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Ostracism: How Ancient Greeks Handled Uncool Politicians · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Well,
0:26
Speaker 1: welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as
0:30
Speaker 1: always so much for tuning in. That's our super producer,
0:34
Speaker 1: the one and only Max Williams. Give it up for him.
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Speaker 1: My name is Ben Um and I owe you Noelan
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Speaker 1: Max a personal thank you for not ostracizing me even
0:48
Speaker 1: though I totally dipped out of town for a minute. Well, Ben,
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Speaker 1: I mean everybody deserves to get away, to fly away. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
1:01
Speaker 1: well that could yeah, that could be that. I like that.
1:04
Speaker 1: I like that idea. I think maybe one of the
1:08
Speaker 1: important things here is that I left temporarily and largely
1:14
Speaker 1: of my own volition. I'd say about of my own volition.
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Speaker 1: I didn't get kicked out. Have you guys ever got
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Speaker 1: kicked out of anything? Questions? Kicked out? I once? Uh no? Yeah? Gosh, Max,
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Speaker 1: how about you? You know, and you've ever been asked
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Speaker 1: politely to leave? Oh? Politely? And I'm politely? Um. Okay.
1:37
Speaker 1: If if our friends Phil and Nathaniel are listening, they
1:40
Speaker 1: can remember us at a bar on King Street in Charleston,
1:44
Speaker 1: South Carolina a few years ago. Yeah, we got asked
1:47
Speaker 1: very unpolitely to leave, and we totally well, they were fine.
1:52
Speaker 1: I totally deserved to be asked unpolitely to leave. Did
1:56
Speaker 1: you put up a fight or did you go h quietly?
1:59
Speaker 1: And Dark Knight was pretty quietly. Okay, no, no, no,
2:03
Speaker 1: it wasn't karaoke. It was just uh, yeah, I deserved it.
2:07
Speaker 1: I a bartender who was at that bar. If you're listening,
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Speaker 1: I am sorry. I know you don't know who I am,
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Speaker 1: but I am sorry. Max with the past, I love it. Um.
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Speaker 1: I think we've all found ourselves, sometimes at one point
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Speaker 1: or another, in some kind of situation where we don't
2:24
Speaker 1: feel comfortable. And uh, we have maybe found ourselves in
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Speaker 1: a situation where one reason or another we're asked to leave,
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Speaker 1: sometimes politely like Noel said, sometimes not politely like Max said.
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Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I just think there's some jobs
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Speaker 1: where no matter what you do, you're not gonna please everyone,
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Speaker 1: like the job of being the president. I would say anything,
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Speaker 1: not just the US. Uh, you'll have people who want
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Speaker 1: you to g t FO And today's episode is about
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Speaker 1: what one of the um processes are, the concepts that
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Speaker 1: the very way like very early days of democracy, the
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Speaker 1: government in ancient Greece figured out their own solution to
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Speaker 1: this problem over in Athens, right now, Yeah, that's right.
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Speaker 1: I mean we think of the word ostracized today and
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Speaker 1: it has kind of um connotations of maybe just sort
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Speaker 1: of given someone the cold shoulder, you know, like not
3:22
Speaker 1: letting someone hang in your click anymore. And you don't
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Speaker 1: do it like as a formal thing. It just sort
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Speaker 1: of happens. You sort of ghosted right over time you
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Speaker 1: start to realize, oh, my homies are not my homies anymore,
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Speaker 1: and I am sort of left alone because I see
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Speaker 1: them hanging out in the lunch room or or the
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Speaker 1: quad or whatever, um hell, and by the water cooler,
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Speaker 1: and they are no longer including me. It is a
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Speaker 1: form of excluding. But in ancient Greece and Athens, like
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Speaker 1: you said, this was essentially a borderline, codified solution to
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Speaker 1: keeping demagogues from rearing their ugly heads in politics, where
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Speaker 1: there was a rule built into Athenian civilization Athenian society
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Speaker 1: that allowed them to exile fellow citizen for ten years
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Speaker 1: if it was decided unanimously. I will get to the
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Speaker 1: official means of doing this, but if it was to
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Speaker 1: side decided animously that they were a disruption essentially, like
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Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna have to ask you to leave
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Speaker 1: for a decade, which is not an insignificant amount of time.
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Speaker 1: That's like a prison sentence. Yeah, and you know if
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Speaker 1: you if you spend your ten years in the figurative
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Speaker 1: quarter and you're still alive, then maybe you can come
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Speaker 1: back and be a little better behaved. This is crazy,
4:41
Speaker 1: we've got some I like the way that New York
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Speaker 1: Daily News put it when they said this is an
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Speaker 1: unpopularity context, because yeah, there's no trial, there's no investigation.
