This page needs to be proofread.

160 HISTORY OF GREECE. racy, it was absolutely indispensable ; to the growing yet mili- tant democracy, it was salutary ; but the full-grown democracy both could and did stand without it. The ostracism passed upon Hyperbolus, about ninety years after Kleisthenes, was the last occasion of its employment. And even this can hardly be con- sidered as a serious instance : it was a trick concerted between two distinguished Athenians (Nikias and Alkibiades), to turn to their own po'itical account a process already coining to be anti- quated. Nor would such a manoeuvre have been possible, if the contemporary Athenian citizens had been penetrated with the same serious feeling of the value of ostracism as a safeguard of democracy, as had been once entertained by their fathers and grandfathers. Between Kleisthenes and Hyperbolus, we hear of about ten different persons as having been banished by ostra- cism. First of all, Hipparchus of the deme Cholargus, the son of Charmus, a relative of the recently-expelled Peisistratid despots ; ' then Aristeides, Themistokles, Kimon, and Thucy- dides son of Melesias, all of them renowned political leaders ; also Alkibiades and Megakles (the paternal and maternal grand- fathers of the distinguished Alkibiades), and Kallias, belonging to another eminent family at Athens ; 2 lastly, Damon, the pre- ceptor of Perikles in poetry and music, and eminent for his acquisitions in philosophy. 3 In this last case comes out the vulgar side of humanity, aristocratical as well as democratical ; for with both, the process of philosophy and the persons of philosophers are wont to be alike unpopular. Even Kleisthenes himself is said to have been ostracized under his own law, and Xanthippus ; but both upon authority too weak to trust. 4 Mil- tiades was not ostracized at all, but tried and punished for mis- conduct in his command. I should hardly have said so much about this memorable ami 1 Plutarch, Nikias, c. 11 : Harpokration, v. I^- 2 Lysias cont. Alkibiad. A. c. 11, p. 143 : Harpokration, v. 'A.Axt@tu$r/r 5 Andokides cont. Alkibiad. c. 11-12, pp. 129, 130: this last oration may afford evidence as to the facts mentioned in it. though I cannot imagine ii to be either genuine or belonging to the time to which it professes to refer, as has been observed in a previous note. 1 Plutarch, Perikles, c. 4 ; Plutarch. Aristeid. c. 1. 4 JElian, V. H. xiii, 24 ; HerakleidQs, nepl Ilo/Umwv, c. 1, ed. Kohler.