Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/179

 MISREPRESENTATIONS OF OSTRACISM. 161 peculiar institution of Kleisthenes, if the erroneous accusations against the Athenian democracy, of envy, injustice, and ill- treatment of their superior men, had not been greatly founded upon it, and if such criticisms had not passed from ancient times to modern with little examination. In monarchical governments, a pretender to the throne, numbering a certain amount of sup- porters, is, as a matter of course, excluded from the country. The duke of Bordeaux cannot now reside in France, nor could Napoleon after 1815, nor Charles Edward in England durh g the last century. No man treats this as any extravagant injustice, yet it is the parallel of the ostracism, with a stronger case in favor of the latter, inasmuch as the change from one regal dynasty to another does not of necessity overthrow all the collateral institutions and securities of the country. Plutarcl' has affirmed that the ostracism arose from the envy and jealousy inherent in a democracy, 1 and not from justifiable fears, an observation often repeated, yet not the less demonstrably untrue. Not merely because ostracism so worked as often to increase the influence of that political leader whose rival it removed, but still more, because, if the fact had been as Plutarch says, this institution would have continued as long as the democracy ; whereas it tinished with the banishment of Hyperbolus, at a period when the government was more decisively democratical than it had been in the time of Kleisthenes. It was, in truth, a product altogether of fear and insecurity, 2 on the part both of the democracy and its best friends, fear perfectly well- grounded, and only appearing needless because the precau- tions 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 ascendency of Perikles, by the spectacle of the great- 1 Plutarch, Themistokles, 22 ; Plutarch, Aristeides, 7, mtpajtvlHa Qdovov KC.I Koviafi6f. Sec the same opinions repeated by Wachsmuth, Hellen- ische Alterthurnskunde, ch. 48. vol. i, p. 272, and by Plainer, Process and Klagen bey den Attikern, vol. i, p. 386. VOL. rv. 11 oo.
 * Thucyd. viii, 73, Sib dvvapeuf ical a&uparif o3ov.