A Phenomenology of Democracy: Ostracism as Political Ritual

PAUL J. KOSMIN

Classical Antiquity. Vol. 34, Issue 1, pp. 121–161. ISSN 0278-6656(p); 1067-8344 (e).Copyright © 2015 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Pleasedirect all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University ofCalifornia Press’s Rights and Permissions website at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp.DOI:10.1525/CA.2015.34.1.121.

A Phenomenology of Democracy:Ostracism as Political Ritual

This article has two objectives. First, and in particular, it seeks to reinterpret the ostracismprocedure of early democratic Athens. Since Aristotle, this has been understood as a rational,political weapon of collective defense, intended to expel from Athens a disproportionatelypowerful individual. In this article, by putting emphasis on the materiality, gestures, and locationof ostraka-casting, I propose instead that the institution can more fruitfully be understood asa ritual enactment of civic unity. Second, and more generally, I hope to explore the frameswithin which early Athenian democracy is placed: while Greek kingship and tyranny (i.e.“primitive” polities) have been very successfully explored through anthropological and cross-cultural comparison, Greek democracy for the most part has remained in the domains ofthe institutional historian and political theorist. Taking a phenomenological and comparativeapproach, this article asks how the citizens of early democratic Athens experienced andcomprehended their new sovereignty and the invented procedures of mass decision-makingthrough which it was expressed.

In memory of Getzel Cohen.

A recurring event in the history of archaic and classical Greece was theconscious remodeling of political institutions,1 and none is more famous orsignificant than Cleisthenes’ program of reforms in late sixth-century Athens.The now standard identification of this moment as the epochal “foundation ofdemocracy”—recall the celebrations in 1992/3 of its 2500th anniversary—has

This article has benefitted enormously from the comments and criticisms of Jan Bremmer, EmmaDench, Susanne Ebbinghaus, Adriaan Lanni, Nino Luraghi, Duncan MacRae, Ian Moyer, and thejournal’s anonymous readers. Parts of the argument were presented to a workshop at HarvardUniversity. I am grateful to Leslie Kurke and Richard Neer for sharing with me the manuscript oftheir 2014 article.

1. See, e.g., Murray 1990.

classical antiquity Volume 34/No. 1 /April 2015122

given an inevitable teleology to its historical investigations, whether in post-Ephialtic Athens, the fourth-century city, or contemporary western polities. Andso, even where agency has been relocated from Cleisthenes to the demos,2 mostscholarship has focused on questions of intentioned, reasoned reform and itspolitical or institutional effects. Taking ostracism as a case study, this paperinstead explores how the Athenian citizenry experienced and comprehended theirnew sovereignty and the invented procedures of mass decision-making throughwhich it was expressed. Since Aristotle, ostracism has been understood as arational, political weapon of collective defense, intended to remove from Athensa disproportionately powerful individual. By putting emphasis on the processof ostracism rather than its end result, this paper proposes that the institutioncan be more fruitfully understood as a ritual enactment of civic unity, borrowingtechnologies, gestures, and symbols more usually associated with acts of magicand pollution-cleansing.

Ostracism allows the historian an incomparably thick description becauseof the confluence of three kinds of data. First, ostracism’s targeting of leadingpoliticians and its importance as a moment of reversal in their careers madeit a cluster-point for the character-revealing anecdote in ancient biography andhistoriography.3 Second, the strangeness of the practice prompted detailed de-scriptions in antiquarian mode by the Atthidographers, the author of the AthenaionPoliteia, scholiasts, and lexicographers. Finally, many thousands of ostraka, theinscribed sherds of pottery with which Athenian citizens identified their targets,have been excavated from the Agora and the Kerameikos; these, the very bal-lots cast, are first-hand testimony of individual citizens’ sentiments and mentalassociations. In short, ostracism gives us our earliest and richest evidence forthe practicing and self-understanding of Athenian people-power.4 It is to earlydemocracy what Old Comedy and forensic oratory are for the later fifth and fourthcenturies.

These three sets of sources can be combined to give the following schematicdescription of Athenian ostracism after Marathon; the reality no doubt was farmessier, contested, and variable than our texts indicate.5 At the meeting of theAthenian ekklesia in the sixth prytany, in mid-January, the assembled demoswas asked to vote, by a show of hands and without discussion, whether or not

2. Ober 2007.3. For the same reason, it features as the subject of historical declamation; see Gribble 1997

and Heftner 2001 on [Andocides] 4.4. Brief mention and a few ostraka attest the existence of parallel procedures in fifth-century

Argos, Cyrene, Megara, Miletus, (Sicilian) Naxos, Syracuse, the Tauric Chersonese, and Thurii; seeBacchielli 1994, Vinogradov and Zolotarev 1999, Greco 2010, and Schirripa, Lentini, and Cordano2012. The technology seems to have been similar to Athenian ostracism, except at Syracuse where,according to Diod. Sic. 11.87, olive leaves were used instead of pottery sherds.

5. On the danger of ritual-in-text, see Buc 2001. Like royal coronations, ostracism was regularenough to have a clear procedural script, yet sufficiently singular for specific ostrakophoriai to beremembered for their targets and outcomes.

kosmin: A Phenomenology of Democracy 123

they wished to conduct an ostrakophoria, the casting of ostraka, that year.6 Ifa simple majority opposed the preliminary suggestion, that was the end of thematter until the following year. If a majority were in favor, the ostrakophoriaitself was held at the beginning of the eighth prytany, in late March or early April.On the appointed day, the Athenian Agora was fenced off and a circular enclosurewas erected at its center.7 With the archons and the Council presiding,8 the demos,gathered from all over Attica, entered the delimited area through ten separategates, one for each of the new Cleisthenic tribes. Each citizen carried face-downa single ostrakon, which was either pre-prepared or inscribed on location. Thisostrakon was then cast into the circular enclosure. Once all the ostraka hadbeen deposited, they were gathered together and counted.9 If fewer than sixthousand ostraka had been cast,10 they were disposed of in the old wells andland-fills of the Agora and Kerameikos and the procedure ended; these abortedostracisms are unreported in the textual tradition but must be represented bysome of our surviving sherds. If the quorum of six thousand had been surpassed,the ostraka were then counted again, this time by name, to determine whichcitizen had been targeted most frequently, and then discarded in the same way.The result was proclaimed by public herald. The most targeted citizen wasobliged to leave Athens within ten days, to remain for his exile outside of theGeraestus and Scyllaeum promontories of Euboea and the Argolid, respectively,while retaining full rights to his property, and to return only after ten years hadelapsed or a decree for recall had been issued. The process was repeated atthe next meeting of the sixth prytany. For purposes of clarity, I shall use theterms “ostracism” for the full procedure, from the preliminary decision to thepolitician’s return, and “ostrakophoria” for the inscribing and casting of ostrakain the Agora.

There are nine firmly attested ostracisms, and possibly five more, beginningwith the ostracism of Hipparchus, the son of Charmus, in 488/7 and endingwith that of Hyperbolus in 416/5; from the report of the Athenaion Politeia itis likely that ostracism remained on the books but unused into the later fourthcentury. The two-decade delay between the law’s supposed promulgation byCleisthenes11 and its first use against Hipparchus, son of Charmus, after Marathonhas been met with varying skepticism and ingenuity, but an attractive solution

6. According to [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 43.5, at the same meeting preliminary complaints werebrought against sycophants and deceivers of the demos; see Christ 1992. For the lack of discussion,see [Andoc.] 4.3.

7. See below. Plut. Alc. 7.4: �να τ�πον τς �γορ�ς περιπεφραγμ�νον �ν κ�κλω� δρυφ�κτοις.Poll. Onom. 8.20: περισχοιν�σαντας δ� τι τς �γορ�ς μ�ρος . . . ε�ς τ ν περιορισθ�ντα τ�πον.

8. Philochorus FGrHist 328 F30; Sch. on Arist. Eq. 855.9. This may be depicted on a red-figure vase by the Pan Painter (Oxford 1911.617); see Siewert

2002: T4.10. Calderini 1945: 38–39.11. [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 22.1 and 3; Ael. VH 13.24; Philochorus FGrHist 328 F30; Sch. Ar. Eq.

855; Diod. Sic. 11.55.1 (implicitly).


is provided by Vaticanus Graecus 1144.12 This fifteenth-century miscellany ofkulturgeschichtliche items includes an unparalleled but internally consistent reportof Cleisthenes’ introduction of a proto-ostracism process: each member of theboule, having deliberated for a number of days, would inscribe on an ostrakon thename of whichever citizen he wished to exile and throw this sherd into an enclosurewithin the Bouleuterion; whoever received two hundred or more votes would berequired to leave Athens for ten years, retaining usufruct of their property. Ata later stage, perhaps under the influence of Themistocles and certainly by thetime of the ostracism of Hipparchus, the practice was relocated from the bouleto the demos.13

Most, if not all, ancient and modern discussions of the institution have iso-lated one moment—the expulsion of a citizen for ten years—as the telos of theprocess and so telescoped into this ostracism’s entire significance. Accordingly,ostracism has been interpreted as a weapon of removal, serving to safeguardthe new democratic constitution by banishing from the community those whowould most endanger it, whether the friends and family of the Peisistratid tyrants,medizing or overweening aristocrats, or factional leaders. From this perspective,as argued most insightfully by Sara Forsdyke, ostracism was a secular, rational,political tool that filled the niche once occupied in the archaic period by intra-aristocratic exilings.14 Such a mode of interpretation ultimately derives fromAristotle’s comparative constitutional inquiries, in which the removal of superla-tive or outstanding elements, “the rule of proportion,” is identified as commonto all politeiai, whether the Argonauts expelling Heracles, the kings of Persiahumbling the Babylonians, Greek tyrants lopping off “the tallest ears of wheat,”or democracies ostracizing their most influential citizens.15 But such focus on thesingle, generalizable fact of expulsion overlooks two things. First, unlike otherforms of exile, the return of the politician was an explicit and necessary part of theostracism institution, albeit sometimes unfulfilled. Put schematically, ostracism,focalized on the targeted politician, has not the double home-away structure ofbanishment but the triple structure of a rite de passage—separation, marginal-ity, and reaggregation16 —that transforms a dangerous or treacherous politicianinto a safe member of the Athenian community.17 Second, and more importantly,

12. McCargar 1976; Develin 1977; Pecorella Longo 1980.13. See Lehmann 1981, Hall 1989, and Doenges 1996.14. Forsdyke 2005. Needless to say, “secular,” “rational,” and “political” are each much disputed

terms; they are used in this paper to characterize a rational-choice analytic model of ostracism whichassumes that the electoral preferences of voters are motivated exclusively by the electoral outcomeswhich their participation generated; see Schuessler 2000.

15. Arist. Pol. 1284a-b.16. The terms are those of Turner 1969: 94–95, adapting van Gennep 1960.17. [Andoc.] 4.5 responds directly to this idea—if a citizen is exiled because he was bad

(πονηρ�ς), leaving Athens will not cure him (ο#τος ο$δ% �πελθ&ν �νθ�νδε πα�σεται). Note thatCalame 1999 has cautioned against the reductionism and over-simplicity of van Gennep’s model;but it remains helpful as an ideal classification of processual rites.


the functionalist reduction of ostracism to expulsion bypasses all the supposedlyirrational, overly formalized, and superfluous elements of the institution.18 Theremoval of a dangerous citizen by communal vote could have been achieved infar simpler ways. Both the ancient evidence (the ostraka above all) and modernanthropological theory suggest that the enactment of the ostracism procedure,the mass ceremonial in all its processual, expressive, emotional, and embodiedstrangeness, was as important as the expulsion which it sometimes prompted. Ananalysis of ostracism, especially the ostrakophoria, as a political ritual can illumi-nate the procedure and, more generally, shed light on the practices and mentalcategories with which the Athenian citizenry made sense of the new democraticorder.

While the hermeneutic of ritual makes ostracism more amenable to scrutiny,it assumes a particular methodological stance. On the one hand, it requires ex-tending a frame of analysis developed for social moments that possessed bothparticular morphological characteristics (stylization, staging, repetition, a collec-tive dimension, etc.) and supernatural referents (religious or magical) to thosewith the formal element alone or primarily. On the other hand, it must movebeyond the theorization of long-established rituals in long-existing societies, withthe Durkheimian emphasis on social maintenance and homeostasis that follows, toan examination of newly-crafted procedures that self-consciously proclaim theirnovelty. Fortunately, both political and invented procedures have been the objectof effective ritual analysis over the past couple of decades.19 Useful analogiesfor thinking about ostracism range from the political ceremonies created for thenew states of the global South to non-traditional spiritual movements like Sci-entology or Fang Reformative Cult; the rituals in each case, while straight off

the typewriter, were promulgated with the expectation of permanence. Such anapproach is further validated if we follow Catherine Bell in considering ritualas not a clearly delineated and autonomous category of traditional social life,but a strategic way of acting (“ritualization”) that can be deliberately adopted todifferentiate or privilege particular moments and activities.20 The three key ingre-dients of ritualization—symbolic objects, prescribed gestures, and a distinguishedlocation—are present throughout ostracism, most evidently in the ostrakophoria.In the following analysis, I will explore the multiple intentions and levels ofexperience or representation that are unified around each of these constituentparts.