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Speaker 1: A bunch of people get together and they say this
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Speaker 1: guy's a really pill or this person could be a
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Speaker 1: danger to our democracy, teld them to get out. And
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Speaker 1: that specific phrase is also mentioned in the unpopularity contest
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Speaker 1: is kind of also alluded to in Smithsonian mag when
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Speaker 1: they quote historian James Sickener of Florida State. He argues
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Speaker 1: that this was a way to get rid of, like
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Speaker 1: you said, an old demagogues, potential tyrants, people who could
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Speaker 1: damage or subvert the new fragile idea of democracy. This
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Speaker 1: is what we're saying is you might have people who say, hey,
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Speaker 1: I felt ostracized from a social circle, or you might
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Speaker 1: have someone who's like, oh, I was outside of this
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Speaker 1: hotel and I felt ostracized standing in the smoking corner
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Speaker 1: or something like that. Right, but this is way different,
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Speaker 1: and this was uh something something that really also arguably
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Speaker 1: subverted the law because again, you were not guilty of
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Speaker 1: a criminal offense. They were not like, we are ostracizing
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Speaker 1: you get out of town for ten years because you
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Speaker 1: know you violated the what what you violated the Toga
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Speaker 1: length law or something like that. Well, it could be that, Ben,
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Speaker 1: It could be that because it was but but again
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Speaker 1: not specifically about a crime, more about going against norms
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Speaker 1: and and things that enough people agreed was um disruptive
6:27
Speaker 1: again that word again, disruptive, which is really really interesting
6:30
Speaker 1: because it's really incredibly incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to
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Speaker 1: do that in our political system. You know, it requires
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Speaker 1: essentially voting someone out of office and then they have
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Speaker 1: the upper hand because aside from impeachment, which we know
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Speaker 1: doesn't work ever. I mean, you can certainly, you know,
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Speaker 1: enact impeachment proceedings, but I don't know that we've ever
6:49
Speaker 1: seen it happen officially in our lifetime other than you know,
6:53
Speaker 1: with Nixon, he didn't he he would have been impeached
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Speaker 1: if he had not resigned, you know, he would have
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Speaker 1: been officially removed from office. We always misconstrued idea of
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Speaker 1: being impeached with being removed from office as a result
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Speaker 1: of impeachment proceedings. Right, but this only required a vote
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Speaker 1: of six thousand individuals in the entire society, which I mean,
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Speaker 1: I'm sure population had to play a play a role
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Speaker 1: in this, but to have someone ostracized, and again, according
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Speaker 1: to historian James Sickinger of Florida, stay who you cited earlier, Ben,
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Speaker 1: this happened at least a dozen times between four hundred
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Speaker 1: and eight seven to four hundred and sixteen BC. Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: And the point of making with that Toga reference is
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Speaker 1: that what I'm emphasizing here is they were not found
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Speaker 1: guilty legally offense uh this vote. And and of course, yes,
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Speaker 1: this is ancient Greece, this is Athens, so it's not
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Speaker 1: as though everybody could vote this. This idea was. It
7:58
Speaker 1: took place as soon after the Athenian forces one the
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Speaker 1: Battle of Marathon against Persian forces in four nine b C.
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Speaker 1: And they were trying to curb the power of any
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Speaker 1: rising tyrant. And this is. Historians believe that this is
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Speaker 1: partially due to the fact that they're old tyrant hippieus
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Speaker 1: have been thrown out years earlier. And when he was
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Speaker 1: thrown out, this guy get this. He went with the
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Speaker 1: Persian fleet to the Battle of Marathon, and he hoped
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Speaker 1: that when the Persians won, he would be uh he
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Speaker 1: would be in charge of Athens, who would be reinstalled
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Speaker 1: in power and Athens even though most of the people
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Speaker 1: didn't want him. There a word about the voting. If
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Speaker 1: you're a citizen in the city state of Athens around
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Speaker 1: this time, that means that you are not for and born,
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Speaker 1: you are not a slave, and you are not a woman.
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Speaker 1: So even though the total number of citizens could be
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Speaker 1: as high as sixty thousand, there was also just like today,
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Speaker 1: even though there are a lot of people in the
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Speaker 1: US who can vote, they're relatively few as percentage of
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Speaker 1: the population who actually do right. So this was think
9:17
Speaker 1: of the voters here as the people who really had
9:20
Speaker 1: an acts to grind. But how many you said there were? Um,
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Speaker 1: he said, there were dozens. That this happened too, But
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Speaker 1: was it was it based on like personal beef? Ever,
9:31
Speaker 1: it seems hard to get six thousand people to have
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Speaker 1: your back just because you know, you don't like the
9:36
Speaker 1: guy who stole your girl at the dance or something. Yeah,
9:39
Speaker 1: I don't think so. It seems uh, you're right, I mean,
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Speaker 1: that seems like a high enough number. It'd be kind
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Speaker 1: of hard to rig it. I mean, I'm sure many tried,
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Speaker 1: because it certainly seemed like a real, full proof way
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Speaker 1: of getting rid of a political rival, you know, if
9:54
Speaker 1: you wanted to, or I imagine perhaps scandals could have
9:58
Speaker 1: been trumped up perhaps or in the same way that
10:00
Speaker 1: you know, a political rival might hire you know, a
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Speaker 1: private detective to photograph someone in like compromised situation that
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Speaker 1: maybe the reality of isn't necessarily matching what the picture
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Speaker 1: would be. Um, that's very vague, but I think you
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Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like, there's there's ways of making
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Speaker 1: people look bad when they actually didn't do anything wrong.
