirely plausible.30 He would not have been the last Athenian to
contemplate “medizing” for political gain, or to have been suspected as contemplating
it, which is equally revealing.31 It is still not well understood how the Athenians
managed to turn the page on their era of stasis so quickly and thoroughly. But part of
the answer perhaps has to do with the introduction of ostracism.32

Ostracism’ similarity to modern voting might tempt us to overlook its fundamental
strangeness, and how extraordinary it must have been when it first appeared. It was very
different from our modern voting. The “ballots” were not standardized and there was
little control over access to them; the potential for what we would consider fraud must
have been immense. Would the Attic peasant that Jacob alludes to in his contribution
have been as surprised as the archaeologists who discovered the cache of Themistocles
ostraca with the same handwriting?33 But Themistocles himself, and all Athenians, so
far as we know, accepted his ostracism as a fact. There was no appeal to a court, no
further discussion, and certainly no room to ignore the decision. How can we explain
this? What made the losers, and their supporters, accept their defeat as a political fact
without resorting to the violent practices of the (very) recent past? Rather than assume
that the Athenians, as good democrats, would naturally accept their voting results, here
26
See Stahl 1987.
27
Ps.-Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 13, 2; cf. 5, 2.
28
See Lavelle 1993; Shrimpton 2006.
29
Herodotus, V, 72; Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 273-282; Ps.-Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians,
20, 3.
30
Herodotus, V, 73.
31
For accusations of medism on the ostraca see Brenne 2002, p. 156-158.
32
There are many interpretations of ostracism, but I side with those who see the practice as an attempted
solution of endemic stasis: e. g., Forsdyke 2005, who argues for such an interpretation at length, adding that
as a collective, symbolic ritual it probably played various roles and expressed different values.
33
Cf. p. 82; Lang 1990, p. 142-158.

72 Alex Gottesman
I would like to consider ostracism through naïve eyes (as Jacob suggests), so we might
better understand something about how and why it worked.
Ostracism involved essentially the same practices of other lieux de savoir: writing,
reading, counting. Simply, people wrote on potsherds the name of the man they wanted
to exile. A handful of ostraca also included images or snippets of what we would call
gossip, and the Athenians kakologia. These have attracted outsized attention, but most
ostraca followed a strict template of name, father’s name, and sometimes demotic. There
is no reason to think that the two types had a substantially different function. Rather,
the creation and circulation of all the potsherds for an ostrakophoria, I argue, served
to create a public that could make a single, momentous decision about what leader
should be exiled; and most importantly, to abide by it. Ostracism’s ability to foster
consensus and common knowledge in a city that was emerging from a long period of

civil violence and war is nothing short of a miracle. It has never been fully explained.
I propose that the ostraca themselves, seen through the lens of a lieu de savoir, might
point to an explanation.
II- The description of ostracism

In the sixth prytany of the year, the Athenian ekklesia voted on whether to hold
an ostracism or not. If they voted yes, they would hold it two months later. When the
day came, they would set up temporary barriers in the agora, and any Athenian citizen
who wished would enter from an opening assigned to his tribe. Each man carried the
sherd face down, so no one could read it. They counted out the sherds, and, provided a
minimum quorum was met, whoever got the most would have to leave the city within
10 days and not return for a period of ten years.
This description is almost the sum of what we know about the procedure, but it
is based on sources from long after ostracism became obsolete. We know that it was last
used in the ostracism of Hyperbolus around 415.34 Before that, it had not been used in
almost 30 years, since the ostracism of Pericles’ opponent Thucydides. The information
about the preliminary vote comes from the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians.
The author is not giving an eyewitness account, but seems to draw ultimately from a set
of laws or regulations directed to the Council. That is why he mentions ostracism in
the context of how to organize assembly meetings.35 The Constitution has been dated
34
For this ostracism, see Rhodes 1994; Mossé 2000.
35
Ps.-Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 43, 3-4.

