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ostracism
Sign in to saveOstracism (, 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 as a way of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to the state or a potential tyrant. The word ostracism continues to be used for various forms of shunning.
Ostracism was an ancient Athenian practice that allowed citizens to vote to expel someone from the city for ten years, either as punishment for wrongdoing or as a preventive measure against potential threats to the state. The term is still used today to describe any form of social exclusion or shunning.
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16 sectionsContents
- Procedure
- History
- Distinction from other Athenian democratic processes
- Purpose
- Fall into disuse
- Analogues
- Modern usage
- Computer networks
- Reactions
- Age
- Whistleblowing
- Ghahr and Âshti
- See also
- Notes
- References
- External links
Ostracism (, 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 as a way of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to the state or a potential tyrant. The word ostracism continues to be used for various forms of shunning.
==Procedure== The term ostracism is derived from the pottery shards that were used as voting tokens, called ostraka (singular: ostrakon; ) in Greek. Broken pottery, abundant and virtually free, served as a kind of scrap paper (in contrast to papyrus, which was imported from Egypt as a high-quality writing surface, and too costly to be disposable).