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Speaker 1: So that certainly could have happened too. And if you
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Speaker 1: can sway enough people public opinion, I think that's what
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Speaker 1: the six thousand represents, right then the six thousand is
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Speaker 1: a microcosm of the greater population that represents public opinion. Yeah. Yeah,
10:33
Speaker 1: and maybe we could talk a little bit about the
10:37
Speaker 1: process here. Once a year, everybody would get together and
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Speaker 1: decide whether or not to ostracize people, and they didn't
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Speaker 1: have to just choose one person. It's theoretically possible that
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Speaker 1: six thousand male citizens could have gotten together and said,
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Speaker 1: let's kick out winning four people because you know, we
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Speaker 1: don't like them. So first there would be a popular
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Speaker 1: assembly of athletes, the ecclesia, and what During the ecclesia,
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Speaker 1: about six thousand male citizens would vote whether or not
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Speaker 1: to proceed with ostracization by just raising their right hand,
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Speaker 1: so you could kind of just read the room when
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Speaker 1: you looked out in the crowd, unless it was very um,
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Speaker 1: I guess, unless it was very tense. I feel like,
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Speaker 1: if you asked for the vote and it looked like
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Speaker 1: everybody was raising your hand, then you've you've got the
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Speaker 1: vote to go forward to the special meeting known as
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Speaker 1: the Austra Couporia, which was the without getting to the
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Speaker 1: weeds of the calendar that was that was the next step,
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Speaker 1: and then the voting was supervised by council of five
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Speaker 1: people and nine highest officials in the land who are
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Speaker 1: known as the archons so Ben I mean there were
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Speaker 1: factions in these days, or I mean, this is the
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Speaker 1: earliest days of democracy. So there were parties, you could say.
12:02
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, they always have been as long
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Speaker 1: as people have agreed to do things in a certain way,
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Speaker 1: people have disagreed, you know, so I imagined, But I
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Speaker 1: imagine that six thousand correct me if I'm wrong, would
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Speaker 1: have been made up of not just rivals of that individual,
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Speaker 1: and I would have had to be some sort of coalition, right,
12:19
Speaker 1: some sort of across the aisle type situation. Otherwise it
12:23
Speaker 1: would be just kind of a railroad job. Yeah, that's
12:25
Speaker 1: a really good point, because it would be it would
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Speaker 1: be strange to imagine that these six thousand people all
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Speaker 1: got along together on everything. But when it was time
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Speaker 1: to do the vote, the vote was anonymous, something that
12:38
Speaker 1: Athens figured out way before the U S. If you've
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Speaker 1: heard our our earlier episodes of voting in this country.
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Speaker 1: They they took this piece of broken pottery and they
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Speaker 1: scratched the name of the person that they wanted ostracized
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Speaker 1: onto the piece of pottery. And a lot of this
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Speaker 1: is coming from a gath a dot g R, which
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Speaker 1: has a great breakdown of how this worked, as well
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Speaker 1: as pictures of actual pottery shards where they would write
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Speaker 1: the names, and so they were where election officials or
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Speaker 1: I guess voting officials who would collect these pieces of
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Speaker 1: broken pottery and make sure that nobody was trying to
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Speaker 1: rig the vote and vote, you know, multiple times. If
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Speaker 1: there was a minimum of six thousand votes cast, then
13:29
Speaker 1: the officials would announce which person had amassed the most
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Speaker 1: votes and then boom, that person is kicked out exile.
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Speaker 1: You cannot appeal this, but really uncontestable. You get like
13:45
Speaker 1: they tell you, uh, they give you a little bit
13:48
Speaker 1: of time to get your stuff together and high tailor right.
13:52
Speaker 1: I think they give you ten days to your ten
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Speaker 1: years to get your stuff together and get out of dodge.
13:58
Speaker 1: By the way, a gath a dot g are is
14:00
Speaker 1: the website of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens,
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Speaker 1: and overall is just a really really cool, rich resource.
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Speaker 1: Highly recommended if you're into like this kind of classical studies.
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Speaker 1: But I mean, this would have been the kiss of death, dude,
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Speaker 1: can you imagine? Yeah, it's when you put it that way,
14:20
Speaker 1: of like a day for each year, that that sounds
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Speaker 1: really difficult. It is interesting that you still get to
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Speaker 1: keep your citizenship and apparently your personal property is not
14:31
Speaker 1: confiscated at least according to the letter of the process,
14:35
Speaker 1: the letter of the law. But I don't know how
14:37
Speaker 1: much that actually held true in real life. Because someone's
14:41
Speaker 1: gone for ten years, does that mean that your family
14:44
Speaker 1: stays on your estate and looks after your property or something.
