#aristeides

Disclaimer: I am not saying I'm an expert, most of the information here are plain Wikipedia searches + stuff I remember from school + plus information that may or may not be true from Tumblr/instagram/YouTube. There are nine results.

So a interesting thing about ancient athens is the idea of the ostracism. We have multiple sources for the ostracism, similar processes in other Polei and quite a bunch of archeological findings too (well known are the ostraka of the kerameikos). The Ostracism was basically a democratic election, that could be held yearly to banish a person for 10 years from returning to athens (this is quite the shortend version of how that all worked, perhaps in the future I will explain it in detail). Democratic meaning, that only free man over a certain age could vote (it is still 5th century athens, so not quite the most woman friendly society)

Anyways one of my Favourite anekdotes (and probably the best known one, as well as a reason for me to write this) about the system of ostracism is that of how Aristeides got ostracised (recounted in this case as in Plut. Arist. 7.5/7.6). Basically the Athenian citizens came together to decide who to ostracise and an illiterate fellow came to aristeides, whom he did not know to ask him to write the name of Aristeides on an ostraka. Aristeides asked why and the citizen answered because he just didnt like the nickname of Aristeides: "the just".

There is a differing account by C. Nepo, in which the citizen is literate (plays a bigger role in the scientific discussions about the literacy of the commoners in 5th century athens), but it plays out in a similar fashion. Also it has to be considered, that Plutarch tried to focus the good of Aristeides in his anecdote. He was playing to the topos of an exemplum by appealing to the honour of Aristeides so readers would follow his example.