18. These were dismissed by Carcopino 1935: 6 as “les details pittoresques.” For theoreticalcriticisms of functionalism, see Rappaport 1979: 43–96. On “ritual involution,” see Tambiah 1985:153.

19. The edited volume of Moore and Myerhoff 1977 was crucial; see also Kertzer 1988 andBell 1997: 128–35.

20. Bell 1992.


OSTRAKA AS SYMBOLS

The iconic object of ostracism, after which the entire procedure was named,was the ostrakon, or potsherd, on which an Athenian participating in the os-trakophoria would inscribe the name of his target. These potsherds are typicallytreated as mere pragmatic text-bearers: banal, quotidian, and culturally invisibleplanes for the words inscribed upon them.21 In fact, certain surviving ostraka andancient descriptions of their use indicate that, at least for some participants, theywere symbolically meaningful in themselves. As symbols, they demonstrate botha multivocality of association and an economy of reference in clustering theseinto a single object.22

Even before they were written upon, the genesis of ostraka and their ob-servable, tactile properties made them appropriate symbols for ostracism. Whilemany ostraka were recycled pieces of accidentally broken vases, it is clear that atleast some were specifically generated for a particular ostrakophoria by smashingvessels in advance or on site in the Agora.23 The violent gesture that broke up aceramic vessel transformed a single, smooth-surfaced, and in some cases beautifulcontainer into a multitude of sharp, jagged-edged sherds. The smashing was anaudibly brittle and visibly immediate crash. It was irreversible. It is no surprise,therefore, that the breaking of a pot was a common metaphor in the wider ancientworld for human mortality, urban violence, and even earthly cataclysm.24 Onoccasion, the pot-smash was used in rites of magical annihilation, as in Mid-dle Kingdom Egypt’s execration vases, which were inscribed with the names oftargeted enemies of the state and then broken.25 Still today we can recognizethe concentration of emotions and their immediate release in acts as common asthe smashing of a child’s clay piggy-bank or as considered as Ai Weiwei’s 1995Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.

That pot-smashing held symbolic significance for Athenian ostracism is nicelyillustrated by two non-joining ostraka, targeting Megacles, son of Hippocrates,that come from a single red-figure vase of the Pistoxenus painter. One of theseostraka (Fig. 1) identifies its target as Megakl[es], the name scratched on the insidesurface; yet on the other side of the same sherd we find the phrase, painted in glazeduring the vase’s manufacture, Meg[akles] | kalo[s] (“Meg[acles] is handsome”).The dating of the vessel requires that this handsome Megacles, honored in this

21. See, e.g., the recent discussion of Missiou 2011: 41–84.22. Turner 1962 and 1967: 19–43.23. Several ostraka join together; though inscribed with different names they come from the

same vessel (Siewert 2002: 72–76).24. E.g., Ecclesiastes 12:6, The Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur (“in Ur,

people were smashed as if they were clay pots”), Death of Gilgamesh (“For six days, Gilgameshlay ill like a shattered pot”); see Foster 2010: 143–45. See Diehl 1964: 146 on the deliberate breakingof hydria for child burials and Vinken 1958 on the broken vase as a figure for female loss of virginityand male impotence.

25. Pritchard 1958: 225; Posener 1966: 277–79; Weiss 1969: 150–51; Faraone 1991a: 174–75and 1993: 78–79; Redford 1992: 87–89.


way by the vase’s maker, be the politician’s homonymous son.26 In other words, atleast two citizens, wishing to target Megacles, deliberately selected a sympoticvessel which already contained his name and advertised his son’s noble goodlooks, smashed it (perhaps accompanied with hostile pronouncements), inscribedhis name on the sherds, and used those pieces in the ostrakophoria. By necessity,only one of these ostraka could carry the original dipinto, the fortunate survival ofwhich allows us to reconstruct this episode, but the significance of the ritualizeddestruction may have carried over to all the sherds that originally came fromthis vase. It is possible that such self-conscious selection and destruction ofvessels was much more common than we can ever know. The targeting ofostracized politicians in this mode—first destroying a citizen’s praise-object andthen reusing the material against the same person—is attested elsewhere: forinstance, the bronze statue dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis by the first targetof demotic ostracism, Hipparchus, son of Charmus, was melted down after theostrakophoria and turned into a stele, on which, beginning with his own, the namesof the city’s traitors or ostracized politicians were inscribed.27 The symbolism ofthe shattered vase is recognized in a fragment of a lost play by Aristophanes,where one speaker says to the other, “What shall I do with you, you devil(kakodaimon), you ostracized sherd of amphora (amphoreus exostrakistheis)?”28

With only this line preserved the precise significance of the figure is obscure, butit is plausible that the addressee, perhaps the ostracized politician Thucydidesor Hyperbolus, is identified in his misfortune with the ceramic vessel broken upfor the ostrakophoria.29 Similarly, a proverb preserved by the imperial-periodgrammarian Diogenianus may confirm this: kerameus anthropos, a pottery man,means someone who is “cracked” (epi tou sathrou), i.e. unsound, impotent, or,appropriately enough for ostracism, treacherous.30

Moreover, the shape and texture of the potsherds made them ideal hand-weapons. Two lawcourt speeches indicate that they could be used to maim andkill personal enemies.31 Such violent associations of ostraka’s materiality werewell suited to the aggression and personal hatreds of the ostracism procedure,even if the targeted politicians were not physically attacked with the sherds.The late antique lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria refers to ostracism as the

26. Willemsen 1991; Siewert 2002: T1/87.27. Lycurg. Leocr. 117–18. On this passage, see Connor 1985: 92 and Schreiner 1970.28. τ� δ' σο( δρ�σω, κακ�δαιμον, �μφορε)ς | �*οστρακισθε�ς; Ar. F661 (KA) = Plut. Comp.

Ar. et Men. 853c. Siewert 2002: T13.29. The number of small drinking-vessel bases used as ostraka—for example, 122 of the 191

famous Themistocles ostraka found in 1937 on the north slope of the Akropolis were kylix feet (seeMissiou 2011: 60)—raises the possibility (it is nothing more) that the “decapitation” of these cupsfor use in the ostrakophoria was a moment of marked significance; it is striking that Arist. Pol.1284a compares ostracism to Periander’s snapping off the tops of the highest ears of wheat.

30. Diogenianus Paroemiae s.v. κεραμε)ς +νθρωπος.31. Lys. 3.27–28 and 4.6–7. On the use of ostraka as weapons in Athenian law, see Phillips

2007: 74–105.


keramike mastix, “the pottery whip”;32 the phrase, perhaps originating as anOld Comedy joke, nicely captures the skin-tearing qualities of the ostrakon, thegestures associated with its casting (see below), and the sublimated violence ofthe entire procedure. Indeed, these physical characteristics of ostraka may explainwhy they were considered appropriate for the casting of hostile magical spells.33

Old Comedy identifies a more playful association of the ostrakon. An Athe-nian children’s chase-game, ostrakinda, used a potsherd, black on one side, termed“Night,” red or white on the other, “Day,” as its main token. Athenian boys woulddivide themselves into two groups, Night and Day, separated by a line drawnin the dust. The ostrakon would be tossed into the middle and, depending onwhich of the colors landed face up, one team would chase after the other. The firstmember of the pursued team to be caught was made to sit down and named onos,“the donkey.”34 The game is explicitly linked with ostracism in a fragment of thecomic poet Plato’s Alliance and in Aristophanes’ Knights.35 In the latter passage,the Sausage-Seller tells personified Demos that he need but frown and look fora game of ostrakinda, and Cleon and his associates “at night (nuktor), running(theontes) to seize the shields [won from the Spartans at Sphacteria and dedicatedin the Stoa Poikile in the Agora], would occupy the entrances (tas eisbolas) of ourgrain.” Demos’ ostrakinda is clearly intended to recall ostracism and the linesskilfully interweave the language of the children’s game—ostrakinda, “night,”“running”—with the terminology and location of ostracism and conspiracy—thehostility of the demos, the prospective treason of Cleon, the Agora location, theeisbolai through which grain arrived at the city and also the ten tribes entered theAgora for ostrakophoriai. The association of the two potsherd-based activities(political ritual and children’s game) is recognized in an ostrakon excavated fromthe Kerameikos, which identifies the intended target of an ostrakophoria as thecaptured victim of ostrakinda—Agasias Lamptreus onos, “Agasias, of the demeLamptrae, the donkey.”36 The suitability of the game’s association for ostracismlies in its enactment of division, selection and abuse of a victim, arbitrariness,37

and, above all, the materiality of the potsherd.All of these associations derived from the ostraka themselves, even before

anything had been written on them: any ostrakon predicated a unity which hadbeen broken and continued to manifest the violence of this destructive act.

32. Hsch. s.v. κεραμικ- μ�στι* (= Adespota F363 KA).33. Collins 2008: 66; see, e.g., PGM CXXIV.1–43. For ostrakon curse-tablets, see Gager 1992:

31n.5 and below.34. Pollux 9.112; Eust. in Il. 1161.37: . μ'ν το�νυν ληφθε(ς τ/ν φευγ�ντων 0νος ο#τος

κ�θηται. See also Pl. Tht. 146a.35. Plato Com. F168 KA; Ar. Eq. 855–57 (1στ% ε� σ) βριμ3σαιο κα( βλ�ψειας 5στρακ�νδα,

| ν�κτωρ καθαρπ�σαντες 6ν τ7ς �σπ�δας θ�οντες | τ7ς ε�σβολ7ς τ/ν �λφ�των 6ν καταλ�βοιεν8μ/ν). See also Plato Phaedrus 241b (5στρ�κου μεταπεσ�ντος).

36. Bicknell 1986; Siewert 2002: T1/35.37. Particularly clear in the Plato Comicus passage; see Siewert 2002: T11 and Rosenbloom

2004: 80.


Indeed, it should be noted that the first count at the end of an ostrakophoria,to determine whether or not the quorum of six thousand had been reached,deliberately overlooked the ostraka’s inscriptions and so foregrounded theirbasic physicality; only at the second count were the names read. One ostrakoneven speaks its political charge from the potsherd’s perspective: “This ostrakonsays. . . .”38

Meaningful in their materiality, ostraka were turned into more complexsymbol-bearers by the inscription of words or images. The most basic andcommonly attested addition to ostraka was the name, sometimes with patronymicand/or demotic, of the targeted citizen. Labeling the potsherd in this way wasthe pragmatic means for the ballot to weigh against the selected politician in thesecond count at the end of an ostrakophoria (if the quorum had been surpassed).But the inscribing of a name on a sherd had, at least for some participants,significant associations derived from other practices.

Named ostraka recall the tokens that could be used in sortition or lot-taking toidentify a politician or leader. For instance, Ajax was identified as the Achaeanchampion by the selection of his marked or named lot.39 Plutarch reports thatthe Thessalians asked the Delphic priestess to select their king from a numberof beans on each of which a different name had been written.40 On the basis ofseveral seventh- and sixth-century potsherds inscribed with names, sometimes ofknown aristocrats like Peisistratus or Aristion and found in the Agora or on theAcropolis, it has been suggested that an early, pre-Cleisthenic ostrakon-based lotwas used at Athens.41 A lot oracle at Delphi, precise details unclear, may haveused similar name-bearing tokens.42 Certainly, the bean-lot for the selection ofthe city’s archons, the officials who presided over the ostrakophoria, was firstused in 487/6, the second year of demotic ostracism.43 The full significance of thiswill become clear below, where we will see that the gestures of ostraka-castingevoked lot-taking or diagnosis rites; but, by itself, the formal similarity of thename-bearing ostrakon to a lot token could gather to it some of the significance ofdivinely sanctioned identification.44

To be identified in sortition or lot-taking was, for the most part, eitherpositive or neutral; but an ostrakon used in ostracism was intended to harm

38. Siewert 2002: T1/153 ([τ�δε] φεσ(ν . . . τ0στρακ[ον]); see below.39. Hom. Il. 7.175–76.40. Plut. De fraterno amore 21 492a-b. She chose the bean representing Aleuas the Red,

eponymous founder of the Aleuadae of Larissa and political organizer of Thessaly (see Helly 1995:121–22).

