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What Do Broken Pottery Fragments Reveal About Athenian Democracy? - Ostracism and the Athenian Practice of Preemptive Exile | Sleepy Facts About History
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In the fifth century BCE, a citizen of Athens could scratch a name onto a broken piece of pottery, drop it into a pile with thousands of others, and vote to send a prominent leader into exile for ten years. This was ostracism, a constitutional mechanism designed to protect the democratic system from individuals who might accumulate enough influence to become a tyrant. The procedure was not a trial, and it was not a punishment for a crime. The exiled man kept his property, his family faced…
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