to the 320s, but the autor’s immediate information here cannot be much older than
ca 340, when the term that he uses for one of the meetings seems to be first employed.36
Meanwhile, the information about the ostracism taking place in the agora also comes
from the 4th century, from Philochorus, the last of the so-called Atthidographers.37
It is reasonable to assume that ostracisms would have required a large, open space.38
But if, as Heftner argued, Philochorus found his information in Theophrastus’ nomoi,
if so, it means that he also does not provide an eyewitness account of the practice.39
The detail about turning the inscription over in the hand so that it is not visible does
seem like something that must be observed to be noted. But it seems suspicious when
one remembers that open voting was seen as being ideologically characteristic of anti-
democratic regimes, such as the Thirty.40 In Philochorus’ account it might be that the
secretly held ostracon is imagined to be something suitable for a free and democratic

citizen, not necessarily something that the Athenians did when they conducted an
ostracism.
Thus, the only contemporary evidence we have about ostracism are the ostraca
themselves. Almost 10,000 have been found, between the excavations carried out in
the agora by the American School and the Ceramicus by the German School. The
Ceramicus ostraca, known since the 1960s, were finally published in 2018.41 Most
scholars now accept that they date to a single session, in 470 or 471. The “winner”
of that ostracism was the Alcmaeonid Megacles the son of Hippocrates, who gets the
great majority of ostraca from the find. Remarkably, the Constitution tells us that he had
already been ostracized in 486, on the grounds that he was “friendly with the tyrants”
(22, 5). It does not mention that he was also the nephew of Cleisthenes, and uncle of
Pericles.42 Perhaps he came back in the general amnesty and recall of exiles occasioned
by the Persian Wars.43
36
Errington 1994.
37
FrGrH 328 F 30.
38
This finds some support in Aristophanes, Knights, 855-857, which seems to suggest that ostracisms
were held in the same space as grain distributions. See Raubitschek 1956.
39
Heftner 2018.
40
See, e. g., Lysias, Against agoratos (XIII), 37; Thucydides, IV, 74.
41
Brenne 2018. Also see Brenne 1994; 2006.
42
Herodotus, VI, 131.
43
Ps.-Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 22, 8; ML 23, l. 44-7; Andocides, On the Mysteries (I), 77.

74 Alex Gottesman
Most of the ostraca simply record the name of a candidate. Occasionally, some
writers included something “extra” besides the simple name of the person they wanted
to vote against. There are not many of these (only 100+/-), and most of them come from
the Ceramicus Deposit. As we might expect, most from this find involve Megacles, but
not exclusively. Most of them just add a small, extra comment. For example, Callias the
son of Cratius is often called a “Mede”, perhaps alluding to a suspicion of treason. A very
few also add a caricature. One famous ostracon for Callias includes a very competent
sketch of a Persian archer on the reverse.
These ostraca frequently get singled out for attention, but so far as I know,
there has only been one attempt to explain why a handful of Athenians went through
the effort of inscribing their ostraca (or of having them inscribed) with comments or
images, beyond the bare name. Kosmin has argued that these ostraca are comparable to

curse tablets or defixiones.
[O]straka and curse-tablets were each technologies for the manifestation of individualized,
interpersonal antipathy through the inscribing and manipulation of a small, hand-held
writing surface.
As such, he argued that they represent “therapeutic responses to personal
anxieties or resentments.”44 For instance, the man who drew a corpse on an ostracon for
Megacles, he suggests, was expressing his feeling about his target, or perhaps making
an attempt at sympathetic magic. I think Kosmin is right to think of ostracism as a
process. He rightly highlights the fine-grain details of the experience: the sounds of
the breaking pots to make smaller pieces, the feel of the sharp sherd clasped by eager
hands, the act of casting them in a pile angrily (an experience that he follows Vernant
and others in comparing to stoning).45 But I do not think he is right when he argues
that they functioned as defixiones. He focuses too much on the individual level, on each
ostracon in isolation. Athenian defixiones might also have been connected to a social
content originally, but once they were created they were deposited in graves, in out of
the way places. Chthonic powers were their intended audience, not fellow Athenians.46
44
Kosmin 2015, p. 130 and 132, developing an idea by Chris Faraone (per Forsdyke 2005, p. 157-158).
On the images specifically see also Allard 2018.
45
On stoning and ostracism see also Gras 1984, especially p. 84-88 (my thanks to M. V. García Quintela
for bringing this work to my attention). As Gras notes, the casting of stones could also be seen as an act of
deliberate judgment, not simply one of anger.
46
E. g. see Lamont 2021, who publishes a fascinating group of defixiones dating to 400-375, found in
situ, near the Long Walls on the way to Piraeus.