41. Vanderpool 1949: 405–407; Mosse and Schnapp Gourbeillon 1998: 50.42. Philochorus FGrHist 328 F195; Callim. Hymn 2.45; Hsch. s.v. θρια�; Steph. Byz. s.v. θρια�;

see Eidinow 2007: 35–36.43. [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 22.5; see Raaflaub 1998: 44–45. Rhodes 1981: 274 suggests that the new

procedure may have been introduced in the previous year, that of the first known ostracism.44. The most explicit statement is Pl. Leg. 6.759c. On the combination of randomness and

divine sanction in sortition procedures, see Stewart 1998 and Johnston 2003.


the named individual. Accordingly, there is a more important formal connection,of the name-inscribed potsherd to the magical curse-tablet.45 In the most generalterms, ostraka and curse-tablets were each technologies for the manifestation ofindividualized, interpersonal antipathy through the inscribing and manipulationof a small, hand-held writing-surface. While the dominant medium for curse-tablets was lead, ceramic potsherds were also used, some of which are, on firstsight, indistinguishable from ostracism’s ostraka.46 Such curse-ostraka were notonly synchronous with Athenian ostracism—appearing in Sicily and the Greekmainland in the early fifth century47—but even, it seems, deliberately emulated bysome participants in the ostrakophoria. The association operates on two levels.

First, fundamental to the inscribing of curse-tablet and ostrakon was a be-lief in the metonymic power of naming. The vast majority of both ostraka andclassical curse-tablets carry only the target’s name; even when lengthier phrasesare used the name is given first.48 It has been demonstrated of curse-tablets thatthis very name-writing was a charged moment of spite, transference, and self-communication, in terms of the sharp cutting gestures of scratching letters onlead or ceramic and the verbal curses or injunctions that accompanied them.49

Scratching with a sharp point, such as was used to inscribe ostraka, appears inPhrynichus’ fragmentary Ephialtes as a metaphor for the Athenian youth whowould nastily mock their fellow citizens in the Agora: “holding some point intheir fingers . . . wandering about the Agora . . . scratching with deep scratchesthose to whom they were formerly pleasant.”50 Moreover, the curse was sympa-thetically enacted or reinforced by the scrambling or retrograde writing of thetarget’s name;51 curling the inscribed name or phrase into a circle has also beenrecognized as some kind of magical act.52 Many ostraka share these features,indicating that name-writing had a more than pragmatic significance. Like earlycurse-tablets, citizens’ names on ostraka are found in the accusative and dativecases as well as the more standard nominative, implying that the moment of

45. This has been observed in passing by, among others, Ogden 1997: 142; Rosenbloom 2004:337; Forsdyke 2005: 157–58; Collins 2008: 65.

46. Some curses were even inscribed on the circular kylix feet, a preferred type of ostracismostrakon (see n.29 above). Gager 1992: 4. Lebedev 1996a and 1996b.

47. Jeffery 1955: 72–76. The binding spell in Aeschylus’ Eumenides (staged in 458 bce) assumespublic familiarity with their use; see Faraone 1985: 152 and Eidinow 2007: 141.

48. Audollent 1904: l; Gager 1992: 5.49. Steiner 1994: 71–75; Collins 2008: 4. Verbs of cursing or binding were frequently com-

pounds of grapho. On the importance of individual autocommunication, even in collective ritual, seeRappaport 1979: 178.

50. Phrynichus Ephialtes F3 (= Ath. 165b): 9χουσι γ�ρ τι κ�ντρον �ν το:ς δακτ�λοις,| μισ�νθρωπον +νθος ;βης< | ε=θ% 8δυλογο>σιν ?πασιν �ε( κατ7 τ-ν �γορ7ν περι�ντες. | �π(το:ς β�θροις @ταν Aσιν, �κε: το�τοις οBς 8δυλογο>σιν | μεγ�λας �μυχ7ς καταμ�*αντες κα(συγκ�ψαντες ?παντες γελ/σιν. With such imagery and location, is this a joke about the practices ofthe ostrakophoria?

51. Gager 1992: 5; there are several examples of jumbled spelling in Jordan 1985.52. Lebedev 1996a and 1996b.


their inscribing or casting was accompanied with some kind of aggressive ordisadvantaging verbal pronouncement;53 we will see below that even nominative-case names could be integrated into performative speech-acts. Moreover, thepoliticians’ names are often written backwards or in circles, even where this isnot demanded by the shape of the potsherd.54 Such meaningfulness of writingis confirmed by the deliberate erasure of certain names or adjectives, presum-ably as a kind of “persuasive analogy” for destruction.55 For instance, in the480s an Athenian inscribed on his potsherd the name Boutalion in the accusativecase (so the object of a verb), scratched a couple of horizontal lines throughit, and then, to secure the identification for counting, rewrote the name andadded the demotic.56 A carefully inscribed four-line ostrakon against Megacles,found in the Kerameikos, gave the politician’s name (in the accusative case), hispatronymic, his demotic, and then, just visible on the final line, the adjectivealeiteron, “accursed”; each letter of this word has been separately and carefullyscratched away (Fig. 2).57 An ostrakon targeting Callias, son of Cratias, callshim a Mede (Medos), but scratches out the first three letters of this treacherousethnic identifier.58 For a culture familiar with the significance of the hostile writ-ing of names, the famous tale in Plutarch, where Aristides inscribes an ostrakonwith his own name on behalf of an illiterate peasant who does not recognizehim, may illustrate not merely the uprightness of this most just of Athenianswhen asked to ostracize himself, but also a memorable act of auto-imprecation;59

note that the anecdote is immediately followed by another description of Aris-tides’ selfless self-exile, when, departing from Athens following the ostrakopho-ria, he raises his hands in prayer that the demos need have no occasion to bereminded of him.

Second, several ostraka bear additional words or magical symbols that, whilesuperfluous to the political name-count of ballots, were evidently consideredworthwhile and efficacious within the broader social context of the ostrakophoria.In certain cases, this was the channeling of a private grudge, keenly felt, in no waypublicly significant, and in consequence mysterious to the modern historian: land

53. Brenne 1994: 23 gives the proportions as 87.4% nominative, 9.8% dative, 2.7% accusative,and 0.1% genitive.

54. See, for example, Lang 1990: #114, 117, 127, 300, 305, 542, 751, 762, 816, 1049, and1053. One ostrakon from the Agora (Siewert 2002: T1/141), for a certain Myrrhinicus, breaks up thename in an intriguing and apparently deliberate way (Μυρρ�|νικος | Dτο | Μυρ). Nothing seems tohave broken off the edge or bottom of the ostrakon. It is unlikely that mur is an abbreviation forthe deme-names Myrrhinoutta or Myrrhinous, as these usually follow immediately after the nameand before any verbal injunction. Perhaps the idea was that victory, nike, is taken from Myrrhinicus.

55. Pace Siewert 2002: 153–54.56. Lang 1990: #89 (with Fig. 4).57. Siewert 2002: T1/93. On the significance of the adjective, see Hatch 1908: 157–62.58. Siewert 2002: T1/48.59. Plut. Arist. 7.7–8. The anecdote is usually invoked in discussions of vicarious literacy; see,

e.g., Missiou 2011: 59.


disputes,60 interpersonal conflicts,61 and other things we cannot begin to identify.Such resentments may explain the so-called “scatter-vote,” i.e., individual ostrakacast against unknown and obscure Athenians, which stood no chance of expellingtheir target but nonetheless satisfied some social-psychological function. Weare dealing with the very same face-to-face, intensely competitive world inwhich curse-tablets were deployed.62 This is confirmed by the explicitly magicalsigns that appear on some ostraka. Inscribed on one, in the line between thename Hippocrates and his patronymic Alcmaeonides, are the three letters orsymbols N N N, meaningless except as magic;63 an ostrakon against Callixenusbears, among other symbols, a drawing of a mullet, a fish associated withHecate and the dead (Fig. 3);64 the Eumenides (Euneides or Eumeides) maybe invoked in another;65 one seems to begin with the imprecation ma tisin s’,“Yes! Vengeance against you” or equivalent.66 A small number of ostrakacontain profile portraits, much as one finds on curse-tablets, embedding thetarget more deeply into the sherd and so making its sympathetic manipulation(see below) all the more effective.67 One particularly horrific ostrakon (Fig.4), cast against Megacles, depicts him as a corpse, lying dead on the ground,68

either sublimating a violent hostility into the ostracism ballot or intending thisimage, in the manner of black-magic figurines, to have some kind of analogicaleffect.

While these features indicate the use of ostraka as therapeutic responses topersonal anxieties or resentments, additional accusations point to more publicconcerns. A number of ostraka, especially from the 480s (between the firstand second Persian invasions), accuse political targets of treason and medism,directly (e.g., “Callixenus, the traitor,” “Against the medizing Habronichus,of the deme Lamptrae”) or by asserted ethnic or kinship link (e.g., “Callias,the Mede,” “Arist—, the brother of Datis”).69 Some of these charges are alsoillustrated on ostraka, depicting, for example, Callias in the costume of a Persianarcher or Callixenus with the beard and crown of the Great King (Fig. 3).70

60. Siewert 2002: T1/112 against Megacles δρυμE h�νεκα (“on account of the copse”);perhaps also T1/109 and T1/110, again against Megacles, π�ρας h�νεκα (“on account of the(land?) beyond”).

61. Siewert 2002: T1/86 against Megacles FΡο�κω χ�ριν (“for the sake of Rhoecus”).62. Faraone 1991b; Riess 2012: 164–234.63. Siewert 2002: T1/43; on such Konsonantenreihen, see Delatte 1913: 247–48 and Dornseiff

1925: 60–61.64. Siewert 2002: T1/157, see Consogno 2005: 352–53 and Apollodorus FGrHist 244 F109

= Ath. 7.325a-b.65. Siewert 2002: T1/114.66. Siewert 2002: T1/42; Raubitschek (in Vanderpool 1949: 403) thought it equivalent to �ς

κ�ρακας. See Hall 1989: 98 on these “imprecations of a plainly sacral character.”67. Siewert 2002: T1/156–64.68. Siewert 2002: T1/159.69. Siewert 2002: T1/65, 41, 50–55, and 37, respectively.70. Siewert 2002: T1/156 and T1/157; see Brenne 1992: 178–82.


Other accusations include financial dishonesty and sorcery.71 Importantly, thesecrimes—tyranny, treason, medism, abuse of authority, and magic—are preciselythose publicly condemned by priests or magistrates with officially intoned curses atpolitical gatherings, sacrifices, and festivals throughout the Greek world.72 In earlyfifth-century Teos, for instance, the city’s Timouchoi pronounced curses againstthose who used poisons, interfered with grain imports, conducted or condonedpiracy, betrayed the territory, or worked in some way against the polis.73 In Athens,a similar commination text was recited at every assembly and council meeting,condemning medism, tyranny, and subversion of the laws.74 Ostracism shares withthese public curses a protective function, a prospective (rather than retrospective)temporality, and internal (rather than foreign) targets, but the potsherd technologyallows a double individuation: on the one hand, each citizen, rather than the priestsor magistrates representing them, can condemn these acts of public betrayal and,on the other, specific targets can be identified by name.

That some Athenians considered inscribing (and casting out, see below)ostraka magically or symbolically efficacious is corroborated by eight ostracismsherds excavated from the Kerameikos. On these we find, instead of the name of afellow citizen or dominant politican, the word limos, “Hunger” or “hunger,” inthe nominative and accusative cases, twice the object of the verb ostrakido, “Iostracize,” once, intriguingly, termed eupatrides, “nobly born” or “aristocratic.”75

Food-shortage was, of course, a constant Greek concern and those who contributedto it were the target of law cases76 and, as we have seen above, curses. In addition,apotropaic rituals were used to expel personified Hunger: Plutarch describes howthe inhabitants of his home city of Chaeronia would drive a chosen slave out ofthe house, beating him with branches, while saying “Get out Hunger (Boulimon)!Come in Wealth and Health!”;77 an imperial-period inscription from Termessus inLycia praises a certain Onoratus for protecting the grain supply and “pursuinghunger into the sea,” perhaps indicating a similar such ritual;78 Athens seems tohave dedicated a plain in Attica in propitiation of Hunger.79 These ostraka indicatethat at least eight citizens considered the potsherd a suitable technology and the

71. Megacles is accused of being philarguros, “silver-loving” (Siewert 2002: T1/111). Leagrusis termed a baskanos, “sorcerer” (Siewert 2002: T1/72), and melas, “dark” (Siewert 2002: T1/73); seeBuxton 2013: 60–71 on the possible implications of melas. Crates is given the sobriquet Phrynondas(Siewert 2002: T1/69), a name associated with magic and sorcery (see Phillips 1990: 129–33).

