Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/125

107 OSTRACISM OF HYFERBOLUS 107 lie was in banishment under sentence of ostracism, and resident at Samos. He terms him, " one Hyperbolas, a low busy-body, who had been ostracized, not from fear of dangerous excess of dignity and power, but through his wickedness and his being felt as a disgrace to the city." 1 This sentence of Thucydides is really the only evidence against Hyperbolus : for it is not less unjust in his case than in that of Kleon to cite the jests and libels of com- edy as if they were so much authentic fact and trustworthy crit- icism. It was at Samos that Hyperbolus was slain by the oligar- chical conspirators who were aiming to overthrow the democracy at Athens. We have no particular facts respecting him to enable us to test the general character given by Thucydides. At the time when the resolution was adopted at Athens, to take a vote of ostracism suggested by the political dissension between Nikias and Alkibiades, about twenty-four years had elapsed since a similar vote had been resorted to ; the last example having been that of Perikles and Thucydides son of Melesius, the latter of whom was ostracized about 442 B.C. The democratical con- stitution had become sufficiently confirmed to lessen materially the necessity for ostracism as a safeguard against individual usurpers : moreover, there was now full confidence in the numer- ous dikasteries as competent to deal with the greatest of such criminals, thus abating the necessity as conceived in men's minds, not less than the real necessity, for such precautionary interven- tion. Under such a state of things, altered reality as well as altered feeling, we are not surprised to find that the vote of ostra- cism now invoked, though we do not know the circumstances which immediately preceded it, ended in an abuse, or rather in a sort of parody, of the ancient preventive. At a moment of extreme heat of party dispute, the friends of Alkibiades probably accepted the challenge of Nikias and concurred in supporting a vote of ostracism ; each hoping to get rid of the opponent. The vote was accordingly decreed, but before it actually took place, 1 Thucyd. viii, 73. 'T7re/3/3o/,6v TE riva T&V 'A&ijvauiv, uvi9pu7roi>, uaTpaKia/j.tvov oil dia, dvvafieuf teal afw//arof 06/3ov, uA/Q <M TrovTjpiav KO.I aia%vvT]v rr/f Tro/lewf. According to Androtion (Fragm. 48, ed. Didot.) uarpaKia/^ilvuv dta ^av^oTTjTQ. Compare about Hyperbolus, Plutarch, Nikias, c. 1 1 ; Plutarch, Alkibiadea R. 13 ; IKl'ism. V. II. xii, -M ; Theopompus, Fragm. 102, 103, ed. Didot.