14:48
Speaker 1: Is it like a situation where you know, your partner
14:52
Speaker 1: or your kids are like, hey, will try try to
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Speaker 1: visit you. Is that and allowed? Would that make them lepers,
15:03
Speaker 1: you know essentially, or make them ostracized by default? We
15:06
Speaker 1: wouldn't really see anything in the research to my knowledge
15:09
Speaker 1: that imposes this you know, fate on family members. But
15:14
Speaker 1: we know that does happen. There's certainly plenty of situations
15:18
Speaker 1: where I mean, hell, this is actually pretty progressive. You know.
15:21
Speaker 1: Typically when you think of this kind of situations where
15:23
Speaker 1: there's you know, political beef or you know, someone is
15:26
Speaker 1: seen as a as an undesirable usually they're just killed
15:30
Speaker 1: along with their family and all of their heirs. This
15:32
Speaker 1: is like a pretty thoughtful way of doing business. Yeah,
15:35
Speaker 1: it is. It seems surprisingly progressive. If you if you're
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Speaker 1: ostracized but you're not like guilty of a crime, you
15:43
Speaker 1: don't go to jail, you don't get tortured, you don't
15:46
Speaker 1: get fined. Ten years go by, if you're still alive,
15:50
Speaker 1: you can come back. And if you were in office
15:52
Speaker 1: when you got ostracized, you can still come back to politics.
15:56
Speaker 1: And what happens, right, if you're like you're up for
15:59
Speaker 1: ostratization and they ultimately don't vote to ostracize you, you
16:03
Speaker 1: can stay. You can just kick it. And then apparently
16:07
Speaker 1: this is the weirdest part, Well, this is one of
16:10
Speaker 1: the weirdest parts. Apparently after you voted, after you turn
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Speaker 1: in your pottery shard, and after everything was counted, these
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Speaker 1: things which were called ostraca were just thrown in the street.
16:21
Speaker 1: And so people who have been conducting excavations in Athens
16:26
Speaker 1: have found thousands, like eleven thousand examples of these broken
16:32
Speaker 1: pottery votes. And this is like a window into the
16:37
Speaker 1: power politics of the day. And I'm sure stute ridiculous
16:42
Speaker 1: historians have put this together already. But the term ostracized
16:45
Speaker 1: came from the term for this pottery, which was a
16:49
Speaker 1: very very uh durable baked pottery called ostraca. Like you said, ostracized,
16:55
Speaker 1: and yeah, you're right, I mean eleven thousand examples of
16:58
Speaker 1: these means that they were far more votes than actual ostracizations,
17:05
Speaker 1: like successful votes. Right, yeah, yeah, And this is interesting
17:10
Speaker 1: because back to our historian Sickensure here, he says that
17:14
Speaker 1: written ballots were kind of unusual in Athenian democracy, and uh,
17:21
Speaker 1: during assemblies where people voted on laws, you just you
17:26
Speaker 1: typically did what they did in the first stage of
17:28
Speaker 1: the ostracization vote. You just raised your hands. So if
17:33
Speaker 1: you think about it, these bits of pottery are hidden,
17:38
Speaker 1: broken shards of history that often weren't noticed by the
17:44
Speaker 1: ancient sources of the time or the contemporary sources of
17:47
Speaker 1: that time, because it's like, why would you write in
17:50
Speaker 1: depth about a vote that ultimately didn't result in something dramatic, Right,
17:56
Speaker 1: that's just day to day. Uh, And you know, people
18:00
Speaker 1: like people had Maximilian Uh william As sees here we go,
18:07
Speaker 1: all right, whatever, Macks, we're going with it. And and uh,
18:10
Speaker 1: they had that guy off for ostracization, but he didn't
18:13
Speaker 1: get the votes for the unpopularity contest. He's fine, why
18:16
Speaker 1: would you write about it? We're done, we did the process,
18:19
Speaker 1: the process worked, We're thrown away our pottery shards. Um,
18:23
Speaker 1: that does seem incredibly progressive for the time. I agree with,
18:27
Speaker 1: you knowl but we also found that there were some
18:31
Speaker 1: examples of abuse of the system, didn't we Yeah, we
18:35
Speaker 1: we do see that. And I just want to point
18:37
Speaker 1: out too at this point that this I said, this
18:40
Speaker 1: was a kiss of death, and it certainly could have been,
18:42
Speaker 1: but there were plenty of examples of folks that returned
18:45
Speaker 1: and we're able to kind of you know, get back
18:47
Speaker 1: into life, you know, almost like getting out of prison
18:50
Speaker 1: and being assimilated back into you know, civilized society or whatever.