72. On these politikai arai, see Vallois 1914, Ziebarth 1985, and Parker 1996: 192–96.73. ML 30; SEG 45 1628; see Herrmann 1981.74. Dem. 19.70 and 20.107; Isoc. Paneg. 157; Ar. Thesm. 331–71 (in parody); see also Din.

2.16 on curses against bribe-takers.75. Siewert 2002: T1/75–81.76. E.g., Lys. 22 (against the grain-dealers).77. Plut. Quaest. conviv. 693f: 9*ω Βο�λιμον 9σω δ' Πλο>τον κα( FΥγ�ειαν. Note the

description of ostracism as the keramike mastix, above. See Herter 1950: 117–18.78. TAM III.1 103 ll.6–7: δ�ω*ε γ7ρ ε�ς ?λα λιμ�ν.79. Zenobius 4.93, Diogenianus 6.13, and Apostol. 10.69 (Λιμο> πεδ�ον). For personified

Hunger at Sparta, see Polyaenus Strat. 2.15 and Callisthenes FGrHist 124 F13 = Ath. 10.452a-b.


ostrakophoria an appropriate moment for such an act of symbolic expulsion.Dismissed by Brenne as “wasted votes,”80 these sherds are in fact evidence for thebottom-up interpretation or co-option of the new democratic ceremony to relievean ancient and deeply felt anxiety.

Far from being banal writing-surfaces for a rational, political process, os-traka seem to have been treated by at least some Athenians as ritual symbols,both in their genesis-in-violence and in the way that inscribing them could sym-pathetically manifest personal or public hostility. That is to say, the coherenceof object, function, and symbol made ostraka as appropriate to expressive, af-fective satisfactions as to narrowly instrumental objectives. Even if the evidencefor this comes from a small proportion of excavated ostraka, it can suggest theemotions and oral pronouncements that may commonly have accompanied themore simply inscribed majority. Indeed, precisely because ostracism was a de-signed, self-consciously artificial procedure, we can expect the ostrakon to haveachieved its symbolic charge by involving associations beyond its immediaterole in the ostrakophoria.81 It is crucial to recognize that individual ostraka,which is really to say individual Athenian citizens, show considerable variationin their associative conceptualization of ostracism, ranging from a children’s gameand hunger-expulsion to private black magic and public imprecation. In a 1965study of Bwiti Reformative Cult in the northern Gabon, a post-independencedeliberate reworking of Fang ancestral religion, anthropologist James Fernandezdemonstrated that, despite all participants testifying to the efficacy of the newcult’s rituals, there was considerable variation in the individual interpretation ofcommonly experienced phenomena. For instance, the ngombi, or native harp,the central object of Bwiti cult, meant nothing beyond a musical instrument tosome informants, a representative of the female element in the universe to oth-ers, and a complex configuration of mythic symbols to still others.82 Like Bwiti,ostracism, especially in its first decade, performed a number of different purposesand allowed individuals to select those that most suited their temperaments andspoke to their condition. Consensus lay neither in shared political targets—forostracism encouraged the individuation of political opinion—nor in a commoninterpretation of the procedure, but in the imposed, and therefore synthesizing,technology through which a congeries of intentions was made manifest.

80. Brenne 1994: 21.81. See, e.g., Turner 1961 and 1962 on the subtle web of associations called up by commonplace

symbols in Ndembu ritual and Versnel 2006 on the culturally ingrained, spontaneous associationsof Greek ritual.

82. Fernandez 1965.


THE CASTING GESTURE

Once the pots had been smashed and the ostraka inscribed, whether witha politician’s name, additional magical symbols, or even “Hunger,” they werecarried by all participants into the Agora. The ostraka were then cast across abarrier—the ballistic verb rhipto, “I throw,” is used—into a circular enclosure.83

This expulsive casting of ostraka was a regular kinetic movement, a marked,significant gesture within individual and collective frames of reference.

We have seen, above, that the inscribing of a name or portrait onto the ostrakonturned the sherd into a metonymic bearer of the targeted person (or personifica-tion): one Athenian could even write on the ostrakon he took to the barrier, “Iam carrying (phero) Megacles,” totally assimilating potsherd and politician.84

Embedding the target’s identity in the ostrakon meant that its manipulation couldintensify and sympathetically enact the inscriber’s purpose. Several inscriptionson ostraka indicate the symbolic force of the throwing gesture: “Cimon, son ofMiltiades, should get out of here (ito), and take (your sister) Elpinice with you!”85

“Megacles, son of Hippocrates, should flee (pheugeto)!”86 “Megacles, son of Hip-pocrates, out with him again (echso eiseltheis)! But not to Eretria!”87 “Callixenus,son of Aristonymus, should go (ioi)!”88 “Myrrhinicus should go (ito), Myr-!”89

“Themistocles, son of Neocles, should go (ito)!”90 and even “[I?] expel (pheu–)Hunger!”91 As before, it is likely that these expulsive verbs indicate what wasregularly spoken or shouted over the majority of ostraka that bear the targets’names alone. The same third-person imperative, ito, “he should go!,” appears onan ostracism ostrakon from the Tauric Chersonese, pointing to the ubiquity of theinjunction.92 The casting away from the citizen and over a barrier was a gesturethat precisely paralleled the orders inscribed on, and presumably spoken over,the ostrakon: action and utterance are different sides of a single analogous act.93

Presumably, the varying violence of the gesture and volume of the injunction gave

83. Throw: Tzetz. Chil. 13.449 (�ρρ�πτουν); Vat. Graec. 1144 (L�πτειν ε�ς τ το> βουλευτηρ�ουπερ�φραγμα). Note that the same verb was also used of ostrakinda, the children’s game identifiedwith ostracism (Pollux 9.112: . δ' L�πτων τ 0στρακον �πιλ�γει “ν)* 8μ�ρα”). Barrier: Pollux8.19 (τ ν περιορισθ�ντα τ�πον); Plut. Ar. 7.4 (�να τ�πον τς �γορ�ς περιπεφραγμ�νον �ν κ�κλω�δρυφ�κτοις). According to Vat. Graec. 1144, bouleutic ostraka were cast into a similar enclosure (τ το> βουλευτηρ�ου περ�φραγμα).

84. Siewert 2002: T1/84.85. Siewert 2002: T1/67; on the incest accusation, see below.86. Siewert 2002: T1/85.87. Siewert 2002: T1/94.88. Consogno 2005: 349 (P17772).89. Siewert 2002: T1/141.90. Siewert 2002: T1/43–46.91. Siewert 2002: T1/81.92. Vinogradov and Zolotarev 1999: #7; Schirripa, Lentini, and Cordano 2012: 125.93. See Corbeill 2004: 3 on how linked gestures and spoken utterances derive from a single,

underlying mental process.


public expression, in a way not possible for a hand-vote or secret ballot, to theintensity of an individual’s opinion.94

This expulsive verbalized gesture shares the forms and behavior of Greeksympathetic magic, according to which a marked action was performed whilean incantation projected this activity onto the absent victim. As ChristopherFaraone has demonstrated, “in most cases the similia similibus formula employsa third-person imperative or optative”;95 these are the precise verbal forms wehave on the ostraka. In addition, the words and gestures of this political ritualare strikingly close to apotropaic formulae used across the Greek world againstillness, hunger, demons, and ghosts:96 “Go out (exo), Hunger!”97 “To the door(thuraze), ghosts!”98 “Flee, flee (pheuge pheug’), leave (iou) bile!”99 If we recallthe “I(?) expel Hunger” sherd, cast at the Athenian ostrakophoria, it is evidentthat the new political ritual is situated, for at least some Athenians, within a similarthought-world.

While the individual’s casting of his ostrakon can be assimilated to sym-pathetic magic, the simultaneous throwing by a crowd of citizens held differentmeanings. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Athenians, gathering from all partsof Attica around the circular enclosure in the Agora, together cast their ostrakainto the center. This collective activity was charged by deeply rooted chains ofcognition related to group throwing, associations that seem to be of long durationand close affinity.

The simultaneous throwing of sharp, hard objects by a crowd of citizens ar-rayed in a circle recalls nothing so much as stoning.100 For ostracism and lapidationshare three fundamental characteristics. First, both were mass-participation ac-tions that were strongly marked as demotic and ideally enacted (and therebywitnessed) by a good part of the community. The identification of stoningwith the demos is evident in narratives which give the entire population (“theAthenians,”101 “the Mytileneans,”102 “the Coans,”103 “the Arcadians,”104 etc.) asthe active subject of stoning verbs and in such literary compounds or juxtaposi-tions as demoleuston, “demos-stoned,”105 demorrhipheis leusimous aras, “demos-

94. See Faig 1993: 144 on this effect of the Spartan shout-vote, and Schwartzberg 2010.95. Faraone 1988: 282.96. See Rotolo 1980 and Faraone 2004.97. Plut. Quaest. conviv. 693f.98. Photius s.v. Θ�ραζε Κ�ρες.99. Heim 1892: #57 (Alex. Trall. II p.377); see also #58–60 (Marc. 8.193).

100. On stoning, see Pease 1907, Gras 1984, Rosivach 1987, Cantarella 1991: 73–87, Steiner1995. The connection with ostracism has been noted in passing by Gras 1984: 85 and Rosenbloom2004: 337.

101. Hdt. 9.5.2.102. Hdt. 5.38.1.103. Apollod. Bibl. 2.7.1.104. Paus. 8.5.13.105. Soph. Ant. 36 and Lycoph. Alex. 331.


thrown stoning curses,”106 and leustera demou, “the demos’ stoning.”107 It isexplicitly understood as a weapon of the weak many, brought about by mutual en-couragement and reinforcement.108 Second, ostracism and lapidation, as demoticweapons, were collective regulations of leadership. That is to say, stoning tar-geted the same kinds of individuals for the same kinds of crime as ostracism:tyrants or would-be tyrants,109 treacherous leaders,110 medizing politicians,111

magistrates who interfered with the grain supply112 or accepted bribes,113 gen-erals who did not press their advantage,114 and those guilty of generating sta-sis.115 Lapidation was the manifestation of demotic opposition to the humiliationof self-interested leadership, the outrage of abusive authority, and the fear oftreachery and betrayal. Several narratives indicate that it was considered an ap-propriate punishment only for in-group leaders, not external threats. Third, inboth stoning and ostracism the casting of the ballistic object was linked withthe simultaneous uttering of accusations or curses.116 Danielle Allen has shownthat this was considered an integral part of the lapidation punishment.117 We findcurses and stones combined in such formulations as demorrhipheis leusimousaras, “demos-thrown stoning curses,”118 apeilas . . . litholeuston Are, “threats. . . stony stoning violence,”119 ballein kai boan, “to pelt and to shout,”120 andmixtaque cum saxis . . . verba mala, “harsh words mixed with stones.”121 Wehave already discussed some of the hostile comments inscribed on certain os-traka—traitor, medizer, silver-lover, sorcerer—and presumably spoken at thepoint of inscription and casting. As a comparison, Xenophon describes how hisGreek mercenaries began to stone Dexippus, “proclaiming him ‘the traitor’”(anakalountes ton prodoten).122 Other ostrakon accusations, to be examined fur-

106. Aesch. Ag. 1616.107. Aesch. Sept. 199.108. For instance, in Eur. IT 331–33 the heroic Orestes and Pylades are surrounded and disarmed

by a greater number of weaker but stone-throwing herdsmen. On mutual encouragement, see, e.g.,Hdt. 9.5.3, Xen. Anab. 5.7.19 and 5.7.21–23, and Tzetz. Chil. 5.965. On the emotional dynamicsof ritual, see Chaniotis 2006.

109. Hdt. 5.38; Diod. Sic. 3.47.4; Plut. Sol. 12.1; Nicolaus of Damascus F51 (Dindorf); Diog.Laert. 9.26; Val. Max. 3.3.2; Plut. Sol. 12.1; Tzetz. Chil. 5.965.

110. Aesch. Myrmidons F132; Xen. Anab. 1.3.1–2 and 6.6.7; Sch. Eur. Or. 432; Paus. 8.5.13.111. Hdt. 9.5.112. Plut. Parallela minora 313b; also piracy, Apollod. Bibl. 2.7.1.113. Paus. 8.5.8–9.114. Thuc. 5.60.6; Diod. Sic. 13.87.4–5; Hyp. Against Autocles F59 and 63 (Jensen).115. Paus. 2.32.2.116. See Bers 1985 and Schwartzberg 2010 on Pl. Leg. 876b, where the multitude uses thorybos,

shouts of blame or praise, to compel the acceptance of its values in the assembly, the theatre, themilitary encampment, and the lawcourt.

