Natalie Haynes

Natalie Haynes Instagram – Election day! At least, it is where I live.
And an opportunity to remember that people haven’t always voted FOR politicians; in 5th century BCE Athens, men (citizenship was restricted to adult male Athenians), could also vote AGAINST politicians or other noteworthy people. So if someone annoyed you, you could scratch his name onto a sherd of pottery (the Greek word for this is ostrakon – which is where our word ostracism comes from), and whoever got the most votes could be booted out of Athens for 10 years. There were some safeguards – a quorum of 6000 voters had to be present.
But the system was set up to prevent demagoguery – as a general rule, anyone who has a high enough profile to affect democractic votes will also antagonise enough people to be at risk of ostracism. So unless your policies had a good impact quickly, you might be out on your ear.
Here we can see lots of ostraka with names scratched on: Themistocles, Aristeides, Hippocrates and more.
I often find myself thinking that ostracism would be a good custom to revive, since it would really separate the popular politician from the ones who just shout culture war slogans.
Happy voting! | Posted on 02/May/2024 16:15:28