The practice of publicly criticising politicians has a long history and goes back as far as ancient Athens with their ostracism. Technological advances give us the opportunity to continue this practice via social media.

What is Athenian ostracism?

Ancient Greece (circa 506-322 BC) is often described as the beginning of democracy. Once a year in January or February the Athenian assembly would be asked if they would like to hold an ostracism for the year. If a ‘yes’ vote was achieved then an ostracism would be held two months later. This two month period gave citizens the time to campaign for the ostracism of certain persons. If any one person was ostracised, they would be banished from the city for ten years.

Every adult male citizen in Athens was expected to partake in politics at some stage in their life and ostracism was one procedure that allowed the assembly to remove any person that was deemed too powerful. Slaves, freed slaves, children, women and foreign resident in Athens were excluded from the political process.

The ostracism would involve each person in the assembly scratching the name of the person they wished to exile onto a piece of broken pottery, which is the equivalent to a scrap of paper today. Those that were illiterate could use a scribe to carve the name into the pottery for them. These scribes made pre-scratched pottery available on the day of an ostracism with the names of people that others had been campaigning to banish. Citizens could just pick them up on the way into the assembly.

Each citizen that wanted to vote would then place their piece of pottery into an urn and the presiding officials would sort them into piles and count them. The ostracism was considered valid if the total number of votes cast was greater than 6,000. The person with the highest number of votes was then ordered to leave the city within ten days. There was no loss of honour or status, the ostracised did not have their property confiscated and could return after their ten year period of exile ended.

What was the purpose?

Athenians view ostracism as a precaution against tyranny and the danger of individual politicians that gained too much power. In their Precautionary Constitutionalism in Ancient Athens paper Adrian Vermeule and Adriaan Lanni from Harvard Law School write:

Aristotle’s Constitution of the Athenians reports that Cleisthenes introduced ostracism as a measure against tyranny, and, in particular, to prevent Hipparchus from reinstating the Peisistratid tyranny. In the Politics, Aristotle similarly describes ostracism as a mechanism for preventing any citizen from amassing too much power. One scholar has suggested that the primary appeal of ostracism over, for example, Solon’s anti-tyranny law, was its precautionary nature: tyranny is a crime “which should be prevented rather than punished,” and ostracism permitted the removal of dangerous individuals before they became so powerful as to be beyond the reach of a tyranny prosecution. It seems clear that ostracism was adopted not because it was viewed as an optimal institution—in fact, since no trial was held it clearly introduced a risk that the state would lose some of its most talented leaders for no reason—but as a precaution against the very real risk of a return to tyranny.

This practice wasn’t without fault. Ostracism was also used as a tactic by powerful politicians to banish their rivals from the city and thereby concentrate power within themselves.

Did ostracism apply to private people?

The ancient Greek word for private person is idiotias meaning “our idiot” and was a person not involved with public affairs. There was no real way to opt out of Athenian society. Citizens were expected to take part in society and prove themselves worthy in everything that they did. Everything was a competition.

How does social media compare to Athenian ostracism?

Social media is a place where citizens can have a direct say about how they feel about our leaders. Similar to the old practice of scratching a name of a disliked person into a piece of pottery, people can now type a name and comment within 140 characters into twitter.

The fact is that we can’t actually exile our politicians from the land these days, so the actual ostracism is being voted out of office. As such making a post on twitter may be similar to placing a piece of pottery in the urn, one chip at a time.

Another similarity is that Athenian ostracism and today’s social media are both somewhat anonymous. Most votes within the Athenian assembly were by a show of hands, but placing a chip of pottery into an urn full of other pieces of broken pottery was fairly anonymous. Today, anyone can sign up to twitter or facebook using an avatar making them anonymous.

The competitive nature of social media is something that is also comparable to ancient Athens. Social media users are always attempting to come up with the funniest (or sometimes nastiest) comment to gain the most views.

CEFA has been monitoring one of the most popular Australians hashtags #AusPol for several years and it is a place where people can express their unedited views about politicians and receive a huge audience. The commenters can also spur on others, perhaps similarly to the two month campaigning period before an ostracism in ancient Athens.

Direct communication with an audience

Ancient Athens was a direct democracy where any citizen could jump into a debate at the assembly. They were guaranteed to have their opinion heard by the rest of the citizens at the assembly.

One of the advantages of social media is that citizens today have a direct voice to the public and social media platforms have a huge audience for people to have their opinions heard. However, vitriolic hate campaigns against individual politicians can and do get out of hand at times.

Whatever your opinion on social media, it does give citizens an outlet to have their say. Here at CEFA we strive for non-partisan education. However, most Constitutional debates do require robust opinions from the citizens of Australia in the lead up to legislation by our Parliament. We can become informed voters through listening and sharing on social media. You can check out some of CEFA’s social media and have your say on facebook or twitter.

Photo attributed to Roy Blumenthal