117. Allen 2000: 206; see also Watson 1991: 46–50.118. Aesch. Ag. 1616.119. Soph. Aj. 252–254; cf. Eur. Ion 1240120. Ar. Ach. 353.121. Prop. 4.5.78.122. Xen. Anab. 6.6.7.


ther in the next section, included such ridicule as incest (Elpiniken labon),123

adultery (moichos),124 impudence or stupidity (apheles),125 and being a passivesexual partner (katapygon).126 These echo the verbal obscenity, or aischrolo-gia, that accompanied Athenian stone-throwing festivals.127 Aristotle consideredsuch abusive language a form of violent aggression, comparable to assault andmurder.128

These structural similarities between ostracism and lapidation can be seenat work in the punishment of Lycidas in 479, a paradigmatic case of aggressiveAthenian patriotism. Herodotus reports that, when the Persian Mardonius sentthe Hellespontine Murychides to the Athenian council, evacuated to Salamis,in order to offer terms of surrender, one of the councillors, Lycidas, aloneproposed that the matter be considered. Herodotus suggests that Lycidas eitherhad been bribed or was happily medizing. The Athenians in the council and thoseoutside were so incensed at Lycidas’ betrayal that they surrounded him in a circle(peristantes) and stoned him to death (kateleusan ballontes); at this great noise(genomenou thorybou), presumably indicating shouts and curses, the citizens’wives, one calling on another, then stoned Lycidas’ wife and children. Theforeigner Murychides was allowed to leave unharmed.129 In Lycurgus’ version ofthe same event, the councillors removed their crowns of office before the stoning,thereby acting merely as citizens.130 Lycidas’ crimes—treason and medism—are among those targeted by ostracism, especially in the five or six successfulinterwar ostrakophoriai of the 480s. The stoning is an in-group punishment.Although the episode takes place on Salamis, to where the Athenians haveevacuated, the stoning outside of the temporary Bouleuterion, where a crowd ofcitizens had gathered, schematically reproduces the dynamics (Athenians standingin a circle, shouting, throwing) and the precise location of the Agora-basedostrakophoria.131

Despite these evident similarities, ostracism, of course, had no tyrant, traitor,or abusive magistrate physically present at the center of the circle. The violence ofthe stoning of Lycidas and his family should be understood as a maximal extreme,made possible by the wartime setting and the dislocation of the polis to Salamis.A number of fifth-century sources recognize that stoning was exceptionally

123. Siewert 2002: T1/67.124. Siewert 2002: T1/106.125. Siewert 2002: T1/119–30.126. Siewert 2002: T1/150; Vinogradov and Zolotarev 1999: #8 (in Tauric Chersonese).127. See Parker 2005: 274; Forsdyke 2008: 48–49; and, related, Hsch. s.v. γεφ�ρις, with Rusten

1977.128. Arist. Eth. Nic. 1131a9, Pol. 1262a27; see Halliwell 1991.129. Hdt. 9.5.130. Lycurg. Leocr. 122. Allen 2000: 144 suggests that this was to show that the councilors

did not abuse their magisterial power by punishing beyond their legally prescribed limits.131. Theodorus Metochites, Miscellanea p. 609 (Muller-Kiessling): Pς Qθροιστο . δμος

παντ�θεν ε�ς τ βουλευτ3ριον; see discussion below.


cruel132 and so could be sublimated into functionally equivalent but more civilizedpractices. Sublimation and substitution have, of course, been guiding conceptsfor ethological or psychological interpretations of Greek sacrifice, ritual, andgames.133 I would suggest that the Greeks understood this political ritual ina similar framework. So, lapidation could be identified with or transfiguredinto democratic voting, encouraged by the shared technology of the psephos,“pebble,” used in both demotic practices.134 At the battle of Plataea, for example,Amompharetus showed his objection to the withdrawal of the Spartan army bypicking up a large stone (petron megan) with both hands, throwing (katabalon)it at the feet of Pausanias, and declaring, “This is my vote (psephon)!”—the threatof stoning is unexpressed but evident.135 Hipponax and the dramatists frequentlyplay on the identification between communal decision-making and lapidation.136

Xanthus of Lydia even preserves an appropriate mythic aetiology: when the godswanted to punish Hermes for killing Argos, but needed to restrain themselves sincehe had acted at Zeus’ behest, they threw their voting pebbles at his feet (instead ofat him) and thereby created the first herm.137 Similarly, the spontaneous lapidationcould be institutionalized: Deinias reports that the Argives located their legaltrials at the very spot where they had stoned to death Melachrus and Cleometra.138

Exile could also be considered a less severe version of stoning.139 If these threedemotic practices—voting, judging, and exile—were recognized as substitutionsfor stoning, as the considered and regularized sublimation of spontaneous demoticviolence,140 then I would suggest that we can infer this for the closely relatedpractice of ostrakophoria as well.

Lapidation was incorporated into two additional forms of demotic violence,actual or symbolic, with which the casting of ostraka was associated: scapegoat

132. Aesch. Eum. 179–90 lists lapidation alongside such cruel punishments as gouging, amputa-tion, and beheading, all not to be associated with Apollo and Delphi.

133. See, e.g., Burkert 1983; Mack 1987; Herman 2006: 303–309.134. See Burkert 1983: 165n.16; Steiner 1995: 193; Hollmann 2012: 9.135. Plut. Arist. 17.3. Cf. Diod. Sic. 13.87.4–5, who describes the stoning of Acragantine

generals in the city’s ekklesia.136. E.g., Hipponax F128 (West): @πως ψηφ:δι ⟨κακS⟩ κακ ν ο=τον 0ληται | βουλS δημοσ�ηS

παρ7 θ:ν% �τρυγ�τοιο; Aesch. Sept. 198–99: ψφος κατ% α$τ/ν 5λεθρ�α βουλε�σεται, | λευστραδ3μου δ% οU τι μ- φ�γηS μ�ρον: Eur. Ion 1222–23: Δελφ/ν δ% +νακτες 1ρισαν πετρορριφ |θανε:ν �μ-ν δ�σποιναν ο$ ψ3φω� μι�W; Eur. Or. 48–50: κυρ�α δ% ;δ% 8μ�ρα | �ν Xι διο�σει ψφονYΑργε�ων π�λις, | ε� χρ- θανε:ν ν& λευσ�μω� πετρ\ματι; 440–42:—ψφος καθ% 8μ/ν οDσεται τSδ%8μ�ραW. |—φε�γειν π�λιν τ3νδ’; ^ θανε:ν ^ μ- θανε:ν;—θανε:ν _π% �στ/ν λευσ�μω� πετρ\ματι;Cratinus Drapetides F62 KA: Λ�μπωνα, τ ν ο$ βροτ/ν | ψφος δ�ναται φλεγυρ7 δε�πνου�πε�ργειν.

137. Xanthus FGrHist 765 F29 = Etym. Magn. s.v. FΕρμα:ον.138. Deinias FGrHist 306 F3 = Schol. Eur. Or. 872. Note that Michelakis 2002: 56–57 has argued

that a civic solution domesticates the threatened stoning of Achilles in Aeschylus’ fragmentaryMyrmidons, but the details remain unclear.

139. Soph. OC 434–36.140. Note that Allen 2000: 50–59 has drawn attention to the importance of city-regulated/regu-

lating anger (Soph. Ant. 354–55: �στυν�μους 5ργ7ς) for the politics of punishment at Athens.


ceremonies and corpse expulsion. Similarities between Greek pharmakos orscapegoat rituals and ostracism have long been recognized, with scholarshipfocusing on either the rhetorical characterization of politicians as scapegoats141 orthe idea of city-purification through expulsion.142 These are important frames ofcomparison, but attention has not been given to the close connection between thegestures used in scapegoat rituals and ostraka-casting. Stoning played a centralrole in the mythic aetiologies and ritual practice of Greek scapegoating. It wasused against the pharmakos to dispel plague, drought, or famine.143 In Athens,Massilia, and Abdera the pharmakos was pelted with stones and chased over theborder;144 the Athenian Thargelia festival re-enacted the Myrmidons’ lapidation ofmythical Pharmakos;145 Hipponax frequently refers to the stoning of pharmakoi;146

and Aristophanes’ Acharnians characterize Dicaeopolis as a scapegoat and traitorbefore they stone him.147 Alongside lapidation, Hipponax and Hesychius describehow a pharmakos was publicly whipped with squill- and fig-branches148 and thenparaded out of the city to the tune of the “fig melody.”149 It is interesting inthis light to recall that ostracism was called the keramike mastix, “pottery whip.”Indeed, one ostrakon against Callixenus has scratched onto it, alongside the mulletfish and medizing portrait, discussed above, a leafy branch (Fig. 3). Consognohas recently and persuasively argued that this was the squill-branch with whicha pharmakos was beaten: the inscriber assimilated his thrown ostrakon to thescapegoating whip and so Callixenus to a pharmakos.150 We may wish to place in

141. See, e.g., Parker 1996: 257–80. Ar. Ran. 730–33 comments that Athens is led by politicianswho previously would not even have been considered appropriate as scapegoats. [Lys.] 6.53suggests that the exile of Andocides would purify the city like the expulsion of a scapegoat(ν>ν οaν χρ- νομ�ζειν τιμωρουμ�νους κα( �παλλαττομ�νους YΑνδοκ�δου τ-ν π�λιν καθα�ρειν κα(�ποδιοπομπε:σθαι κα( φαρμακ ν �ποπ�μπειν κα( �λιτηρ�ου �παλλ�ττεσθαι, Pς bν το�των ο#τ�ς�στι). Demosthenes was condemned by Aesch. in Ctes. 131 as “the polluting demon of Greece” (A τςFΕλλ�δος �λειτ3ριε). Scapegoating terminology is found on several ostraka: Siewert 2002: T1/92–93, T1/153 (Megacles and Xanthippos, respectively, as aleiteros, “cursed”), T1/149 (Themistoclesas hypegaios agos, “a curse on the land”); see Faraone 2004: 239.

142. Vernant 1972: 125–26; Burkert 1985: 83; Parker 1996: 269–71; Ogden 1997: 142; Dreher2000: 74. Ammonius’ definition of a pharmakos (142 Valckenaer) is “one who is cast out to purifythe city” (. �π( καθ�ρσει τς π�λεως Lιπτ�μενος), using the same verb as the casting of ostraka.It is worth considering if the ostracized politician would have departed Athens through the gate usedfor scapegoats and refuse (Plut. de curiositate 518b).

143. Philostr. VA 4.10; Plut. Quaest. Graec. 26 (297b); Schol. Ar. Eq. 1136; Tzetz. Chil.5.728–40; see Bremmer 1983 and 2008: 191–92, Cantarella 1991: 83–84, and Luraghi 2013: 57–60.

144. Schol. Callim. Aet. F90; Schol. Ov. Ib. 467; see Bremmer 1983: 315.145. Suda s.v. φαρμακ�ς (= Ister FGrHist 334 F50). Rosenbloom 2004: 339 has noted that, like

mythical Pharmakos, Hyperbolus was accused of stealing cups (Leucon Phratry-Members F1).146. Hipponax F6, F7, F128; see Masson 1948 and Faraone 2004.147. Ar. Ach. 182, 282–85.148. Hsch. s.v. κραδησ�της (φαρμακ�ς, . τα:ς κρ�δαις βαλλ�μενος); Hipponax F5: π�λιν

καθα�ρειν κα( κρ�δηSσι β�λλεσθαι, F6: β�λλοντες �ν χειμ/νι κα( Lαπ�ζοντες | κρ�δηSσι κα(σκ�λληSσιν 1σπερ φαρμακ�ν. See Bremmer 2008: 184–89.