The ostraca as a whole, rather, suggest a more open and communal process. They were
intended to be read and to influence others.
III- Interactive graffiti

Perhaps a better comparison with the writing practices that we see on the ostraca
derives from symposia. Writing and reading in symposia were meant to facilitate or
provoke a reaction and a discussion or a debate. A well near the site of the ostracisms, in
the vicinity of the tholos, has turned up potentially relevant finds. One proper ostracon
for Aristides there gave archaeologists the earliest terminus.47 Other inscribed potsherds
were also found but they were clearly not proper ostraca. A kylix base called Timoxenos
kalos.48 Another called Alkaios kalos, “in the opinion of Melite”.49 This came from a
large vessel filled with other graffiti, which seem to be from different hands. Another

called Alkaios katapygon. Yet another, on a base, called Sosias a katapygon. Around
that inscription, on the rim, it also said, “says the writer Euphronios.”50 Looking at the
assemblage, Steiner has suggested that the pots came from a mock ostracism that took
place in a symposium. She imagines that these were aristocratic archons engaged in a
subversive game, poking fun at the practice that had targeted so many of their peers.51 It
may be, as Steiner thinks, that the ostraca can shed light on the finds from the well. But
it may also be that these finds can shed light on the ostraca. For both were practices of
writing that were fundamentally communal and shared.
The general practice of writing kalos on Athenian vases has been called “the
positive counterpart to ostracism”.52 As Lissarrague suggests, kalos-inscriptions on
vases with specific names on them (as opposed to a more generic labels) function
because people knew the person named: “It is a matter of advertisement and shared
knowledge.”53 The inscriptions were interactive. Not only were they meant to be
read aloud and thus repeat their objects’ acclaim, but they were also meant to elicit a
response, to spark discussion and debate from the cup’s users. One find from the agora
47
Agora P 5190.
48
Agora P 5128.
49
Agora P 5160.
50
Agora P 5157.
51
Steiner 2002. On this material, with a different view, see in this volume P. Schmitt Pantel, “Les
banquets comme lieux de savoirs,” p. 319-341.
52
Slater 1999, p. 58. On writing kalos on walls and in the countryside of Attica, see Taylor 2011.
53
Lissarrague 1998, p. 365.

76 Alex Gottesman
well illustrates this: “Is Alcaeus kalos? (I don’t think so, but) Melite thinks that!”54
Aside from the act of reading, which as Svenbro argued, ancient writers interpreted as
a kind of domination over the reader, there was also an element of playful interaction
between the graffiti.55 For example, in Aristophanes’ Wasps, Xanthias describes how
his old master Philocleon is so enamored of voting that when he sees a graffito calling
Demos kalos—referring to the famously gorgeous son of Pyrilampes—he would write
next to it, Kemos kalos, meaning the voting urn. The joke highlights his obsession for
the jury but it also shows how graffiti writing might work: Aristophanes calls this act
παρέγραψε πλησίον, he writes right next to it. He could have simply erased the delta of
“Demos” or with two marks turned it into a kappa, thereby obliterating the previous
graffito. Philocleon leaves the original graffito up, for the interactive joke to work.
Might some ostraca function similarly? Consider the fascinating case of a

matching pair of ostraca against Megacles from the Ceramicus.56 They were once part
of an elegant red-figure vase that has been attributed to the Pistoxenos-painter, a master
craftsman who made fine cups in the years around 470-465.57 On the one side someone
scratched the name: MEGAKLES. But on the reverse enough letters are preserved to
make clear that this was once part of a cup that declared the very same Megacles kalos.
The label appears next to a satyr making wild gestures and sticking his tongue out (see
fig. 1). Brenne argues that this is not a coincidence but rather a purposeful reuse of an
existing illustration.58 Somehow the voter came to possess one of the vases on which
Megacles was labelled kalos (there are at least five others that have been found but the
number cannot have been large enough to account for the coincidence on its own), and
either broke it intentionally, or kept it to use as an ostracon! It would be very surprising
indeed to find an ostracon like this if Kosmin is right to see the sherds as fulfilling a
private need to curse. It is more likely that this ostracon, no less than the others, were
made in order to provoke a reaction, to foster discussion or debate, and not just to
register a vote. The owner’s friends would have enjoyed seeing a vase created to praise
Megacles transformed into an object that made fun of him.
54
Agora P 5160.
55
Svenbro 1993.
56
Kerameikos O 5274, 4610.
57
Published by Willemsen 1991.
58
One of several such that he has identified: Brenne 2006.


