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82-417: A punitive expedition is a military journey undertaken to punish a political entity or any group of people outside the borders of the punishing state or union . It is usually undertaken in response to perceived disobedient or morally wrong behavior by miscreants , as revenge or corrective action , or to apply strong diplomatic pressure without a formal declaration of war (e.g. surgical strike ). In

164-501: A misdemeanor is not. There are many possible reasons that might be given to justify or explain why someone ought to be punished; here follows a broad outline of typical, possibly conflicting, justifications. Two reasons given to justify punishment is that it is a measure to prevent people from committing an offense - deterring previous offenders from re-offending, and preventing those who may be contemplating an offence they have not committed from actually committing it. This punishment

246-525: A battle the week before such a second vote. It opened a period for discussion (or perhaps agitation), whether informally in daily talk or public speeches before the Athenian assembly or Athenian courts. In this process a consensus, or rival consensuses, might emerge. Because ostracism was carried out by thousands of people over many decades of an evolving political situation and culture, it did not serve one monolithic purpose. Observations can be made about

328-422: A certain proportion of trust in the population can lead to self-governance without the need for punishment. There are also arguments against the notion of punishment requiring intelligence, based on studies of punishment in very small-brained animals such as insects . There is proof of honey bee workers with mutations that makes them fertile laying eggs only when other honey bees are not observing them, and that

410-399: A contractual form of fine or demotion . Most hierarchical organizations, such as military and police forces, or even churches , still apply quite rigid internal discipline, even with a judicial system of their own ( court martial , canonical courts ). Punishment may also be applied on moral, especially religious, grounds, as in penance (which is voluntary) or imposed in a theocracy with

492-408: A desirable behavior. Ostracism Ostracism ( Greek : ὀστρακισμός , ostrakismos ) was an Athenian democratic procedure in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years. While some instances clearly expressed popular anger at the citizen, ostracism was often used preemptively. It was used as a way of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to

574-403: A level of suffering. A principle often mentioned with respect to the degree of punishment to be meted out is that the punishment should match the crime. One standard for measurement is the degree to which a crime affects others or society. Measurements of the degree of seriousness of a crime have been developed. A felony is generally considered to be a crime of "high seriousness ", while

656-411: A measure of retributive justice , in which the goal is to try to rebalance any unjust advantage gained by ensuring that the offender also suffers a loss. Sometimes viewed as a way of "getting even" with a wrongdoer—the suffering of the wrongdoer is seen as a desired goal in itself, even if it has no restorative benefits for the victim. One reason societies have administered punishments is to diminish

738-415: A person, or even an animal. The authority may be either a group or a single person, and punishment may be carried out formally under a system of law or informally in other kinds of social settings such as within a family. Negative or unpleasant impositions that are not authorized or that are administered without a breach of rules are not considered to be punishment as defined here. The study and practice of

820-740: A religious police (as in a strict Islamic state like Iran or under the Taliban ) or (though not a true theocracy) by Inquisition . Belief that an individual's ultimate punishment is being sent by God, the highest authority, to an existence in Hell , a place believed to exist in the after-life, typically corresponds to sins committed during their life. Sometimes these distinctions are specific, with damned souls suffering for each sin committed (see for example Plato's myth of Er or Dante's The Divine Comedy ), but sometimes they are general, with condemned sinners relegated to one or more chamber of Hell or to

902-481: A right ". Critics argue that punishment is simply revenge . Professor Deirdre Golash, author of The Case against Punishment: Retribution, Crime Prevention, and the Law , says: We ought not to impose such harm on anyone unless we have a very good reason for doing so. This remark may seem trivially true, but the history of humankind is littered with examples of the deliberate infliction of harm by well-intentioned persons in

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984-432: A second chance and society would be spared feuds, civil war, political tensions and/or murder. The last ostracism, that of Hyperbolos in or near 417 BC, is narrated by Plutarch in three separate lives : Hyperbolos is pictured urging the people to expel one of his rivals, but they, Nicias and Alcibiades , laying aside their hostility for a moment, use their influence to have him ostracised instead. According to Plutarch,