149. Hsch. s.v. κραδ�ης ν�μος.150. Consogno 2005: 349–52.


the same context Cratinus’ joke against Pericles, whom “the ostrakon has passedby” (toustrakon paroichetai)—a reference to the ostrakophoria at which his rivalThucydides, son of Melesias, received more votes—as a “squill-headed Zeus” (hoschinokephalos Zeus).151

Ostraka-casting could also be identified with the precipitation of a livingbody or dead corpse. This practice shared with ostracism a two-stage geography,transitioning from the identification and punishment, often by stoning, of acitizen at the city’s heart to the expulsion of his remains into a pit or over aborder.152 Throwing stones and throwing the body were linked and analogousgestures: the Delphians both stoned Aesop (hoi polloi lithois auton ballontes) andpushed him off a cliff (kata kremnou eosan);153 the Arcadians stoned Aristocrates(katalithosantes) and then cast him unburied beyond their boundaries (ekballousinataphon);154 Plato proposed in his Laws that, if someone were found guilty ofmurder, he should be executed and cast out naked (ekballonton gymnon) at acrossroads, where all the magistrates, acting on behalf of the city, would firststone him (lithon hekastos pheron . . . ballon) and then cast out his corpse beyondthe borders unburied (eis ta tes choras horia pherontes ekballonton . . . ataphon).155

Even where stoning is not found, the expulsion of a corpse beyond the borderswas often a second stage: the Leucadians, according to a picturesque customdescribed by Strabo, would tie false wings and live birds to a criminal, throwhim off a sea cliff (rhipteisthai), collect his remains in a boat, and dispose ofthem over the state’s boundaries.156 The significance of corpse-expulsion for theAthenians’ conceptualization of ostracism is shown by the Megacles ostrakon,discussed above, onto which a naked corpse had been drawn (Fig. 4). In theprevious section, I argued that the act of inscribing this image may have beensymbolic or allegorical, turning the ostrakon into a kind of curse-tablet or “voodoodoll.” Here, where we are examining the throwing gesture, we may go further,to suggest that the casting of such a corpse-ostrakon was intended to recall theexpelling of the naked body of a public enemy over the Athenian border or intothe barathron, the natural chasm that was used for these punishments.157 We canidentify such a self-conscious association in the literary tradition as well. Plutarchreports that Aristides, at the height of his competition with Themistocles, advisedhis fellow citizens as he was leaving the Assembly one day that Athens wouldnot be secure unless they threw both himself and his rival into the barathron

151. Cratinus F73 (Kassel and Austin) = Plut. Per. 13.9. This has usually been treated as areference to Pericles’ supposed cranial abnormality; see, e.g., Cohen 1991.

152. See Rosivach 1983 and Cantarella 1991: 91–105.153. Vitae G and W; see Nagy 1979: 280–81.154. Paus. 4.22.7.155. Pl. Leg. 9.873b.156. Strabo 10.2.9.157. On the barathron, see Gernet 1924, Gras 1984: 81, Cantarella 1991: 96–105, and Allen

2000: 216–21; on its location, see Lalonde 2006: 114–16.


(eis to barathron embaloien).158 It is hardly likely that Aristides is suggestinghis own precipitation; rather, the ancedote is surely a reference to the purposeand gestures of the sherd-casting ostrokaphoriai, through which his rivalry withThemistocles played out, and yet another variation on the theme of his patrioticand voluntary self-ostracism—recall his ostrakon auto-inscription and departureprayer, discussed above.159 Another possible example: in Aristophanes’ Knights,personified Demos promises to throw the politician Hyperbolus, who would beostracized almost a decade later, into the barathron.160

A final association. We have seen that a meeting of the Assembly in mid-January determined by hand-vote and without discussion whether or not anostrakophoria should take place that year; in other words, the procedure existedin two possible states—not occurring or occurring—each of which signaledsomething about the political health of Athens.161 By itself, the ostrakophoriawas both the public recognition that something was rotten and the diagnosis ofthat evil.162 Indeed, as the famous tale of Aristides’ auto-inscription demonstrates,ideally and in practice the guilty party would be one of the participants in theostrakophoria. Given the formal similarity between inscribed ostraka and lotsor religious tokens (see above), the throwing of these sherds into the circularenclosure to identify the most hated citizen would have resembled forms ofcasting-divination used in Greece and throughout the ancient Mediterranean. Alot-oracle was associated with Delphi, where the cast tokens were known as thriaior mantikai psephoi;163 the practice was widely attested in the Italian peninsula.164

In Iliad 7 each Achaean who wished to enter single combat with Hector marked atoken (kleron esemenanto) and threw it (ebalon) into Agamemnon’s helmet.165

Tacitus reports on Germans who took auspices by marking signs on sticks andcasting them (spargunt) onto a white cloth, from where they were read andinterpreted by a civic priest.166 Like Aleuas the Red of Thessaly, Saul wasidentified by lot as the first king of Israel.167 More relevantly, the casting oflots could be used to determine which in-group individual was responsible for apublic malaise of some kind. So, Herodotus’ Scythian soothsayers could identify,

158. Plut. Arist. 3.2: �λλ% ε=πεν �π τς �κκλησ�ας �πι\ν, Pς ο$κ 9στι σωτηρ�α το:ς YΑθηνα�ωνπρ�γμασιν, ε� μ- κα( Θεμιστοκλ�α κα( α$τ ν ε�ς τ β�ραθρον �μβ�λοιεν.

159. On the voluntariness of the pharmakos, see Bremmer 2008: 183–84.160. Ar. Eq. 1362–63: +ρας μετ�ωρον ε�ς τ β�ραθρον �μβαλ/, | �κ το> λ�ρυγγος �κκρεμ�σας

FΥπ�ρβολον.161. See Rappaport 1979: 91.162. Ostracism corresponds to Burkert’s model of religious therapy, expounded most schemat-

ically in Burkert 1996: 103.163. Zenobius 5.75; Robbins 1916; Graf 2012: 37–39.164. Champeaux 1990a. On the use of the inscribed lot for Roman Republican political practice,

see Stewart 1998: 22–51.165. Hom. Il. 7.175–76; on this episode, see, e.g., Steiner 1994: 10–15.166. Tac. Germ. 10.1.167. 1 Samuel 10:19–22.


using a technology similar to Tacitus’ Germans, the subject who had caused hisking’s illness, even determining guilt by majority vote.168 In the Hebrew Bible,the Phoenician sailors carrying Jonah to Tarshish throw lots to discover on whoseaccount the tempest threatened their safety and then, in a precipitation-like act,throw the prophet overboard.169 An episode in the book of Joshua pulls togethermany of the phenomena we have explored: when the Israelites were sufferingGod’s anger because of the theft of some religious dedications a lengthy processof lot-casting within the camp identified a certain Achan as responsible; he wasthen led far away, stoned to death, and left unburied beneath the heap of thrownrocks.170 The Hebrew verbs of lot-casting were also used for expulsive throwing.171

No ancient source explicitly links the ostrakophoria with casting-divination, butthe identity of gesture, diagnostic purpose, and inscribed tokens suggests that theassociation was possible.172

In sum, ancient narratives and the images and phrases inscribed on somesherds suggest that ostraka-casting can be understood as a ritual gesture, sym-pathetically enacting expulsive intentions and imitating long-established formsof demotic punishment or diagnosis. Stanley Tambiah has argued that the mean-ing of ritual gestures is situated precisely in this capacity to codify analogicallyand to express multiple implications simultaneously.173 The gesture is not just away to express something but is itself an aspect of that which it is expressing.174

Furthermore, even if only a minority of participants conceptualized the ostraka-casting in any of these ways, the simultaneity of gesture by itself would haveforged among all a kind of political communion.175 If the bare occurrence of anostrakophoria signaled factionalism and interpersonal distrust, then the groupcasting of sherds into the center of a circle gave a unity of expression to thecitizens’ individualized, contradictory opinions. That is to say, even though eachAthenian had his own target, his inscription was unknown to the crowd and hisvoice lost in their thorybos; the collective throwing of ostraka toward the samecenter posited, behind the polyphony of competing voices, an idealized visionof a homogeneous and united polis. Unlike hand-raising or the secret ballot, theostrakophoria’s ritual gesture allowed the fantasy of the unanimous vote. Thegestural associations, with lapidation in particular, disguised the incipient stasis

168. Hdt. 4.67–68. See also Amm. Marc. 31.2.24 on the Alani. On the use of such stick-lotsby Gauls, Germans, and Scythians, see Champeaux 1990b.

169. Jonah 1:7, 12. Note that the verb for throwing Jonah into the sea (the hiphil form of tul)is also used of casting lots (e.g., Proverbs 16:33).

170. Joshua 7.171. See Lindblom 1962.172. On the religious authority of the demos in classical Athens, see, e.g., Garland 1984.173. Tambiah 1985: 53; see also Rappaport 1979: 199.174. On the “obvious” aspects of ritual, see Rappaport 1979: 173–222.175. Cf. Ozouf 1975 and Kertzer 1988: 23. A Biblical proverb teaches that the casting of lots

together generates friendship (Proverbs 1:14: “Throw in your lot among us; we will all have onepurse”). See also Riess 2012 on the integrative effect of civic violence.


as a citizenry “hating with one mind.”176 Compare, for example, the Spartan ephorSthenelaıdas’ reification of division, by physically grouping into two separatesections the Spartiates who supported and those who opposed war with Athens in432,177 with the ostrakophoria’s common action at the Agora’s circular enclosure.Indeed, the growing accumulation of ostraka would have been an effective symbolof this unity-through-gesture, like the pile of rocks that engulfed the victim oflapidation and gave visual confirmation of both the number and consensus ofparticipants.178 If, as I argued above, any individual ostrakon could symbolize thebroken unity that generated it, then the ingathering of several thousands of theseprovided a powerful image of restored and unstriated unity.179 The significance ofthis massive aggregation of sherds is shown by the double-count that followedtheir casting: the ostraka were first tallied up as a single unit, without being read,to see if the quorum had been surpassed. This first reckoning can be considereda formal confirmation of their collective and unifying function.

Such an analysis follows an influential body of Durkheimian scholarship,which has identified political integration as a primary social effect of ritual andthe cloaking or domestication of intragroup conflict as a subset of this.180 A keyinsight of such analyses, helpful for our understanding of ostrakophoriai, is thatsuch social solidarity can be generated by people doing the same things rather thanthinking the same things. Precisely because ostracism was a procedure emergingfrom a dramatic diversity of opinion, social coherence came from the publiclyvisible unity of gesture and the associated suppression of explicit speech.

THE AGORA LOCATION

The circular enclosure around which the Athenian citizens gathered to casttheir inscribed sherds was erected in the new Agora to the northwest of theAcropolis. As far as we can gather, this periphragma was located in the openarea below the Kolonos Agoraios, between the Cleisthenic Bouleuterion, theAltar of the Twelve Gods, and the Tyrannicide statues on the Sacred Way.181

Kolb has suggested that the ostracism enclosure was raised on the so-calledOrchestra.182 This setting should be considered a meaningful ritual location. Aswe have seen, the ostracism procedure began with a preliminary binary hand-vote

176. Aesch. Eum. 986: στυγε:ν μι�W φρεν�. On Athens’ self-idealization as free of conflict andat peace, see Loraux 1991.

177. Thuc. 1.87; see Faig 1993.178. E.g., Philostr. VA 4.10; Xanthus FGrHist 765 F29 = Etym. Magn. s.v. FΕρμα:ον.179. On the symbolic unity of the Cleisthenic system, see Leveque and Vidal-Naquet 1996.180. See, e.g., Turner 1957; Gluckman 1962: 40–41; Bell 1992: 172–76; Wulf and Zirfas 2004:

22.181. For the early fifth-century Agora, see Kolb 1981; Camp 1986: 36–63; Shear Jr. 1994; Millett

1998: 211–14; Anderson 2003: 87–102; Neer and Kurke 2014.182. Tim. Soph. Lex. Plat. s.v. 5ρχ3στρα; Paus. 1.8.5; see Kolb 1981: 27–54 and Brenne 1994:

20.


in the ekklesia in mid-January; if a majority were in favor, an ostrakophoria washeld in early spring. The two moments were distinguished from one another by atemporal delay, different decision-making technologies, and, above all, a changeof location. We do not know where the early fifth-century Assembly met: if italready gathered on the Pnyx hill by the time of the first demotic ostrakophoria,the spatial distinction between the preliminary vote and the Agora-based sherd-casting was present ab initio;183 if the Assembly met in the Agora until later into thefifth century,184 when the ekklesia was moved to the Pnyx the ostrakophoria wasleft in its original location. In either case, the Agora setting was deliberate. Thefindspots of ostraka in Cyrene, Sicilian Naxos, and Thurii suggest that these extra-Athenian ostrakophoriai also took place in their cities’ agorai.185 Functionalistexplanations of ostracism have explained away this preference as a mere pragmaticnecessity: Rosenbloom proposes that an ostrakophoria summoned a larger crowdthan the Pnyx could hold,186 Carcopino that the Agora’s flatness of ground made itmore suitable.187 One could also add that, if bouleutic preceded demotic ostracism,as the Vatican manuscript suggests, then the procedure simply moved outdoors inthe same location. Whether or not these hold, I will argue here that the Agora waschosen for ostrakophoriai because of its association with the demotic regulationof hierarchy and its identification as the spatial center of Attica.

