Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/169

 THE OSTRACISM. 151 after Kleisthenes, the conspiracy between Nikias and Alkibiades fixed it upon Hyperbolus. The two former had both recom- mended the taking of an ostracizing vote, each hoping to cause the banishment of the other ; but before the day arrived, they accommodated the difference. To fire off the safety-gun of the republic against a person so little dangerous as Hyperbolus, was denounced as the prostitution of a great political ceremony : " it was not against such men as him (said the comic writer, Plato),' 1 Plutarch (Nikias, c. 11 ; Alkibiad. c. 13; Aristcid. c. 7) : Thucyd. viii, 73. Plato Comicus said, respecting Hyperbolus Oil -yap TOIOVTUV OVVEK? oaTpa.%' r)i)pc&rj, Theophrastus had stated that Phseax, and not Nikias, was the rival of Alkibiades on this occasion, when Hyperbolus was ostracized ; but most authors, says Plutarch, represent Nikias as the person. It is curious that there should be any difference of statement about a fact so notorious, and in the best-known time of Athenian history. Taylor thinks that the oration which now passes as that of Andokide's against Alkibiades, is really by Phseax, and was read by Plutarch as the oration of Phseax in an actual contest of ostracism between Phaeax, Nikias, and Alkibiades. He is opposed by Ruhnken and Valckenaer (see Sluiter's preface to that oration, c. 1, and Ruhnken, Hist. Critic. Oratt. Grsecor. p. 135). I cannot agree with either : I cannot think with him, that it is a real oration of Phseax ; nor with them, that it is a real oration in any gen- uine cause of ostracism whatever. It appears to me to have been composed after the ostracism had fallen into desuetude, and when the Athenians had not only become somewhat ashamed of it, but had lost the familiar con- ception of what it really was. For how otherwise can we explain the fact, that the author of that oration complains that he is about to be ostracized without any secret voting, in which the very essence of the ostracism con- sisted, and from which its name was borrowed (ovre 6iaip7j<piaa[iii'uv Kpvpdr/v, c. 2)? His oration is framed as if the audience whom he was addressing were about to ostracize one out of the three, by show of hands. But the process of ostracizing included no meeting and haranguing, nothing but simple deposit of the shells in a cask ; as may be seen by the description of the special railing-in of the agora, and by the story (true or false) of the unlettered country-citizen coming into the city to give his vote, and asking Aristeides, without even knowing his person, to write the name for him on the shell (Plutarch, Aristeid. c. 7). There was, indeed, previous discussion in the senate as well as in the ekklesia, whether a vote of ostracism should be entered upon at all ; but the author of the oration to which I allude does not address himself to that question ; he assumes that the vote is actually about to be taken, and that one of the three himself, Nikias, or Alkibiades must be ostracized (c. 1 ). Now, doubtless, in practice, the do