103 HISTORY OF GREECE. the partisans of both changed their views, and preferred to let the political dissension proceed without closing it by separating the combatants. But the ostracizing vote, having been formally pronounced, could not now be prevented from taking place : it was always, however, perfectly general in its form, admitting of any citizen being selected for temporary banishment. Accordingly, the two opposing parties, each doubtless including various clubs, or hetaeries, and according to some accounts the friends of Phoeax also, united to turn the vote against some one else : and they fixe^ upon a man whom all of them jointly disliked, Hyperbolus. 1 By thus concurring, they obtained a sufficient number of votes against him to pass the sentence, and he was sent into temporary banish- ment. But such a result was in no one's contemplation when the vote was decreed to take place, and Plutarch even represents the people as clapping their hands at it as a good joke. It was presently recognized by every one, seemingly even by the enemies of Hyperbolus, as a gross abuse of the ostracism. And the lan- guage of Thucydides himself distinctly implies this ; for if we even grant that Hyperbolus fully deserved the censure which that historian bestows, no one could treat his presence as danger- ous to the commonwealth ; nor was the ostracism introduced to meet low dishonesty or wickedness. It was, even before, passing out of the political morality of Athens ; and this sentence con- summated its extinction, so that we never hear of it as employed afterwards. It had been extremely valuable in earlier days, as a security to the growing democracy against individual usurpation of power, and against dangerous exaggeration of rivalry between individual leaders : but the democracy was now strong enough to dispense with such exceptional protection. Yet if Alkibiades had returned as victor from Syracuse, it is highly probable that the Athenians would have had no other means than the precautionary antidote of ostracism to save themselves from him as despot. It was in the beginning of summer (416 B.C.) that the Athe- nians undertook the siege and conquest of the Dorian island of 1 Plutarch, Alkibiad. c. 13; Plutarch, Nikias, c. 11. Theophrastus say: that the violent opposition at first, and the coalition afterwards, was not between Nikias and Alkibiades, but between Phaeax and Alkibiades.
The coalition of votes and paities may well have included all three