The location of the ostrakophoria was colored by two forms of demotic coer-cion: anti-elite gossip and anti-tyrannical violence. By at least the second halfof the fifth century, the Agora was recognized as the privileged Athenian loca-tion for day-to-day free speech and loidoria (personal abuse directed at namedfigures).188 The widespread envy endemic to Athenian society could find ex-pression in bad-mouthing the elite.189 Such activities were characterized as ago-raic and, conversely, considered typical of those who spent much time there.190

This is where Theophrastus stations his rumor-monger.191 Phrynichus’ spitefulyouths, who “scratch with a sharp point” their fellow citizens (the metaphor isdiscussed, above), are always wandering around the Agora (aei kata ten ago-ran periontes).192 Aristophanes’s Knights identifies the combative language ofthe Sausage-Seller (named “Agoracritus”) with the space.193 And in his Wasps

183. Martin 1951: 290.184. A plausible suggestion; see Thompson 1982: 136n.10 and Osborne 2007: 197.185. Bacchielli 1994; Greco 2010; Schirripa, Lentini, and Cordano 2012: 135–44.186. Rosenbloom 2004: 96.187. Carcopino 1935: 76.188. See, e.g., Hunter 1990, Halliwell 1991, Steiner 1994: 187–93, Lewis 1996: 14–19, Forsdyke

2008, and Storey 2010.189. Walcot 1978; Eidinow 2010: 25–27. Note that Plut. Them. 22.4–5 and Alc. 7.1 identifies

ostracism as a form of appeasing this envy.190. On the Agora as locus of information exchange, see Dem. 24.15, Hyp. 4.21, Isoc. 18.9,

Lys. 24.20.191. Theophr. Char. 8; see also Dem. 24.15.192. Phrynichus Ephialtes F3 (= Ath. 165b).193. Ar. Eq. 217–19.


a speech of Bdelycleon indicates, in a typical conflation of food and politics,that this is where suspicions of hostility to the democratic order were raised:“The word [tyranny] is being bounced around the Agora. . . . ‘That man looksas if he’s buying special fish with a view to tyranny!’ . . . ‘You’re asking foran onion. Is that for setting up a tyranny?’”194 The concentration of gossip andridicule in this particular space made it a site for the projection and enforcementof normative values and democratic attitudes.195 The several ostraka that bearaccusations, both political (treason, medism, bribery) and personal (incest, sex-ual passivity, adultery), indicate that the verbalized gestures of ostraka-castingcould function as an intensification or institutionalization of this spatially situateddemotic criticism.

It was argued in the previous section that ostrakophoriai substituted for themore extreme weapons of lapidation and precipitation. This is reinforced bythe fact that the precise environment of ostraka-casting was a space of demoticviolence. Ostracism’s circular enclosure was erected in the immediate vicinityof the famous statue group of the Tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton.196

The first sculptural pair, carved by Antenor, was set up at some point betweenthe fall of the Peisistratid tyranny and Xerxes’ invasion; Pliny’s synchronismof the group’s erection with the expulsion of the Roman kings (510/9) mayonly be a convenient fiction.197 After Xerxes stole this away to Persia in 479,a replacement was quickly made by Critius and Nesiotes. These monuments,one replacing the other, remained the only statues of Athenian citizens in theAgora for the entire fifth century; moreover, the area around the group was leftempty, giving prominence by isolation to the two figures.198 In other words,every single known ostracism took place in the shadow of Harmodius and Aris-togeiton, and these were the only sculpted human forms, the only Athenianshonored with statues, visible during the procedure. This is significant for a coupleof reasons.

Although we know nothing of Antenor’s sculpture, standing during the os-tracisms of the 480s,199 a couple of contemporary skolia, or drinking songs,indicate that the depicted citizens were already celebrated for their murder of “thetyrant” Hipparchus (in fact, younger brother of the senior Peisistratid, Hippias)and their supposed establishment of isonomia, a face-saving narrative that oc-cluded the corruption of the Pythia and the consequent Spartan intervention in

194. Ar. Vesp. 488–91. On the comic Agora, see Wilkins 2000: 156–201. Steiner 1994: 191observes that the democrats of the Piraeus, overthrowing the Thirty Tyrants and restoring democracy,gathered in the Agora and not the Pnyx.

195. See Morris 2000: 134–38.196. The location of the statue group is described by Tim. Soph. Lex. Plat. s.v. 5ρχ3στρα, Paus.

1.8.5, and Arr. Anab. 3.16.8.197. Plin. HN 34.17; on synchronisms invented for ideological effect, see Feeney 2007.198. Taylor 1981: 26; Ma 2013: 113–14.199. It was returned to Athens by Alexander (Arr. Anab. 3.6.8), Seleucus I (Val. Max. 2.10 ext.1),

or Antiochus I (Paus. 1.8.5). Its artistic priority was immediately evident to Pausanias.


507.200 The most famous runs, “In a branch of myrtle I’ll carry my sword, likeHarmodius and Aristogeiton when they killed the tyrant (ton tyrannon ktaneten)and made Athens isonomous.”201 The later group depicted Harmodius and Aris-togeiton energetically striding forward, weapons in hand, in the act of strikingdown Hipparchus. Many scholars have noted the absence of the victim from thecomposition, leaving the monument unbalanced and open-ended, incorporatingthe citizen viewer into the action, and so transforming a historical moment intoa political paradigm.202 The sculpture was paraenetic, encouraging imitation ofthe heroes and the ongoing targeting of would-be tyrants and oligarchs:203 in theskolia, quoted above, we see citizens play-acting the Tyrannicides; Herodotushas Miltiades call on Callimachus, polemarch at Marathon, to join battle withthe Persians and so surpass even the Tyrannicides in civic honor;204 the chorusof old men in the Lysistrata adopts the pose of Aristogeiton in their defense of theconstitution.205 Julia Shear has persuasively argued that the assassination of theoligarch Phrynichus in the Agora in 411, for seeking peace with Sparta, was adeliberate re-enactment of the Hipparchus episode.206 Accordingly, ostrakopho-riai took place beside an idealized, hortatory visualization of tyrant-killing, amonument that legitimized and promoted civic violence in defense of the demos.Furthermore, it is likely that these statue groups were erected on or near the verylocation of the slaying of Hipparchus.207 In other words, the monument identifiedthe Agora and, more particularly, the open area at its center, where ostrakophoriaitook place, as the historical birthplace of Athenian democracy. The circular en-closure, into which ostraka were cast, may have been considered the very siteof Hipparchus’ death.208

So, during an ostrakophoria, thousands of citizens, wielding their potsherds,converged on the celebrated killing zone of the tyrant. The Tyrannicide statueswould necessarily have been incorporated into the assembling hubbub, triggering

200. The issue’s many complications need not detain us here; see, e.g., Lavelle 1993 and Thomas1989: 238–61.

201. Poetae Melici Graeci #893–96.202. Brunnsaker 1971: 163–64; Ober 2003: 218 and 221; Neer 2010: 78–85; Ma 2013: 114.203. Ober 2003 has shown that democrats assimilated oligarchic opposition to tyranny.204. Hdt. 6.109.3.205. Ar. Lys. 631–34.206. Thuc. 8.92; Shear 2011: 28–29, 60. According to Lycurg. Leocr. 113, his bones were

expelled from Attica. Note that it also echoes the stoning of Lycidas on Salamis, also outside theBouleuterion and also for proposing peace with the great enemy.

207. Taylor 1981: 42; Castriotia 1998: 202; Ajootian 1998: 3. Hipparchus was killed in thevicinity of the Leocorium ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 18.3; Thuc. 1.20.2, 6.57.3), the shrine of the daughtersof Leos, who sacrificed themselves to ward off famine (Ael. VH 12.28; Aristid. Pan. 13.119). Thiswas a familiar landmark in the northern or central part of the Agora, beside the Panathenaic Way; seeWycherley 1957: 108–13.

208. Cf. Timoleon’s razing the palace of Dionysius II of Syracuse and building courts of justiceon the very site (Plut. Tim. 22.1–3)—a similar localization of anti-tyrant aggression; on house razing,see Connor 1985.


memories, modeling attitudes, and characterizing the procedure; perhaps someparticipants even emulated their stance. The association must have been especiallyclose for the early ostracisms, which directly targeted the family and friends ofthe assassinated tyrant—the first victim was a Peisistratid named Hipparchus. Alate fourth- or third-century inscription from Erythrae demonstrates the ongo-ing aggression of such tyrannicide monuments: the public decree reports howoligarchic revolutionaries removed the sword (exeilon to xiphos) from an oldstatue of the tyrannicide Philites, “thinking that the statue’s stance was entirelyaimed at them (nomizontes katholou ten stasin kath’ auton einai).”209 I wouldsuggest, therefore, that the location of ostrakophoria, in addition to its archetypaltyrant-killing mass gesture, turned the procedure into a ritualized repetition of theoriginary, generative act of anti-tyrant violence.210 Such re-enactment is implied inPlutarch’s suggestion that Pericles was fearful of being ostracized (phoboumenosexostrakisthenai) because he physically resembled the tyrant Peisistratus (edokeiPeisitratoi toi tyrannoi to eidos empheres einai).211 No portrait of the tyrant couldhave been made or survived for such resemblance to be observed. Rather, the com-ment implies that, just as ostracism assimilated the demos to the Tyrannicides,so it made tyrants of the targeted politicians.

In addition to being imbued with demotic aggression, the new Agora had alsobeen turned into the symbolic center of all Attica. A comprehensive program ofpublic construction and relocation of functions, beginning under the Peisistratidsand accelerating after Cleisthenes’ reforms, demarcated and developed the south-ern and western edges of the Agora.212 Most importantly, the new Altar of theTwelve Gods, close to the Orchestra and the Tyrannicide statues, was selectedas Athens’ geographic node, to and from which all distances were measured;213

Pindar terms it the city’s omphalos, “navel.”214 Furthermore, the marking outof the Agora with horoi and lustral basins made it a sacred space, from whichthose guilty of murder, mistreating their parents, impiety, cowardice, or desertionwere formally excluded.215 The ostrakophoria, therefore, possesses a paradoxicaldirectionality, a strange combination of the centripetal and the centrifugal: on theone hand, Athenians gathered from all over Attica at the sacred and pure centerof the city to cast a sherd into the middle of a circle; on the other, the action

209. SIG3 284; SEG 32 1143; Heisserer 1979; Gauthier 1982: 215–21; Ober 2003: 227.210. Pace Forsdyke 2005: 279, who, with her focus on the expulsive telos of ostracism, considers

it a re-enactment of the expulsion of Cleisthenes’ rival Isagoras after the fall of the tyranny.211. Plut. Per. 7.1–2.212. Camp 1986: 36–77; Holscher 1991; Shear Jr. 1994; Millett 1998.213. Camp 1986: 42; Shear Jr. 1994: 231. Note that the democrats erased from the Altar of

the Twelve Gods the dedicatory inscription of Pisistratus, son of the tyrant Hippias (Thuc. 6.54.7),demonstrating to Athenians the symbolic power of names and their removal at this very spot.

214. Pind. F75. Note, however, that Neer and Kurke 2014 have argued that the Altar of theTwelve Gods was originally erected in the old Agora, to the east of the Acropolis, and relocatedto the markedly democratic space of the new Agora at some point in the fifth century.

215. Lycurg. Leocr. 5; Aeschin. 3.176; Dem. 20.158, 22.77, and 24.60; see Millett 1998: 224.


was intended to expel far beyond the boundaries of the state someone consideredguilty of treason, bribery, and other polluting personal offences. How can wereconcile this?