18:54
Speaker 1: But like I said earlier, I mean, it wasn't impossible
18:57
Speaker 1: to game this system. We do have historical evidence of
19:03
Speaker 1: you know, small sects of of of people that kind
19:07
Speaker 1: of colluded against the policies of a particular person. Because again,
19:11
Speaker 1: the fact they were able to return back to society
19:13
Speaker 1: after their ostracization does seem to indicate that this is
19:18
Speaker 1: more about voting against people's politics rather than the people themselves, right, Yeah. Yeah,
19:24
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like this isn't a perfect comparison.
19:28
Speaker 1: But you know, sometimes you'll talk to people who are
19:32
Speaker 1: voting in the US and they're saying, well, I'm not
19:35
Speaker 1: really voting for this one candidate and voting against the
19:40
Speaker 1: other one, you know, and you're like, somebody might vote
19:45
Speaker 1: to ostracize a certain individual in ancient Athens. But what
19:49
Speaker 1: they're really, what they're really doing, is they're voting against
19:55
Speaker 1: the policies. And when they vote against that person, what
19:58
Speaker 1: they're they're doing is support the rival policy or the
20:02
Speaker 1: rival idea. But then also, people were much the same
20:06
Speaker 1: then as they are today. There's one funny, petty thing
20:10
Speaker 1: here in plutarch uh in his biography of Aristides, he
20:16
Speaker 1: says there was one guy who voted against Aristides the
20:22
Speaker 1: just just because he got tired of the guy having
20:26
Speaker 1: the nickname the Just. So it's like, imagine you're deciding
20:31
Speaker 1: not to vote for someone because you're like, I don't know,
20:34
Speaker 1: I think it's tie is pretentious. I think it's Tie
20:37
Speaker 1: insist upon himself. Um, I don't like the cut of
20:41
Speaker 1: his jib. That's basically it. You could vote to kick
20:44
Speaker 1: someone out for ten years because you don't like the
20:46
Speaker 1: cut of their jip. That's absolutely right then. And one
20:50
Speaker 1: example of potential abuse of the system was in the
20:54
Speaker 1: unearth thing of one hundred and ninety pieces of this
20:57
Speaker 1: Astraca pottery in a well near the Acropolis of Athens,
21:02
Speaker 1: which we all know and love, that amazing piece of architecture.
21:06
Speaker 1: Um and the name the mysticallys was written on all
21:10
Speaker 1: of them, but it was clear that it was done
21:13
Speaker 1: by just a few people's hands, just a few different
21:18
Speaker 1: examples of handwriting. So they must have rigged it in
21:22
Speaker 1: some way. Uh, done a little ballot box stuffing as
21:26
Speaker 1: it were. Right, Yeah, And first off, I think that's hilarious.
21:31
Speaker 1: I don't know why they did it, but it's such
21:34
Speaker 1: an obvious case of cheating. I do have to begrudgingly
21:40
Speaker 1: note that they put some work into it, because scratching
21:43
Speaker 1: that name in the pottery is tougher than just filling
21:46
Speaker 1: in a little bubble with a with a number two pencil,
21:49
Speaker 1: or or just writing something on papers. So they thought
21:52
Speaker 1: about it, and they had to scratch all that name
21:55
Speaker 1: a hundred and ninety times. But uh, maybe it's people
22:00
Speaker 1: handing out pre written votes. I think that's one of
22:02
Speaker 1: the speculations, you know, and we have so many Well,
22:06
Speaker 1: as we said, there are cases where this system worked.
22:10
Speaker 1: We know that the first, like actual real life ostracism
22:17
Speaker 1: wasn't held until four eighties seven b C. When a
22:23
Speaker 1: guy named Hipparcus who was related to the tyrant we
22:28
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top, Hippieus. He became the first person
22:32
Speaker 1: who was successfully exiled through the process of ostracism. And
22:38
Speaker 1: I think in the next two years there were a
22:40
Speaker 1: couple more people, and they were historians largely believed that
22:45
Speaker 1: these three guys, mega Cles, Callius, and Hipparcus, we're all
22:51
Speaker 1: found guilty or thought to be guilty of supporting Persia.
22:56
Speaker 1: And so they're like, all right, well, you know what,
22:59
Speaker 1: come back in ten years, tell us what you think
23:01
Speaker 1: about it then. But nol, I have a question. If
23:04
Speaker 1: you're exiling people for the same perceived you know, violation
23:09
Speaker 1: of norms or the same danger, what's to stop them
23:12
Speaker 1: from getting together outside of town and like staging some
23:17
Speaker 1: sort of revolt right right? You see where I'm going
23:20
Speaker 1: with us. I don't see where you're going with us.
