Athenian Ostracism and its Original Purpose

Abstract

AbstractAthenian Ostracism and its Original Purpose. A Prisoner’s Dilemma is the first book in English about Athenian ostracism, by far the most emblematic institution of Athenian democracy, in many decades. It offers a reassessment of ostraka (or potsherds, on which the names of the ‘candidates’ for exile were inscribed by citizens) from several Greek cities outside Athens, a reconstruction of the history and of the procedure of ostracism in Athens, and a comprehensive account of the political circumstances of the introduction of the law about ostracism by Cleisthenes in 508/507 bc. The novelty of the book is its focus on the entire operation procedure of this institution, whereas earlier scholarship concentrated mainly on its last step, i.e., on the day of the vote of ostraka. Following the logic of the political play in Athens between the first and the last stage of ostracism, it is argued that Athenian ostracism was a mechanism devised to impose compromise on the main political players of the Athenian political life. Otherwise, the entire political elite of Athens would be randomly punished by the Athenian people, by exiling one of the leading politicians in an unpredictable vote by huge masses of citizenry. To support this hypothesis, the author turns to the theory of the ‘evolution of cooperation’ as formulated by the American mathematician and political scientist Robert Axelrod based on the ‘iteratated prisoner’s dilemma’ in game theory—as a probabilistic analogy to the dynamics of Athenian political life under democracy.