The ostraka enclosure should be considered, to adopt Foucault’s term, aheterotopia.216 That is to say, for the duration of the ostrakophoria, this boundedcircle at the navel of the polis came to represent an anti-Athens populated by anti-Athenians. It was a space into which citizens symbolically disposed of both whatthey did not like—tyranny, incest, hunger, and so on—and those they did not wishto have among them. The circle, therefore, represented an absolute break from theregular time and space of the Agora; it was marked off physically by a barrierand ritually, as I have argued, by a repeated gesture. As a locus of pollution,deviance, and political danger it operated in a relation of inverted analogy tothe idealized democratic polis; such a polar reversal may have been effectedprecisely because it was located at Athens’ geographic and conceptual center.Circle-tracing has a recognized ability to mark off a space as heterotopic,217 andcertain ostraka may represent this in the shape of their inscriptions. An ostrakonagainst Callias, for instance, schematically locates the targeted politician withinthis heterotopia by placing his name and deme (Kallias Alopekethen) at the centerof the sherd, around which a circle of writing records his patronymic (Kratiou)and his crime (hos e(m) Medon, “the one from Media”); another has the sameCallias’ name inscribed across the top of the sherd and the similar accusation, hosem Medon hekei, “who has come from Media,” written in a full circle beneath.218

The casting of these “from Media” circle sherds into the enclosure may have beenan analogous expulsion back to the foreign locale. Similarly, the inscription neakome, on a couple of ostraka targeting Megacles, son of Hippocrates, may indicatesomething like “a new village [for you]!” identifying the circle with the genericallynon-Athenian, non-polis life of the exile.219 If I am correct to understand thecasting of the Megacles-corpse ostrakon as a symbolic precipitation (see above),then the enclosure becomes the barathron or equivalent. The circle in whichthe ostraka accumulated, therefore, was capable of juxtaposing in a single realspace several imagined destinations that were in themselves incompatable butgained a unity from their shared expulsive relation to Athens. In other words,the ostrakophoria procedure temporarily transformed this delimited part of theAgora into a dystopic a-polis.

216. The term was introduced by Foucault 1986 and developed by Soja 1996: 154–63.217. On the symbolism of the circle in archaic and early classical thought, see Vernant 1969:

170–80. Circle-tracing was a widespread technique of ancient magic used for, amongst other things,protection against demons, thaumaturgy, rain magic, and debt obligations; see Cameron 1928, Goldin1963, and Kosmin 2014: 129–30.

218. Siewert 2002: T1/56.219. Siewert 2002: T1/107–108. Cf. the fetial rite for inaugurating a Roman war, according to

which a spear was thrown into a piece of land beside the temple of Bellona at Rome that temporarilyrepresented foreign territory (Serv. ad Aen. 9.52); see Ando 2011: 19–36 and Rich 2011: 204–209.


The Agora offered ostraka-casting what the Pnyx could not: the city’s centrallocation, an association with quotidian anti-elite behavior, and the foundationalsite of democratic freedom. The ostrakophoria would have been charged by itsproximity to these demotic monuments and memories. But ostracism was not onlya passive receiver. A procedure of such scale and emotion would in turn have con-tributed to this ideological and physical program of agoracization: the citizenryperformed to itself the Agora’s significance as the city’s spatial, demotic centerand, by repeated negation, limned all that Athens should be. Indeed, the ingather-ing of the citizenry in this form can be understood as a moment of democraticsocialization: to paraphrase d’Azeglio, if Cleisthenes’ reforms had made Athensa democracy, Athenians still had to be made democratic. Moore and Myerhoff

have noted how political ritual can objectify and reify social relationships or ideasthat are otherwise invisible.220 So, the ostrakophoria asserted in one and the sameplace the physical reality of the new political order by, for instance, grouping thepopulation entering the Agora into its ten otherwise discontiguous new tribes,221

publicly deploying the administrative responsibilites of the magistrates and coun-cillors, and demonstrating the ultimate and aggressive sovereignty of the demos.For the duration of the ostrakophoria, the Agora was a microcosm of the state.Such political socialization was already observed by George Grote, first moderndefender of the ostracism institution: “It was necessary to create in the multitude,and through them to force upon the leading ambitious men, that rare and difficultsentiment which we may term a constitutional morality.”222

DISENCHANTMENT

Any account of ostracism’s emergence must also find room for its desuetude.From its almost annual frequency during the 480s, the institution declined toperhaps three completed ostracisms in the 470s, maybe two in the 460s, possiblyone in the 450s, a couple in the 440s, none during the 430s or 420s, andfinally ended with that of Hyperbolus in 416 or 415.223 While it is likely thatthe preliminary question continued to be asked of the Assembly throughout thelater fifth and fourth centuries224 and it is possible that several below-quorumostrakophoriai have not entered the historical record, the overall pattern isundeniable. Explanations for the waning of the institution argue either that itsfunctional niche was filled by the lawcourts and the eisangelia prosecution225

220. Moore and Myerhoff 1977: 14. See also Wulf and Zirfas 2004: 18–20.221. It is still debated whether they would have been seated by tribe in the Assembly; see Hansen

1977 and 1987: 39–41, 127 and Stanton and Bicknell 1987.222. Grote 1856: 4.205; see also Petzold 1990: 172 on ostracism’s contribution to the demos’

self-awareness.223. Phillips 1982: 27.224. Heftner 2003.225. E.g., Mosse 2000; Dreher 2000; Riess 2012: 97, 163, 389–90.


or, following ancient accounts, that it was made disreputable by Nicias’ andAlcibiades’ turning of it against low-born Hyperbolus.226 The approach takenin this paper can add a further insight: the ostraka themselves, where theycan be dated by target’s name or orthography, show a decline in associativeor symbolic richness over the course of the fifth century. Most of the sherdsthat have been particularly helpful for the above analysis, with their images,imprecations, magical signs, and so forth, date to the 480s or 470s; with acouple of exceptions, such “superfluous” elements are almost entirely absentby the 460s or 450s. Furthermore, a similar reduction occurs in the use of theaccusative and dative cases for the targets’ names and, presumably, the verbalinjunctions that would have accompanied them: of the 31 dative-case publishedostraka from the Agora, 28 date to ostracism’s early period (the 480s and 470s),2 to the middle period (460s-440s), and only one to the late period (410s); ofthe 13 accusative-case sherds, 11 are early, 2 late.227 (The Kerameikos datahave not yet been processed in this way.) Additionally, the scatter-vote seems tonarrow from a broad range to the few major players. These changes suggest that,even if, as Old Comedy demonstrates, ostracism could still attract symbolic orritualized meanings, nonetheless the institution had undergone a routinization anddisenchantment (Entzauberung).228 The ensemble of practices and associationsthat generated ostracism ultimately opened a space for the idea of ostracismitself. That is to say, the inscribing and casting of ostraka became increasinglysituation referential, referring to the institution for which they were used and notto the reperformance by allusion or analogy of other rites.229 Such narrowing ofostracism’s associative or symbolic fan correlates with the institution’s decliningfrequency.

We can see this in the last successful ostracism, of the rabble-rouser Hyper-bolus, which, according to Plutarch’s three accounts, discredited the procedureamong the Athenians because, on the one hand, it turned against a poneros aninstitution properly used to target elite citizens230 and, on the other, the proce-dure was openly manipulated by Alcibiades, Nicias, and possibly also Phaeax.231

The Hyperbolus ostracism can be considered a ritual breakdown or infelicity232—publicly instrumentalized, socially divisive rather than integrative, inverting theritual script, and so producing an inappropriate result233—all predicated on the

226. Thuc. 8.73.3; Plut. Arist. 7.3–4, Nic. 11.4–6, Alc. 13.4–5. See, e.g., Connor and Keaney1969.

227. Lang 1990: 17, with nn.64–65.228. For these Weberian concepts, dispersed through his writings, see Koshul 2005: 9–39.229. On situation referentiality, see Fernandez 1965: 911–12.230. The identification between ostracism and elite status was so close that Demetrius of Phaleron

argued that Aristides was wealthy simply on the basis that he had been ostracized (FGrHist 228 F43= Plut. Arist. 1.2).

231. Plut. Arist. 7.3–4, Nic. 11.4–6, Alc. 13.4–5; see Fuqua 1965 and Rosenbloom 2004.232. On ritual failure, see Geertz 1957, Grimes 1990, and Husken 2007.233. Cf. Hoffmeister 2007, on the breaking of the social script in serial killings.


above process of routinization and rationalization. Indeed, the tension betweenthe ritualized ostracism examined in this paper and the functionalist ostracismof Aristotle and most modern scholarship is not only the result of the respectiveforegrounding of embodied participation or intellectualized choice, but also itselfan effect of the disenchantment of the procedure. The richness of semantic associ-ation, ritual identification, and symbolic or magical analogy manifested in earlyfifth-century ostraka was unavailable or unknowable to fourth-century analysis.

CONCLUSION

In Spring 488/7, the victors of Marathon assembled in their ten new tribesin their new Agora to take part for the first time in a new procedure—to write on abroken piece of pottery the name of a fellow citizen and to cast this into a circularenclosure. The strangeness of this political ritual must not be overlooked: wecan imagine Athenians questioning their neighbors on the procedure; disagreeingabout whom to target or whether private grudge outweighed public misdemeanor;the growing thrill of collective might; the heightened resentment and envy andrevenge; the fun of it all, or the fear; the Tyrannicide model; the breath ofmagic and sacrality. Such a study of ostracism does not require us to divideits features between the “political”—the rationally motivated, goal-oriented,individualized choice-making that has dominated scholarship—and the “ritual”—all the symbolic, affective, and communal elements discussed above. They areinseparable. Rather, the emerging picture of ostracism as an assemblage ofpractices and meanings allows us to understand the procedure, and, I wouldsuggest, the Cleisthenic moment of political reform in general, as bricolage.234

No element in ostracism—the shattering of vases, the inscription of hostilemessages, the casting of tokens, the demotic aggression, or the expulsion ofa dangerous or polluted citizen—was newly invented. Cleisthenes creativelyrecycled cultural wares, combining preexisting, pre-signified materials into anew ensemble. This is not the “invention of tradition” popularized by EricHobsbawm235 but the “inventiveness of tradition,”236 where the meaning andparticularity of new cultural formulations derive from the embedded logics andintelligibilities of their constituent parts. Given the brazen, engineered artificialityof much of the new democratic order, and so the need to generate genuine groupsentiment, it is easy to see why borrowing and resignifying was an effectivestrategy: in addition to ostracism, we can observe it in the adoption of Doricsanctuary architecture for the newly constructed Council Chamber, probably its

234. The term was introduced by Levi-Strauss 1966: 17–28.235. Hobsbawm 1983: 4–7. Attempts to identify the hero Theseus as the inventor and first victim

of ostracism (Suda s.v. YΑρχ- Σκυρ�α), perhaps encouraged by his death outside Attica, are late;see Carcopino 1935: 9–14.

236. The phrase was coined by Sahlins 1999, discussing the institutionalization of sumo at theMeiji court.


first use for a non-temple building in the entire Greek world,237 or the selectionof preexisting Attic heroes as the Stammvater of the ten new tribes.238 In thisway, the reform program of Cleisthenes is comparable to other “revitalizationmovements” that express ideological innovation through cultural syncretism,the novel use of old things, and borrowing across traditional boundaries.239 Forinstance, Hugh Urban has recently shown how L. Ron Hubbard, as a religiousbricoleur, incorporated into the Dianetics rite of his new Scientology materials andideas drawn from eastern religions, science fiction, the occult, psychoanalysis, andeven police lie-detecting, and that each of these brought to the invented procedurequite distinct sets of associations.240 Similarly, Emily Chao has demonstratedthat revived Chinese exorcism has introduced political and military elements,such as punchy quotations from Chairman Mao, anti-Japanese marching hymns,and phrases from the national anthem, all to charge the religious rite with theexpulsive power and historical memory of battlefield resistance.241 As we haveseen, the inscriptions on several ostraka indicate that the migration to the center ofdemocratic politics of technologies and gestures from magical, symbolic, or ludicpractices also carried over, for at least some Athenians, their preexisting and pre-embedded associations. This is a well-paralleled phenomenon: it has been shown,for instance, that rituals in T’ang China echoed, implied, and assumed otherrites,242 or that modern voting behavior among the indigenous Tzotzil of southernMexico resembles prayer and shamanic practices.243 Speaking more generally, Iam arguing that participants in the newly invented procedures of early democracyneeded to cross-reference domains of meaning in order to supply associations andinformation from well-known spheres or practices to the newer ones. Ostracismshows us that in early democratic politics, as presumably in other spheres of life,Athenians thought through objects, gestures, and locations as well as about them.

Harvard [email protected]

237. Shear Jr. 1994: 232–39; Anderson 2003: 97–102: “The appeal lay . . . in its suggestion of thetraditional practices and cultural permanence associated with structures hitherto built in this idiom”(202).

238. Kearns 1985: 201.239. The concept of revitalization—a deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a

society to construct a more satisfying culture—was introduced by Wallace 1956 to theorize phe-nomena as varied as cargo cult, messianic communities, political and religious reform movements,and revolution; it has been developed in material-focused directions by Liebmann 2008.

240. Urban 2011.241. Chao 1999.242. Bell 1992: 129.243. Vogt and Abel 1977.


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[1 62] Kosmin figures 1–4

Fig. 1: Drawing by Catherine Alexander(Siewert 2002: T1/87).

Fig. 2: Drawing by Catherine Alexander(Siewert 2002: T1/93)



A Phenomenology of Democracy: Ostracism as Political Ritual

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