23:22
Speaker 1: It's a good question, ben like some sort of like
23:24
Speaker 1: reverse lynch mob. I don't know. I think the numbers
23:26
Speaker 1: wouldn't be on their side. I don't feel like there
23:28
Speaker 1: was any there's any number. I mean, like the highest
23:31
Speaker 1: number too, to your point earlier, would probably be in
23:33
Speaker 1: the twenties, you know, I highly doubt they were like
23:36
Speaker 1: exiling enough, uh that they could come back on mass
23:41
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. Yeah, and then a public
23:44
Speaker 1: opinion is already against them so much they would have
23:48
Speaker 1: to get help from a foreign power. So if you
23:52
Speaker 1: if you look at this and you just think about
23:55
Speaker 1: the relatively snarky nature of people, you might feel a
23:59
Speaker 1: ridiculous historians assume that all of the prominent power players
24:05
Speaker 1: and politicians in Athens or at some point targets for
24:09
Speaker 1: ostracization or ostracism, you would be correct, ding ding first
24:15
Speaker 1: prize to you. Even the legendary Pericles was a candidate
24:20
Speaker 1: for this treatment. We know that when they held these votes,
24:24
Speaker 1: they often concentrated on just like two or three people
24:28
Speaker 1: who might get kicked out. But some, according to these
24:32
Speaker 1: shards of pottery, these ostraka, some people that scholars never
24:37
Speaker 1: even learned about anywhere else, also got really big votes
24:41
Speaker 1: for ostracism. So again back to Sickener, He says that
24:47
Speaker 1: writers from this time tend to focus on just the
24:50
Speaker 1: big names, the few big names. But if you look
24:53
Speaker 1: at these shards of pottery, you'll see there were a
24:56
Speaker 1: lot of people that didn't make it into the historical
24:59
Speaker 1: record otherwise is that we're a big enough deal for
25:02
Speaker 1: Athenes to be concerned. Yeah, that's right, and um we
25:05
Speaker 1: you know again, we learn all of this from archaeological digs,
25:09
Speaker 1: and our historian Seeking gerb had this to say about
25:13
Speaker 1: exactly what you're talking about that writers from antiquity quote,
25:16
Speaker 1: writers from antiquity focus on just a few big men.
25:19
Speaker 1: History was the history of leading figures, powerful individuals, generals
25:24
Speaker 1: and politicians, but others or maybe not quite as prominent,
25:27
Speaker 1: but clearly prominent enough that dozens or hundreds of individuals
25:31
Speaker 1: thought them worthy of being ostracized. That's very interesting because
25:35
Speaker 1: it sort of speaks to what you're talking about, Ben.
25:38
Speaker 1: I think what the biggest concern would be is if
25:41
Speaker 1: someone with a lot of sway, Because we know that
25:44
Speaker 1: even though it only took six thousand votes to ostracize someone,
25:48
Speaker 1: we're talking about a population the dwarfs that number. So
25:51
Speaker 1: the issue would be if enough people were not on
25:56
Speaker 1: board with the ostracization of their guy, then maybe they
26:00
Speaker 1: follow him, and then that would be a coup that
26:02
Speaker 1: could be staged. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. There
26:07
Speaker 1: are serious political concerns here. But also because this show
26:13
Speaker 1: is about ridiculous history. Folks. We would be remiss if
26:17
Speaker 1: we didn't share some of the funny roast and disses
26:22
Speaker 1: and things that were written about people when they were
26:25
Speaker 1: up for an ostracism vote. You can see a lot
26:34
Speaker 1: of what Athenians thought about other citizens. Some have these
26:39
Speaker 1: like they didn't just write the name, they added some
26:43
Speaker 1: extra here's why to it. There's like lie gross Glacon
26:49
Speaker 1: nos Slanderer, Yeah, collected us the trader ex Antipus Eraphon
26:56
Speaker 1: Sun is declared by this ostracon to be the out
26:59
Speaker 1: and out winner amongst a cursed sinners. And we have
27:07
Speaker 1: another historian to thank for the record of all of
27:10
Speaker 1: this and how it really informs what was going on
27:13
Speaker 1: with the politics of ancient Greece, Stephen Brenn of the
27:17
Speaker 1: University of Geeseon in Germany. He actually cataloged all nine
27:22
Speaker 1: thousand pieces of this Ostraka pottery that were um dug
27:26
Speaker 1: up in uh Kara Micos between nineteen ten and just
27:32
Speaker 1: as recently as two thousand five, and bren says that
27:37
Speaker 1: some of these comments, those uh comments that we mentioned
27:41
Speaker 1: earlier were these kind of personal political grievances against candidates
27:47
Speaker 1: um that were perhaps used in almost like yeah, like
27:52
Speaker 1: what you would think of as as a campaign right
27:55
Speaker 1: leading up to one of these votes, so you know,
27:58
Speaker 1: you would almost in the same way you lead up
28:00
Speaker 1: to like say, voting for the Oscars for your consideration
28:03
Speaker 1: or the Emmys or whatever. They would have had these
28:06
Speaker 1: like slogans or you know, the stay with any political
28:08
Speaker 1: process leading out to us. So a lot of these
28:10
Speaker 1: things that were written would have reflected those types of campaigns.
