Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/175

PROCESS OF OSTRACISM. ]5f fairs, after which he was required lo depart from Attica for tet years, but retained his property, and suffered no other penalty. It was not the maxim at Athens to escape the errors of the people, by calling in the different errors, and the sinister interest besides, of an extra-popular or privileged few ; nor was any third course open, since the principles of representative govern- ment were not understood, nor indeed conveniently applicable to very small communities. Beyond the judgment of the people so the Athenians felt there was no appeal; and their grand study was to surround the delivery of that judgnuC* with the best securities for rectitude and the best preservatives against haste, passion, or private corruption. Whatever Measure of good government could not be obtained in that way, could not, in their opinion, be obtained at all. I shall illustrate the Athe- nian proceedings on this head more fully when I come to speak of the working of their mature democracy : meanwhile, in respect to this grand protection of the nascent democracy, the vote of ostracism, it will be found that the securities devised by Kleis- thenes, for making the sentence effectual against the really dan- gerous man, and against no one else, display not less foresight than patriotism. The main object was, to render the voting an expression of deliberate public feeling, as distinguished from mere factious antipathy : the large minimum of votes required, one-fourth of the entire citizen population, went far to insure this effect, the more so, since each vote, taken as it was in a latter opinion, which is supported by Philochorus, Pollux, and the Schol. on Aristophanes, though Plutarch countenances the former. Bocckh, in his Public Economy of Athens, and Wachsmuth, (i, 1, p. 272) are in favor of Plutarch and the former opinion ; Paradys (Dissertat. De Ostr. p. 25), Plainer, and Hermann (see K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der Gr. Staatsalt. ch. 130, not. 6) support the other, which appears to me the right one. For the purpose, so unequivocally pronounced, of the general law deter- mining the absolute minimum necessary for a privilecfiMm, would by no means be obtained, if the simple majority of votes, among six thousand voters in all, had been allowed to take effect. A person might then be ostracized with a very small number of votes against him, and without creating any reasonable presumption that hfc was dangerous to the consti- tution ; which was by no means either the purpose of Kleisthenes, or the well-understood operation of the ostracism, so long as it continued to be i realifv.