Latest / Ancient Greece: Philosophy, Democracy, and Endless War — Fexingo History / The Ostracism of Themistocles: Exile by Broken Pottery
Transcript
- Lucas: So Luna, we've talked a lot about Athenian democracy — the Assembly, the Boule, the courts. But there's one institution that feels almost bizarre to us today: ostracism. Luna: Right, that's where they literally voted to kick someone out of the city for ten years, just by writing their name on a piece of pottery? Lucas: Exactly. On an ostrakon — a broken shard of ceramic. Every year, the Assembly would decide whether to hold an ostracophoria, a vote on whether anyone needed to go. If they voted yes, then a few weeks later, citizens would gather in the agora, and if you scratched a name on your shard, and that person got at least 6,000 votes, they had to leave Athens within ten days. Luna: No trial, no crime, just popularity contest. Lucas: Exactly. And the most spectacular case has to be Themistocles — the guy who basically won the Battle of Salamis against the Persians. He was the architect of Athenian naval power, the man who convinced Athens to build the fleet that saved Greece. And yet, around 472 or 471 BC, he was ostracized. Luna: Wait — right after he was a hero? Lucas: Within a decade. After Salamis and the Persian Wars, Themistocles was at the height of his influence. But he was also arrogant, he'd made enemies, and he pushed a hardline anti-Spartan policy. His rival Cimon, who was pro-Spartan, gained the upper hand. And the Athenians, as they often did, decided that one man had become too powerful. Luna: So they used ostracism to cut him down. Lucas: Yes. But here's the twist — his exile didn't end there. Later, he was accused of medism — collaborating with Persia. That was a capital crime. So instead of sitting out his ten years, he fled. He ended up, of all places, at the court of Artaxerxes I, the son of Xerxes, the very king he had defeated at Salamis. Luna: He went to the Persian king? That's incredible. Lucas: According to Thucydides, Themistocles learned Persian, gained the king's trust, and was granted the city of Magnesia on the Maeander in Asia Minor to govern. He lived out his days as a Persian satrap — a Greek governor for the empire he once fought. It's an extraordinary reversal. Luna: If today was worth a coffee to you, that's the link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, listener support keeps this show ad-free and lets us dive into these weird corners of history. If you've been coming with us through these conversations about the Mediterranean world, that little link goes a long way. Luna: So back to Themistocles — was ostracism always about limiting power, or could it be petty? Lucas: Both. The earliest known ostracism, around 487 BC, targeted Hipparchus, a relative of the Peisistratid tyrants. That made sense — it was still a safeguard against tyranny. But soon it became a political weapon. Take the story of Aristides the Just. He was ostracized around 482 BC, and according to Plutarch, an illiterate voter asked a stranger to write 'Aristides' on his shard. The stranger asked why, and the man said, 'Because I'm tired of hearing him called the Just.' The stranger was Aristides himself. Luna: That's a great story, even if it might be apocryphal. Lucas: Exactly. But it captures how ostracism could be used against anyone. Later, in 417 BC, the politician Hyperbolus tried to get Alcibiades or Nicias ostracized, but the two rivals joined forces and got Hyperbolus ostracized instead. After that, the Athenians kind of lost faith in the process — it was too easily manipulated. Luna: So they stopped using it? Lucas: More or less. The last known ostracism was Hyperbolus himself. But the institution itself was never formally abolished; it just fell out of use. The lesson seems to be that ostracism worked best when the threat was real — a potential tyrant — but failed as a routine political tool. Luna: It's almost like they invented a safety valve for democracy, but it could backfire. Lucas: Precisely. And it raises the question: was it worth it? Themistocles, after all, was a brilliant strategist. Exiling him probably weakened Athens in the long run. But the Athenians valued the principle that no single man should overshadow the polis. That tension — between individual genius and collective equality — is one of the enduring themes of their history. Luna: And it leaves me wondering what would have happened if Themistocles had stayed. Lucas: That's the kind of counterfactual that haunts historians. But we do know his end: he died in Magnesia, still a Persian governor, around 459 BC. Some say he committed suicide rather than fight against Greece; others say he died of illness. Either way, his life was a Greek tragedy in three acts: hero, exile, servant of the enemy. Luna: And it all started with a broken piece of pottery. Lucas: Exactly. An ostrakon — just a shard, but with a name scratched on it, it could topple the most powerful man in Athens.