1066-434: A second undated ostracism not listed above. The known ostracisms seem to fall into three distinct phases: the 480s BC, mid-century 461–443 BC and finally the years 417–415: this roughly correlates with the clustering of known expulsions, although Themistocles before 471 may count as an exception. This may suggest that ostracism fell in and out of fashion. The last known ostracism was that of Hyperbolus in circa 417 BC. There

1148-403: A single, coherent framework. Instead of punishment requiring we choose between them, unified theorists argue that they work together as part of some wider goal such as the protection of rights. Some people think that punishment as a whole is unhelpful and even harmful to the people that it is used against. Detractors argue that punishment is simply wrong, of the same design as " two wrongs make

1230-460: A system of pedagogy or behavioral modification which also includes rewards. There are a large number of different understandings of what punishment is. Various philosophers have presented definitions of punishment. Conditions commonly considered necessary properly to describe an action as punishment are that Introduced by B.F. Skinner , punishment has a more restrictive and technical definition. Along with reinforcement it belongs under

1312-452: A year, and only for one person. It resembles the Greek pharmakos or scapegoat —though in contrast, pharmakos generally ejected a lowly member of the community. A further distinction between these two modes (and not obvious from a modern perspective) is that ostracism was an automatic procedure that required no initiative from any individual, with the vote simply occurring on the wish of

1394-438: Is a common retaliatory strategy used by organizations in response to whistleblowing . Kipling Williams, in a survey on US whistleblowers, found that all respondents reported post-whistleblowing ostracism. Alexander Brown similarly found that post-whistleblowing ostracism is a common response, and indeed describes ostracism as form of " covert " reprisal, as it is normally so difficult to identify and investigate. Qahr and ashti

1476-470: Is a culture-specific Iranian form of personal shunning, most frequently of another family member in Iran . While modern Western concepts of ostracism are based upon enforcing conformity within a societally-recognized group, qahr is a private (batini), family-orientated affair of conflict or display of anger that is never disclosed to the public at large, as to do so would be a breach of social etiquette. Qahr

1558-525: Is another interpretation, however, according to which these ostraka were prepared beforehand by enterprising businessmen who offered them for sale to citizens who could not easily inscribe the desired names for themselves or who simply wished to save time. The two-month gap is a key feature in the institution, much as in elections under modern liberal democracies . It prevented the candidate for expulsion being chosen out of immediate anger, although an Athenian general such as Cimon would have not wanted to lose

1640-472: Is increased group-conformity , in a quest for re-admittance; the second is to become more provocative and hostile to the group, seeking attention rather than acceptance. Older adults report experiencing ostracism less frequently, with a particular dip being around the age of retirement . Regardless of age, ostracism is strongly associated with negative emotions, reduced life satisfaction and dysfunctional social behaviour. Research suggests that ostracism

1722-455: Is intended to be sufficient that people would choose not to commit the crime rather than experience the punishment. The aim is to deter everyone in the community from committing offences. Some criminologists state that the number of people convicted for crime does not decrease as a result of more severe punishment and conclude that deterrence is ineffective. Other criminologists object to said conclusion, citing that while most people do not know

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1804-519: Is no sign of its use after the Peloponnesian War , when democracy was restored after the oligarchic coup of the Thirty had collapsed in 403 BC. However, while ostracism was not an active feature of the fourth-century version of democracy, it remained; the question was put to the assembly each year, but they did not wish to hold one. Ostracism was crucially different from Athenian law at

1886-424: Is not acceptable behavior, it serves the dual function of preventing vigilante justice by acknowledging public anger, while concurrently deterring future criminal activity by stigmatizing the offender. This is sometimes called the "Expressive Theory" of denunciation. The pillory was a method for carrying out public denunciation. Some critics of the education and denunciation model cite evolutionary problems with

1968-450: Is only determined after the fact by the reduction in behavior; if the offending behavior of the subject does not decrease, it is not considered punishment. There is some conflation of punishment and aversives , though an aversion that does not decrease behavior is not considered punishment in psychology. Additionally, "aversive stimulus" is a label behaviorists generally apply to negative reinforcers (as in avoidance learning), rather than