28:14
Speaker 1: For sure. There were things like accusations of incest. Uh.
28:19
Speaker 1: There were also there's one really interesting thing where some
28:24
Speaker 1: folks found examples of Athenians casting their votes not for
28:29
Speaker 1: a specific human citizen, but uh casting to ostracized famine.
28:36
Speaker 1: And according to signature. It's kind of tough to tell
28:39
Speaker 1: whether this was sincere or whether this was sarcastic, because
28:43
Speaker 1: some Greek cities did have rituals where they would pick
28:47
Speaker 1: typically an enslaved person, make them a scapegoat representing hunger,
28:52
Speaker 1: and then drive them out of the city. So it's
28:55
Speaker 1: a little bit faster and looser than a lot of
28:58
Speaker 1: voting today. But we do know that the end of
29:03
Speaker 1: ostracism occurred around four seventeen b c e. There was
29:09
Speaker 1: a guy named Hyperbolos who wanted to exile one of
29:16
Speaker 1: his two great rivals. He had two people that would
29:19
Speaker 1: rather not be in town, and he thought things would
29:22
Speaker 1: go better for me if I get one of them
29:23
Speaker 1: out of the game. These were Alcabiades and Nicias. But
29:28
Speaker 1: instead his rivals teamed up and got him voted out
29:33
Speaker 1: of the city. And this political maneuvering apparently made enough
29:37
Speaker 1: people disgusted that they decided collectively to end ostracism, and
29:44
Speaker 1: after that point, even though it was still legally possible
29:47
Speaker 1: to do this, nobody was ostracized, and there was still
29:52
Speaker 1: on the books until the fourth century b c. Instead,
29:56
Speaker 1: if he didn't like someone, if you had a political rival,
29:59
Speaker 1: you would int age in a process called graph a paranomon,
30:04
Speaker 1: where anybody could make a formal accusation against anyone else
30:09
Speaker 1: and say, hey, their ideas, their policies, their proposals, those
30:13
Speaker 1: are unconstitutional. And if the person you accused was found
30:17
Speaker 1: guilty of the charge, you would get fined. You have
30:21
Speaker 1: to pay a lot of money. And then there was
30:23
Speaker 1: a three strikes law. Can you believe it? If you
30:26
Speaker 1: lost three cases of graph a paranoman, then you could
30:31
Speaker 1: no longer be in politics, which is funny because you know,
30:35
Speaker 1: it's so tempting Noll to have to think that maybe
30:40
Speaker 1: modern democracies would be better with this kind of three
30:43
Speaker 1: strikes law for politicians A million percents. I mean, we
30:47
Speaker 1: should have some sort of mechanism like this. I wouldn't say,
30:52
Speaker 1: you know, leave the city for ten years, but there
30:54
Speaker 1: should be some popular way to recall people that doesn't
30:58
Speaker 1: involve like all of this crazy pedantic um, you know,
31:03
Speaker 1: kind of bureaucracy that we have to deal with. Because again,
31:06
Speaker 1: like we've seen with uh, you know, we're not a
31:08
Speaker 1: political show. We're not. We don't we don't put our
31:11
Speaker 1: we don't wear our political views on our sleeves. But
31:13
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree that there have been
31:16
Speaker 1: situations throughout history where perhaps we would have benefited if
31:20
Speaker 1: there was some accepted way of ousting someone at their
31:24
Speaker 1: very least kind of knocking them a couple of runs
31:26
Speaker 1: off of their pedestal, you know, for stuff that we
31:29
Speaker 1: would just consider absolutely unacceptable. Yeah. Yeah, and and uh,
31:35
Speaker 1: to have consequences for some actions of corruption or so on,
31:40
Speaker 1: like those consequences can frankly be hard to uh, hard
31:45
Speaker 1: to follow through with in many cases, and this this
31:49
Speaker 1: is something that led our pal Gave to ask whether
31:55
Speaker 1: ostracism is worth a second look today. He was citing
32:01
Speaker 1: that New York Daily News op ed we mentioned at
32:04
Speaker 1: the very very top of the show, and this was
32:07
Speaker 1: an op ed by Stephen Ruddy, and in this op ed,
32:12
Speaker 1: Ruddy says the process of ostracism holds advantages over the
32:16
Speaker 1: American system of impeachment because he notes that the Athenian
32:22
Speaker 1: process of ostracizing someone was based on policy often right,
32:28
Speaker 1: And people would like your point earlier about how six
32:33
Speaker 1: thousand people might not agree on everything, but they kind
32:37
Speaker 1: of went across whatever their faction lines were. One would hope, yeah,
32:41
Speaker 1: one one would. And that doesn't happen with the US
32:44
Speaker 1: system of impeachment. Yeah, it tends to go around partisan lines.