Figure 1: Reverse of Megacles ostracon O 5274 (old inv. n° 7715b).
Credits/source: D-DAI-ATH-Kerameikos-17079; photo credit: Gösta Hellner; courtesy of the Hellenic Ministry for Culture
and Sport and the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut.
Certainly the graffiti-ostraca were made to be experienced within a group. But

were the “regular” ostraca different in that regard? One way this might work is if people
gravitated towards those who were able to write, or able to write on oven-fired clay
(which was not so easy, as some scholars who have tried to do so can attest).59 Take
the well-known story about Aristides in Plutarch. The story is evidently apocryphal,
but perhaps revealing. As Plutarch tells it, an illiterate farmer by chance gave his
sherd to Aristides himself and asked him to write “Aristides”, “as he was one of the
passersby (ὡς ἑνὶ τῶν τυχόντων)”, implying that he was out in public and needed to
ask someone he did not know for help in writing his sherd. Notably, Aristides asks
him for the reason for his vote—so there is a discussion of sorts that ensues. In this
case, the reason the farmer wanted Aristides banished is because he was tired of him
being called “The Just.” Aristides wrote his name down with no further comment and
handed back the ostracon.60 It is easy to imagine that a less magnanimous person would
have a lot more to say! Perhaps the ostraca that provide a reason for the vote capture a
little of that conversation, a little of that publicly shared back-and-forth emotion and
59
Vanderpool 1970, p. 12-13. This sidesteps the problem of Athenian literacy, since not everyone who
handles an ostracon has to be able to read it; only the writer and the counter need a bare ability to decipher
letters. For contrasting views of Athenian literacy, see Missiou 2011 (with high estimate), Harris 1989
(with a low estimate).
60
Plutarch, Aristides, 7, 7-8.

78 Alex Gottesman
discussion. For example, some ostraca against Megacles call him an Alcmaeonid, or a
Cylonian, a reference to the Alcmaeonid inherited guilt, or just “accursed”.61 Others
characterize him as the son of Koisyra.62 It was highly unusual to give the name of a
mother. In this case, judging from the information that Koisyra is a byname for a faux-
aristocratic, foreign, “bad” woman, it seems that Megacles’ character and legitimacy
is in question.63 The ostraca that also call him “horse-breeder” similarly might attack
him for his class and turn his aristocratic pedigree against him.64 Another one calls
him “greedy”, making the point clearer that his luxurious lifestyle and heritage counted
against him.65 By contrast, the runner-up, Callias, only gets called a “Mede.”66 This does
not mean that there were no other rumors about Callias that circulated when people
made his ostraca.67 They simply were not written down.
This fragment of the comic writer Phrynichus might give us a glimpse of the

social dynamics behind the act of writing:
ἔστιν δ’ αὐτούς γε φυλάττεσθαι τῶν νῦν χαλεπώτατον ἔργον.
ἔχουσι γάρ τι κέντρον ἐν τοῖς δακτύλοις,
μισάνθρωπον ἄνθος ἥϐης·
εἶθ’ ἡδυλογοῦσιν ἅπασιν ἀεὶ κατὰ τὴν ἀγορὰν περιόντες.
ἐπὶ τοῖς βάθροις ὅταν ὦσιν, ἐκεῖ τούτοις οἷς ἡδυλογοῦσιν
μεγάλας ἀμυχὰς καταμύξαντες καὶ συγκύψαντες ἅπαντες
γελῶσιν.
It is the most difficult thing of all to protect yourself against them.
They hold a kind of sting in their fingers,
this misanthropic flower of youth.
Either they sweet-talk everyone as they walk around the agora,
but when they go to their home-bases, there those they sweet-talked
they scratch out with deep gouges, and bending over together they all laugh.68
61
Kerameikos O 2741.
62
63
For who she might have been, see Lavelle 1989.
64
65
Kerameikos O 4825.
66
See the list in Brenne 2018, p. 38-85 with 18 cases.
67
Plutarch, Aristides, 7-8; Athenaeus, XII, 536F. See Shapiro 1982, p. 72.
68
Phrynichus Comicus PCG 3(= Athenaeus, IV, 165b).

