Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/171

 THE OSTRACISM. 153 all others most dreaded, and where fixed laws, with trial and defence as preliminaries to punishment, were conceived by the ordinary citizen as the guarantees of his personal security and as the pride of his social condition, the creation of such an exceptional power presented serious difficulty. If we transport ourselves to the times of Kleisthenes, immediately after the expulsion of the Peisistratids, when the working of the demo- cratical machinery was as yet untried, we shall find this difficulty at its maximum ; but we shall also find the necessity of vesting such a power somewhere absolutely imperative. For the great Athenian nobles had yet to learn the lesson of respect for any constitution ; their past history had exhibited continual struggles between the armed factions of Megakles, Lykurgus, and Peisis- tratus, put down after a time by the superior force and alliances of the latter. And though Kleisthenes, the son of Megakles, might be firmly disposed to renounce the example of his father, and to act as the faithful citizen of a fixed constitution, he would know but too well that the sons of his father's companions and rivals would follow out ambitious purposes without any regard to the limits imposed by law, if ever they acquired suffi- cient partisans to present a fair prospect of success. Moreover, when any two candidates for power, with such reckless disposi- tions, came into a bitter personal rivalry, the motives to each of them, arising as well out of fear as out of ambition, to put down his opponent at any cost to the constitution, might well become irresistible, unless some impartial and discerning interference could arrest the strife in time. " If the Athenians were wise (Aristeides is reported to have said, 1 in the height and peril of his parliamentary struggle with Themistokles), they would cast both Themistokles and me into the barathrum." 2 And whoever 1 Plutarch, Aristeid. c. 3. tom, into which criminals condemned to death were sometimes cast. Though probably an ancient Athenian punishment, it seems to have become at the very least extremely rare, if not entirely disused, during the times of Athens historically known to us ; but the phrase continued in speech after the practice had become obsolete. The iron spikes depend on tho evidence of the Schol. Aristophan. Plutus, 431, a very doubtful autho* ity, when we read the legend which he blends with his statement. 7*
 * The barathrum was a deep pit, said to have had iron spikes at the bot-