2050-591: Is seen to be threatening to the fundamental human needs of belonging , self-esteem , control and meaningful existence. Cyber- rejection (receiving "dislikes") caused more threat to the need of belonging and self-esteem, and lead to social withdrawal . Cyber-ostracism (being ignored or receiving fewer "likes") conversely lead to more prosocial behavior . Ostracism is thought to be associated with social media disorder . Williams and his colleagues have charted responses to ostracism in some five thousand cases, and found two distinctive patterns of response. The first

2132-426: Is shown by life-course studies that long sentences for burglaries amongst offenders in their late teens and early twenties fail to incapacitate when the natural reduction in offending due to ageing is taken into account: the longer the sentence, in these cases, the less the incapacitative effect. Criminal activities typically give a benefit to the offender and a loss to the victim. Punishment has been justified as

2214-622: Is typically considered only revenge or spite rather than punishment. In addition, the word "punishment" is used as a metaphor, as when a boxer experiences " punishment " during a fight. In other situations, breaking a rule may be rewarded, and so receiving such a reward naturally does not constitute punishment. Finally the condition of breaking (or breaching) the rules must be satisfied for consequences to be considered punishment. Punishments differ in their degree of severity, and may include sanctions such as reprimands , deprivations of privileges or liberty , fines, incarcerations , ostracism ,

2296-515: The council of the five hundred supervised the process while the Archontes counted the ostraka submitted and sorted the names into separate piles. The person whose pile contained the most ostraka would be banished, provided that a quorum was met. According to Plutarch , the ostracism was considered valid if the total number of votes cast was at least 6,000; according to a fragment of Philochorus , at least 6,000 votes had to be cast against

2378-422: The law —and respect for rule of law —under which the social group is governed. Punishment may be self-inflicted as with self-flagellation and mortification of the flesh in the religious setting, but is most often a form of social coercion . The unpleasant imposition may include a fine , penalty , or confinement , or be the removal or denial of something pleasant or desirable. The individual may be

2460-616: The operant conditioning category. Operant conditioning refers to learning with either punishment (often confused as negative reinforcement) or a reward that serves as a positive reinforcement of the lesson to be learned. In psychology, punishment is the reduction of a behavior via application of an unpleasant stimulus (" positive punishment") or removal of a pleasant stimulus (" negative punishment"). Extra chores or spanking are examples of positive punishment, while removing an offending student's recess or play privileges are examples of negative punishment. The definition requires that punishment

2542-441: The 19th century, punitive expeditions were used more commonly as pretexts for colonial adventures that resulted in annexations, regime changes or changes in policies of the affected state to favour one or more colonial powers . Stowell (1921) provides the following definition: When the territorial sovereign is too weak or is unwilling to enforce respect for international law, a state which is wronged may find it necessary to invade

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2624-510: The Latin name defixiones , where small dolls were wrapped in lead sheets written with curses and then buried, sometimes stuck through with nails for good measure. In one anecdote about Aristides, known as "the Just", who was ostracised in 482, an illiterate citizen, not recognising him, asked him to write the name Aristides on his ostrakon. When Aristides asked why, the man replied it was because he

2706-470: The Persians. Nearly twenty years later Hippias landed with an invasion force at Marathon. Tyranny and Persian aggression were paired threats facing the new democratic regime at Athens, and ostracism was used against both. Tyranny and democracy had arisen at Athens out of clashes between regional and factional groups organized around politicians, including Cleisthenes. As a reaction, in many of its features

2788-693: The ability to make intentional choices should instead be treasured as a source of possibilities of betterment, citing that complex cognition would have been an evolutionarily useless waste of energy if it led to justifications of fixed actions and no change as simple inability to understand arguments would have been the most thrifty protection from being misled by them if arguments were for social manipulation, and reject condemnation of people who intentionally did bad things. Punishment can be effective in stopping undesirable employee behaviors such as tardiness, absenteeism or substandard work performance. However, punishment does not necessarily cause an employee to demonstrate

2870-527: The availability of costly punishment can enhance cooperative behavior, it does not improve the group's average payoff. Additionally, there is a significant negative relationship between the overall payoff and the employment of costly punishment. Individuals who achieve the highest total payoffs generally avoid using costly punishment. This indicates that employing costly punishment in cooperative games may be disadvantageous and suggests that it may have evolved for purposes other than promoting cooperation. Achieving

2952-875: The basis for penal responsibility impossible in populations subject to such selective punishment. Certain scientists argue that this disproves the notion of humans having a biological feeling of intentional transgressions deserving to be punished. Punishments are applied for various purposes, most generally, to encourage and enforce proper behavior as defined by society or family. Criminals are punished judicially, by fines , corporal punishment or custodial sentences such as prison ; detainees risk further punishments for breaches of internal rules. Children , pupils and other trainees may be punished by their educators or instructors (mainly parents , guardians , or teachers , tutors and coaches )—see Child discipline . Slaves , domestic and other servants were subject to punishment by their masters . Employees can still be subject to

3034-537: The case of more complex brains, the notion of evolution selecting for specific punishment of intentionally chosen breaches of rules and/or wrongdoers capable of intentional choices (for example, punishing humans for murder while not punishing lethal viruses ) is subject to criticism from coevolution issues. That punishment of individuals with certain characteristics (including but, in principle, not restricted to mental abilities) selects against those characteristics, making evolution of any mental abilities considered to be

3116-483: The conclusion that a similar institution existed there as well, in spite of the silence of the ancient records on that count. A similar modern practice is the recall election , in which the electoral body removes its representation from an elected officer. Unlike under modern voting procedures, the Athenians did not have to adhere to a strict format for the inscribing of ostraka . Many extant ostraka show that it

3198-541: The democracy strove to reduce the role of factions as the focus of citizen loyalties. Ostracism may have been intended to work in the same to similar ends: by temporarily decapitating a faction, it could help defuse confrontations that threatened the order of the State. In later decades when the threat of tyranny was remote, ostracism seems to have been used to decide between radically opposed policies. For instance, in 443 BC Thucydides, son of Melesias (not to be confused with

3280-427: The efficiency of crime fighting methods are a danger of creating a reward hack that makes the least efficient criminal justice systems appear to be best at fighting crime, and that the appearance of deterrence being ineffective may be an example of this. Some punishment includes work to reform and rehabilitate the culprit so that they will not commit the offence again. This is distinguished from deterrence, in that

3362-489: The electorate—a diffuse exercise of power. By contrast, an Athenian trial needed the initiative of a particular citizen-prosecutor. While prosecution often led to a counterattack (or was a counterattack itself), no such response was possible in the case of ostracism as responsibility lay with the polity as a whole. In contrast to a trial, ostracism generally reduced political tension rather than increased it. Although ten years of exile may have been challenging for Athenians, it

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3444-425: The exact severity of punishment such as whether the sentence for murder is 40 years or life, most people still know the rough outlines such as the punishments for armed robbery or forcible rape being more severe than the punishments for driving too fast or misparking a car. These criminologists therefore argue that lack of deterring effect of increasing the sentences for already severely punished crimes say nothing about

3526-444: The few that are caught in the act are killed. This is corroborated by computer simulations proving that a few simple reactions well within mainstream views of the extremely limited intelligence of insects are sufficient to emulate the "political" behavior observed in great apes . The authors argue that this falsifies the claim that punishment evolved as a strategy to deal with individuals capable of knowing what they are doing. In

3608-426: The goal here is to change the offender's attitude to what they have done, and make them come to see that their behavior was wrong. Incapacitation as a justification of punishment refers to the offender's ability to commit further offences being removed. Imprisonment separates offenders from the community, for example, Australia was a dumping ground for early British criminals. This was their way of removing or reducing

3690-514: The harm they've done—by apologizing, returning stolen money, or community service." The restorative justice approach aims to help the offender want to avoid future offences. Punishment can be explained by positive prevention theory to use the criminal justice system to teach people what are the social norms for what is correct, and acts as a reinforcement. Punishment can serve as a means for society to publicly express denunciation of an action as being criminal. Besides educating people regarding what

3772-485: The historian of the same name ) was ostracized. He led an aristocratic opposition to Athenian imperialism and in particular to Pericles ' building program on the acropolis, which was funded by taxes created for the wars against the Achaemenid Empire . By expelling Thucydides the Athenian people sent a clear message about the direction of Athenian policy. Similar but controversial claims have been made about

3854-412: The infliction of pain , amputation and the death penalty . Corporal punishment refers to punishments in which physical pain is intended to be inflicted upon the transgressor. Punishments may be judged as fair or unfair in terms of their degree of reciprocity and proportionality to the offense. Punishment can be an integral part of socialization, and punishing unwanted behavior is often part of

3936-439: The means we choose will indeed secure them. Golash also writes about imprisonment : Imprisonment means, at minimum, the loss of liberty and autonomy, as well as many material comforts, personal security, and access to heterosexual relations. These deprivations, according to Gresham Sykes (who first identified them) "together dealt 'a profound hurt' that went to 'the very foundations of the prisoner's being. But these are only

4018-575: The minimum harms, suffered by the least vulnerable inmates in the best-run prisons. Most prisons are run badly, and in some, conditions are more squalid than in the worst of slums. In the District of Columbia jail, for example, inmates must wash their clothes and sheets in cell toilets because the laundry machines are broken. Vermin and insects infest the building, in which air vents are clogged with decades' accumulation of dust and grime. But even inmates in prisons where conditions are sanitary must still face

4100-488: The most common form of ostracism is silent treatment , wherein refusing to communicate with a person effectively ignores and excludes them. Ostracism in the context of computer networks (such as the Internet ) is termed "cyberostracism". In email communication, in particular, it is relatively easy to engage in silent treatment, in the form of "unanswered emails" or "ignored emails". Being ostracised on social media

4182-431: The name of those they wished to be ostracized to a scribe, as many of them were illiterate, and they then scratched the name on pottery shards. The shards were piled up facing down, so the votes would remain anonymous. Ostracism served as a political tool to eliminate rivals. It also helped to reflect the Athenians' belief in the importance of civic engagement and the power of collective decision making. Nine Archontes and

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4264-525: The notion that a feeling for punishment as a social signal system evolved if punishment was not effective. The critics argue that some individuals spending time and energy and taking risks in punishing others, and the possible loss of the punished group members, would have been selected against if punishment served no function other than signals that could evolve to work by less risky means. A unified theory of punishment brings together multiple penal purposes—such as retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation—in

4346-459: The numbing boredom and emptiness of prison life—a vast desert of wasted days in which little in the way of meaningful activity is possible. There are critics of punishment who argue that punishment aimed at intentional actions forces people to suppress their ability to act on intent. Advocates of this viewpoint argue that such suppression of intention causes the harmful behaviors to remain, making punishment counterproductive. These people suggest that

4428-403: The offenders ability to carry out certain crimes. The death penalty does this in a permanent (and irrevocable) way. In some societies, people who stole have been punished by having their hands amputated. Crewe however, has pointed out that for incapacitation of an offender to work, it must be the case that the offender would have committed a crime had they not been restricted in this way. Should

4510-448: The ostracism of Cimon in 461 BC. The motives of individual voting citizens cannot be known. Many of the surviving ostraka name people otherwise unattested. They may well be just someone the submitter disliked, and voted for in a moment of private spite. Some ostraka bear the word "Limos" (hunger) instead of a human name. As such, it may be seen as a secular, civic variant of Athenian curse tablets , studied in scholarly literature under

4592-407: The outcomes, as well as the initial purpose for which it was created. The first instance of people ostracized in the decade after the defeat of the first Persian invasion at Marathon in 490 BC were related or connected to the tyrant Peisistratos , who had controlled Athens for 36 years up to 527 BC. After his son Hippias was deposed with Spartan help in 510 BC, the family sought refuge with

4674-506: The people then become disgusted with ostracism and abandoned the procedure forever. In part ostracism lapsed as a procedure at the end of the fifth century because it was replaced by the graphe paranomon , a regular court action under which a much larger number of politicians might be targeted, instead of just one a year as with ostracism, and with greater severity. It may already seemed like an anachronism as factional alliances organised around important men became less significant and power

4756-484: The perceived need for retaliatory "street justice", blood feud , and vigilantism . Especially applied to minor offenses, punishment may take the form of the offender "righting the wrong", or making restitution to the victim. Community service or compensation orders are examples of this sort of penalty. In models of restorative justice , victims take an active role in a process with their offenders who are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, "to repair

4838-415: The person who was to be banished. Plutarch's evidence for a quorum of 6,000 agrees with the number required for grants of citizenship in the following century and is generally preferred. The person newly ostracized had ten days to leave the city. If he attempted to return, the penalty was death . The property of the man banished was not confiscated and there was no loss of status. After ten years, he

4920-463: The practice was not expelled until 487 BC—nearly 20 years later. Over the course of the next 60 years some 12 or more individuals followed him. The list may not be complete. The list of known ostracisms is as follows: Around 12,000 political ostraka have been excavated in the Athenian agora and in the Kerameikos . The second victim, Cleisthenes' nephew Megacles, is named by 4647 of these, but for

5002-429: The punishers. Punishment is sometimes called retaliatory or moralistic aggression ; it has been observed in all species of social animals , leading evolutionary biologists to conclude that it is an evolutionarily stable strategy , selected because it favors cooperative behavior . However, other evolutionary biologists have argued against punishment to favour cooperation. Dreber et al. demonstrate that while

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5084-481: The punishment of crimes , particularly as it applies to imprisonment, is called penology , or, often in modern texts, corrections ; in this context, the punishment process is euphemistically called "correctional process". Research into punishment often includes similar research into prevention. Justifications for punishment include retribution , deterrence , rehabilitation , and incapacitation . The last could include such measures as isolation, in order to prevent

5166-406: The putative offender not be going to commit further crimes, then they have not been incapacitated . The more heinous crimes such as murders have the lowest levels of recidivism and hence are the least likely offences to be subject to incapacitative effects. Antisocial behaviour and the like display high levels of recidivism and hence are the kind of crimes most susceptible to incapacitative effects. It

5248-436: The sick to leeches to rid them of excess blood, and put suspects to the rack and the thumbscrew in the service of truth. They schooled themselves to feel no pity—to renounce human compassion in the service of a higher end. The deliberate doing of harm in the mistaken belief that it promotes some greater good is the essence of tragedy. We would do well to ask whether the goods we seek in harming offenders are worthwhile, and whether

5330-426: The significance of the existence of punishment as a deterring factor. Some criminologists argue that increasing the sentences for crimes can cause criminal investigators to give higher priority to said crimes so that a higher percentage of those committing them are convicted for them, causing statistics to give a false appearance of such crimes increasing. These criminologists argue that the use of statistics to gauge

5412-447: The state or a potential tyrant , though in many cases popular opinion often informed the expulsion. The word " ostracism " continues to be used for various forms of shunning . The term "ostracism" is derived from the pottery shards that were used as voting tokens, called ostraka (singular: ostrakon ὄστρακον ) in Greek. Broken pottery, abundant and virtually free, served as a kind of scrap paper (in contrast to papyrus , which

5494-426: The territory and to chastise the individuals who violate its rights and threaten its security. Punish The reasoning for punishment may be to condition a child to avoid self-endangerment, to impose social conformity (in particular, in the contexts of compulsory education or military discipline ), to defend norms , to protect against future harms (in particular, those from violent crime ), and to maintain

5576-426: The time; there was no charge and no defense could be mounted by the person expelled. The two stages of the procedure ran in the reverse order from that used under almost any trial system—it is as if a jury were first asked "Do you want to find someone guilty?" , and subsequently asked "Whom do you wish to accuse?" . The judicial framework is perhaps the institution's most peculiar feature: it can take place at most once

5658-409: The vain pursuit of ends which that harm did not further, or in the successful pursuit of questionable ends. These benefactors of humanity sacrificed their fellows to appease mythical gods and tortured them to save their souls from a mythical hell, broke and bound the feet of children to promote their eventual marriageability, beat slow schoolchildren to promote learning and respect for teachers, subjected

5740-467: The wider Greek world and who, unlike genuine exiles, were able to access their income in Attica from abroad. In Plutarch , following the anti-democratic thought common in elite sources, people might be recalled early, thus being an example of the inconsistency of majoritarianism characteristic of Athenian democracy. However, ten years of exile usually resolved whatever had prompted the expulsion. Ostracism

5822-404: The wrongdoer's having contact with potential victims, or the removal of a hand in order to make theft more difficult. If only some of the conditions included in the definition of punishment are present, descriptions other than "punishment" may be considered more accurate. Inflicting something negative, or unpleasant, on a person or animal, without authority or not on the basis of a breach of rules

5904-452: Was a lenient punishment compared to the sentences that courts could impose. When dealing with politicians held to be acting against the interests of the people, Athenian juries could inflict severe penalties such as death, unpayably large fines, confiscation of property, permanent exile, or loss of citizens' rights through atimia . Further, the elite Athenians who suffered ostracism were rich or noble men who had connections or xenoi in

5986-477: Was a pragmatic measure; the concept of serving out the full sentence did not apply as it was a preventive measure, not a punitive one. An example of the practicalities of ostracism comes from the cache of 190 ostraka discovered dumped in a well next to the acropolis . From the handwriting, they appear to have been written by fourteen individuals and bear the name of Themistocles , ostracised before 471 BC, and were evidently meant for distribution to voters. This

6068-458: Was a two-stage process, 2) it was open to all Athens citizens , 3) it was overseen by outside officials, 4) must meet a specific quorum, 5) regulated penalties. The majority of citizen must come to a unified agreement to start the procedures of Ostracism. If they voted "yes", then an ostracism would be held two months later. In a section of the agora set off and suitably barriered that was called perischoinisma (περισχοίνισμα), citizens gave

6150-459: Was allowed to return without stigma. It was possible for the assembly to recall an ostracized person ahead of time; before the Persian invasion of 479 BC, an amnesty was declared under which at least two ostracised leaders— Pericles ' father, Xanthippus , and Aristides 'the Just'—are known to have returned. Similarly, Cimon , ostracised in 461 BC, was recalled during an emergency. Ostracism

6232-445: Was imported from Egypt as a high-quality writing surface, and too costly to be disposable). Each year the Athenians were asked in the assembly whether they wished to hold an ostracism. The question was put in the sixth of the ten months used for state business under the democracy (January or February in the modern Gregorian Calendar ). The process of ostracism could be divided into five elements according to Philochorus : 1) It

6314-500: Was more specifically located in the interaction of the individual speaker with the power of the assembly and the courts. The threat to the democratic system in the late fifth century came not from tyranny but from oligarchic coups, threats of which became prominent after two brief seizures of power, in 411 BC by "the Four Hundred" and in 404 BC by "the Thirty" , which were not dependent on single powerful individuals. Ostracism

6396-563: Was not an effective defence against the oligarchic threat and it was not so used. Other cities are known to have set up forms of ostracism on the Athenian model, namely Megara , Miletos , Argos and Syracuse, Sicily . In the last of these it was referred to as petalismos , because the names were written on olive leaves. Little is known about these institutions. Furthermore, pottery shards identified as ostraka have been found in Chersonesos Taurica , leading historians to

6478-457: Was not in use throughout the entire period of Athenian democracy (circa 506–322 BC), but only occurred in the fifth century BC. The standard account, found in Aristotle 's Constitution of the Athenians 22.3, attributes the establishment to Cleisthenes , a pivotal reformer in the creation of the democracy. In that case, ostracism would have been in place from around 506 BC. The first victim of

6560-406: Was not necessarily evidence of electoral fraud (being no worse than modern voting instruction cards), but their being dumped in the well may suggest that their creators wished to hide them. If so, these ostraka provide an example of organized groups attempting to influence the outcome of ostracisms. The two-month gap between the first and second phases would have allowed for such a campaign. There

6642-501: Was possible to write expletives, short epigrams or cryptic injunctions beside the name of the candidate without invalidating the vote. For example: Ostracism is evident in several animal species, as well as in modern human interactions. The social psychologist Kipling Williams defines ostracism as "any act or acts of ignoring and excluding of an individual or groups by an individual or a group" without necessarily involving "acts of verbal or physical abuse". Williams suggests that

6724-695: Was sick of hearing him being called "the Just". Perhaps merely the sense that someone had become too arrogant or prominent was enough to get someone's name onto an ostrakon. Ostracism rituals could have also been an attempt to dissuade people from covertly committing murder or assassination of intolerable or emerging individuals of power so as to create an open arena or outlet for those harbouring primal frustrations and urges or political motivations. The solution for murder, in Gregory H. Padowitz's theory, would then be "ostracism" which would ultimately be beneficial for all parties—the ostracised individual would live and get

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