Kosmin interprets this passage to refer to magical practice; he suggests the young
men might be making a defixio. But note that they are writing something down about
people they were pleasant to before. And they are laughing. This is not cursing, but a
game. They find something about scratching down names as very funny. The fragment
does not tell us what it is they are writing, or on what. There is no indication it is for
an ostracism. The “sting” in their fingers perhaps refers to their penchant of writing
kakologia. Perhaps they are entertaining themselves by writing and reading aloud that
the man they were just pleasant and friendly to is actually a katapygon. Such gossip is not
uncommon as graffiti. It is also found on ostraca, for example on one for Themistocles.69
The act of writing graffiti was a communal, ludic practice. The act of writing ostraca
must have been similar.
Some ostraca do show signs of interaction when they were created. Brenne found

one case where two ostraca came from the same larger piece.70 This was not unusual
in itself; some of these were the work of neutral scribes, from the same hand but for
different candidates. By contrast, in this case both of these are for Megacles, but the
hands are different. Perhaps one was written by a scribe (or someone better at writing),
for it has well laid out the letters that perhaps show the use of a grid, in the stoichedon
method familiar to epigraphists. The writing on the mating piece is less refined but
shows the same organization of letters, with each name on a separate line. There is a key
difference, however. One piece names Megacles aliteiros, “accursed”, which other ostraca
did also, as mentioned above. The other piece instead adds his deme. Interestingly, it
initially included the “accursed” epithet as well but it was at some point erased. Kosmin
suggests that the act of erasing the letters here was magical in nature. That is not likely.
A more plausible scenario, as Brenne suggests, is that two men acquired or made their
ostraca side by side, for the letters’ layout matches quite closely. After discussion, the one
man decided to erase the epithet, the other did not. It is impossible to know why. The
simplest explanation is that the one man did not consider such kakologia appropriate
in an ostracism.
IV- Ostracism and the street

While I do not agree with Kosmin’s interpretation of ostraca as defixiones, I
think he is right to call to mind the entire process of ostracism. Here we must keep in
69
Kerameikos 7262.
70
Brenne 1994, p. 16, with illustrations; for full list of joins see Brenne 2018, p. 142-200.

80 Alex Gottesman
mind that ostracism was not simply a one-day affair. By design, ostracism effectively
bridged the divide between formal and informal space (or institutional and extra-
institutional space). The decision to hold an ostracism was made by the Assembly
months before the ostracism itself was carried out. But contrary to our only text that
claims to be a speech in an ostracism, there was no occasion for debate. Paradoxically,
the text’s author acknowledges as much: ostracism, he says, is a bad practice because it
does not allow occasion for debate and instead punishes a man without any due process
(akriton).71 This is why ostracism, he says, is stupid, because you can exile someone (or
worse!) with a trial that preserves some basic rights for the accused. In ostracism, there
is no defending yourself. This text is clearly fictional, but the fiction does show how
difficult it is to imagine what an ostracism debate would look like. The Constitution
of the Athenians calls the vote an epicheirotonia.72 Other passages refer to the vote as

a procheirotonia.73 Whatever the case, it means it was an expedited procedure, and as
Carcopino argued long ago, this must have meant there was no debate whatsoever.74
Some historians have been troubled by the implications of this.75 Hansen’s
account of procheirotonia is relevant here. He argued that the procedure referred to an
attempt to pass a resolution through the Assembly with unanimous consent, but if even
one person raised a hand, a debate would begin.76 Procheirotonia was used especially
for uncontroversial or routine matters, but that could not be the case for an ostracism,
which was neither. Perhaps by the time of Aristotle it was a simple formality to raise the
question, for there had not been an ostracism held in nearly a century, and there was no
prospect of actually reviving it.77 This would explain how one assembly meeting could
include the numerous and important topics that he says had to be dealt with on the
same meeting that decided on an ostracism day.78 But even at the height of the practice,
71
Ps.-Andocides, Against Alcibiades (IV), 3. Gazzano 1999, p. 21-22, suggests that the contradiction can
be solved by imagining the speech composed to be delivered in the context of a club (hetaireia) gathering
in order to marshal public opinion against Alcibiades before the vote.
72
Ps.-Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 43, 5.
73
Houtsma 1965, p. 80.
74
Carcopino 1935 [1909], p. 57-72.
75
E. g. Rhodes 1994, p. 89, with n. 25.
76
Hansen 1983.
77
Errington 1994 plausibly suggests that ostracism made it on the assembly agenda only in the 330s, in
response to fears that a pro-Macedonian tyrant might seek to take over the city.
78
Ps.-Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 43, 4.

it is very hard to imagine what kind of debate there would be around a preliminary
vote on whether to hold an ostracism, without the debate devolving into a shouting
match between rival politicians and their supporters. Any arguments would inevitably
become personal attacks. In the 4th century such attacks were supposedly not allowed
in the assembly, as I noted above. In the 5th century perhaps the norms of conduct
were different. If we knew what the original, stated purpose of ostracism was, it would
be helpful to imagine the debate. Was the original purpose to target the followers of
Pisistratus, as Androtion and the author of the Athenian Constitution believed? Or was
it to make sure no one became too powerful, as Aristotle thought?79 Neither one makes
sense as the grounds for a debate, because the preliminary question was not “whom
should we exile?”; rather, “should we exile someone?”.
If a strong opinion existed about the threat a certain person posed, there were

less risky, more surgical, ways to eliminate or marginalize him. We hear about trials for
Miltiades, Themistocles and Cimon.80 The latter two were also ostracized. According
to Thucydides, Themistocles was in fact tried after being ostracized!81 This suggests that
the decision to conduct an ostracism must have been independent of any particular
offense or crime.82 The initial vote on ostracism tested the public mood in general. If the
hands raised were overwhelming, if “the air shuddered,” as Aeschylus put it,83 then there
would be an ostracism. But how would the individual citizens come to that conclusion,
if there had not been a debate? They must have already thought and talked about the
matter beforehand. When the question was asked, “Should we have an ostracism?”,
they would already have strong feelings on the question. They must have felt that an
ostracism was a good idea for the city, quite apart from their desire for the exile of a
specific leader. And, by design, they must have reached that conclusion in the Street.
79
Androtion FrGrH 324 F6; Ps.-Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians, 22, 3; Aristotle, Politics, III,
1284a35-37.
80
For these trials, and their much-debated place in Athenian institutional history, see Hansen 1975,
p. 69-71; 1980; Rhodes 1979; Ostwald 1986, p. 28-40.
81
Thucydides, I, 135, 2-3.
82
According to Siewert 2002, p. 505-508, ostracism responded to a crime against the community for
which there was no explicit law. But this makes little sense of the preliminary phase.
83
Aeschylus, Suppliants, 607-608: “The air shuddered at the right hands of the entire demos, as they
approved this argument (πανδημίαι γὰρ χερσὶ δεξιωνύμοις // ἔφριξεν αἰθὴρ τόνδε κραινόντων λόγον).”

82 Alex Gottesman
The interim two months that passed from the decision to conduct an ostracism
must have been an intense period of discussion in the Street.84 The time of the ostracism,
in the winter and early spring, as Carcopino first pointed out, was when agricultural
workers were especially at leisure. We might imagine that the cold weather would
be conducive to gatherings indoors. The ostracism coincided with the Lenaia in the
sixth prytany and the Anthesteria at the end of the seventh. Falling during a lull in the
agricultural calendar, these would be occasions when the citizens would be especially
liable to mix and mingle, especially between city and countryside. So there was plenty
of time to discuss. There was also plenty of time to make the ostraca. A few do seem
to be made in advance. There is the famous Themistocles hoard from the agora, 190
ostraca which seem to be inscribed by 14 individuals. These would be the work of an
organized group. Others also show sign of advance preparation. I already mentioned

the “Megakles Kalos” vase that became the raw material for at least two ostraca against
him. Other ostraca show signs of being custom-made and fired. For example, some were
painted rather than incised, suggesting that someone took time and care at producing
them.85 There is no reason to think that all this effort was spent on an object whose only
function was to represent a vote and then to be discarded. It is possible, perhaps even
likely, that the ostraca were supposed to have an effect before being counted, as well as
to count as votes.
Here I should touch on a problem with our understanding of ostracism as
a form of voting that is rarely raised but seems to me to be fundamental. As I said
above, it is easy for us to conceive the ostraca as ballots because of our own experience
with voting. But mass voting did not exist when Athenians invented ostracism. The
Assembly “voted” by raising hands, but there is no indication that it relied on a precise
numerical count.86 People accepted the outcome, presumably based on their sense of
what consensus felt like. Courts, on the other hand, did determine their verdicts by
publicizing a precise count that the parties involved took as authoritative. Interestingly,
courts took special care to ensure that only valid votes would count, and that there
would be some protection from undue influence.87 Similar precautions must have been
impossible in an ostracism. Looking at the sheer variety of ostraca, in terms of size, type
84
As noted by, among others, Brenne 1994, p. 13; Forsdyke 2005, p. 162-163.
85
See Vanderpool 1970.
86
Hansen 1977.
87
The fact that the voting procedure in the courts changed between the 5th and the 4th century might
reflect a need to shore up the legitimacy and fairness of the decisions : see Boegehold 1963, p. 367-368.

and skill of writing, it is difficult to imagine why Athenians would have felt that it was
possible to come up with a true, authoritative count in an ostracism. As Brenne asks,
since many ostraca were made before the procedure, what was to prevent a determined
group from smuggling in illegitimate votes, for instance by hiding them beneath bigger
ones?88 The answer is: nothing prevented them. The agora was too small an area not
to get hopelessly overrun when thousands of men gathered in it, making it next to
impossible to check that nobody was carrying extra sherds, or that only eligible citizens
had shown up and that there were not more votes cast than people present.89 And yet
ostracism involved the entire city in a consequential and momentous decision.
I do not doubt that in an ostracism the act of counting the ostraca must have been
an important part of the process. If the information we have about the quorum of 6,000
is correct, whether it was a minimum vote total or minimum vote for one candidate,

then they must have needed at least a rough count of the sherds.90 There must have been
procedures in place to make sure that the total number of sherds were in line with the
total attendance, or at least not completely off.91 But the count was only one part of the
process, and I suggest perhaps not the most important one. What made the outcome
of an ostracism authoritative must have been the fact that so many Athenians shared in
the experience itself: spending two months discussing; then gathering in the crowded
agora; writing the name on the sherd, or more likely, finding someone to write it for
them or to give them one that was already written; holding it in their hand, looking
at the sherds of others; and then, perhaps most importantly, talking with others and
trying to convince them—and shouting. The shouting must have been deafening.
People shout more when they are emotional, and they are more inclined to shout
if they think that people around them will also be likely to shout. We should not forget
that ancient practices of writing were social in nature; we know that reading aloud was
the norm. Ostracism involved the common creation of ostraca and counting them, but
also enough people had to show up (without any financial compensation, we should
not forget), and they had to be appropriately motivated to express their opinion. This
88
Brenne 1994, p. 20-21, is one of the few to recognize this problem, but he does not address its
implications.
89
A similar point is raised by Phillips 1990, p. 139-140.
90
On the roughness of Greek measures, see Johnstone 2011, p. 35-61. He focuses on grain and trade, but
the problem was even more acute when having to read and count the ostraca.
91
This might be what is depicted in the Pan-painter’s cup in Oxford (1911.617); see Siewert 2002,
p. 174-184.

84 Alex Gottesman
might be another reason why there was such a long delay between the decision to hold
an ostracism and the ostracism itself. Kosmin is right that the ostraca show signs of
emotion, but it was not the private expression of the emotion of the creator that was
the main issue, but rather the emotion of those around the man holding it; after all, the
creator and the holder were not necessarily the same man.
Thus, I suggest, each ostracon did not just record a personal preference, a vote,
it also represented a small effort to shape public emotion in the course of the ostracon’s
journey from the moment of creation to the moment of its use. Regardless of what each
ostracon looked like, or even if it was entirely legible to the archon who had to count it,
or perhaps even how many of them there ultimately were, when the citizens raised their
voices in the agora against each name there could be no doubt who had lost.

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II- The description of ostracism

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III- Interactive graffiti

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DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

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DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

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Certainly the graffiti-ostraca were made to be experienced within a group. But

DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

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DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

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IV- Ostracism and the street

DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

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DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

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DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

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DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

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DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

© Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté | Téléchargé le 13/01/2024 sur www.cairn.info (IP: 92.89.167.97)

FrGrH = F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der Griechischer Historiker, Berlin, 1923-1958.

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DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

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DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

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DHA, supplément 27, 2023 – CC-BY

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