32:49
Speaker 1: But with this, I think we can see the very
32:55
Speaker 1: serious and progressive roots of a phrase that that a
32:59
Speaker 1: lot of us you're kind of misusing in the modern day.
33:02
Speaker 1: I felt I told somebody that I felt ostracized for
33:07
Speaker 1: some of my Okay, I'll admit stridently militant opinions about
33:11
Speaker 1: certain foods, you know, but that wasn't ostracization. That was
33:16
Speaker 1: my friends saying Hey, man, you're getting real weird about
33:20
Speaker 1: case that he is I was still allowed to sit
33:22
Speaker 1: at the table. Well, that's called intervention. That's not that's
33:26
Speaker 1: the people that that's people that care about you and
33:28
Speaker 1: want to make sure you're okay. They want you around.
33:30
Speaker 1: They just thought you maybe went a little too far
33:32
Speaker 1: down that case of the a rabbit hole band. And
33:35
Speaker 1: we just want to help you. Man. We love you,
33:37
Speaker 1: We love you, and we love you. I I think
33:39
Speaker 1: I know, Matt, I think we could have so much
33:42
Speaker 1: fun if well, how do we define so much fun
33:46
Speaker 1: for us? If we're hanging out with some of our
33:48
Speaker 1: coworkers or something, and it's someone like we'll just pick
33:53
Speaker 1: a point they they have an opinion about something. It
33:55
Speaker 1: could be Alex Williams, who could post our track. Alex
33:58
Speaker 1: says something that the three of us could exchange significant glances,
34:02
Speaker 1: and I'll bring the pottery sharks and we can put
34:05
Speaker 1: on pottery sharts. Yeah, well we'll hit up pottery barn.
34:09
Speaker 1: I think all you would need would be one of
34:11
Speaker 1: those big planters, you know, and that's that will be
34:13
Speaker 1: enough for for our vote. We don't need six thousand though,
34:18
Speaker 1: I think that seems a bit much within our little
34:20
Speaker 1: podcast sphere. Maybe twenty money is ambitious on it zone. Yeah,
34:25
Speaker 1: I think that's great. But U but let us let
34:28
Speaker 1: us know what you think, folks. We'd love to hear
34:32
Speaker 1: from you. We'd love to hear what you think about
34:34
Speaker 1: the process of ostracization or ostracism, whether it should return
34:39
Speaker 1: in the modern day. You could tell us all about
34:42
Speaker 1: it on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians to meet the
34:46
Speaker 1: best part of the show your fellow listeners. Also, uh,
34:50
Speaker 1: we have an email address, right, absolutely do It's real.
34:55
Speaker 1: You can write to us at Ridiculous at I heart
34:58
Speaker 1: media dot com. I don't think people are we need
35:00
Speaker 1: to start maybe saying this at the top of the show.
35:02
Speaker 1: Ben still get the emails set up. I don't get
35:05
Speaker 1: the email. This is crazy. Then you're once again being
35:08
Speaker 1: punished for being an honor student. I vote to ostracized.
35:11
Speaker 1: I t ostracized. I T I love that. That's a
35:15
Speaker 1: good slope, good chance. Um, yeah, thirded, thirded. We should
35:20
Speaker 1: thank some people. Doesn't that mean we have a quorum.
35:23
Speaker 1: Isn't that a quorum what we have here? I forget
35:25
Speaker 1: parliamentary procedure, but we will thank some people who definitely
35:28
Speaker 1: do not want to ostracize. That's, of course you already
35:31
Speaker 1: mentioned Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Max Williams, superproducer
35:36
Speaker 1: of the year, of the century, of the millennium. Um,
35:39
Speaker 1: you would have been a really great Greek pray tour
35:42
Speaker 1: or something, you know, one of those like dudes that
35:44
Speaker 1: wears the robe and just holds up two fingers and
35:46
Speaker 1: looks very like a mystic. Yeah. I think it would
35:50
Speaker 1: also have been a great orator, Max. Uh, you've got
35:54
Speaker 1: some gravatoas about you. Uh, speaking with gravatoas of course,
35:58
Speaker 1: big big thanks to Casey Pegram, Christopher Hasiotis, Eve's Jeff Cote,
36:04
Speaker 1: our Shining Star Research gave Louisier and uh, Noel, I
36:09
Speaker 1: have to ask you, Max, I have to ask you
36:12
Speaker 1: my last question for the day, real talk. Would you
36:15
Speaker 1: vote to ostracize the quister? I don't know, Man, I
36:19
Speaker 1: kind of missed the guy. Yeah, yeah, we should just
36:23
Speaker 1: let him stay. Let's let him stay, all right. Nobody
36:25
Speaker 1: telling me said that, but yeah, I agreed. We'll see
36:28
Speaker 1: you next time. Folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
36:37
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
36:40
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows,