Ostraka and the Law of Ostracism—Some Possibilities and Assumptions

Abstract

In his History of the Athenian Constitution (Oxford, 1952, pp. 159 ff.) Mr. Hignett rejected Aristotle's attribution of the law of ostracism to Kleisthenes and this rejection met with approval from R. J. Hopper in a review of his book in JHS lxxvi (1956) 141. In preferring a later date for the law, Androtion's date—or what is supposed to be Androtion's date, for without the full context of Harpokration's quotation we cannot be sure that the τότε πρῶτον of that passage is so precise in its reference as to imply a date significantly later than Aristotle's—Mr. Hignett relies mainly on the well-established argument (which he imagines may well have been Androtion's also) that ‘the authors of such a law cannot have intended to let it remain a dead letter … it must have been passed not long before its first application’ (p. 164). Indeed, this must be regarded as his only decisive (so intended) argument, for, as far as sources are concerned, he states ‘the Atthidographers … had no documentary evidence for the date of the law’ and ‘the different dates given by different writers are all due to conjecture’ (p. 160). Here he has the agreement of Jacoby, who says in FGH iii(b) (1954) 121 ‘there was as little documentary evidence for the introduction of ostracism as for the Seisachtheia’ (i.e. none at all), but the latter's conclusion is more cautious—‘our tradition does not allow of making a final decision between the dates of Androtion and Aristotle’ (p. 124). Our purpose in this paper is, first, to re-examine the historical (and even merely logical) possibilities in this question and to suggest that the more cautious conclusion is the proper one in the light of these possibilities; and, secondly, to review certain other conclusions, based on archaeological as well as literary evidence, arrived at by recent writers regarding the actual history of the institution, in order to see whether some of these too would not need to be more cautiously stated if all the possibilities were taken into account.

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