Scanned text contains errors.
from other authorities in stating, that for an expulsion of this sort it was not necessary that the votes given against any individual should amount to 6000, but only that the sum total should not be less than that number. Bockh and Wachsmuth are in favour of Plutarch ; but Mr. Grote, who supports the other opinion, justly remarks, " that the purpose of the general law would by no means be obtained, if the simple majority of votes among 6000 in all, had been allowed to take effect. A person might then be ostracised with a very small number of votes against him, and without creating any reasonable presumption that he was dangerous to the constitution, which was by no means either the purpose of Cleisthenes, or the well-understood operation of the ostracism, so long as it continued to be a reality." All, however, agree that the party thus expelled was not deprived of his property. The period of his banishment was ten years. The ostracism was also called the KepauiKT] /^a<fn£, or earthenware scourge, from the material of the offrpaKov on which the names were written.
Some of the most distinguished men at Athens were removed by ostracism, but recalled when the city found their services indispensable. Amongst these were Themistocles, Aristeides, Cimon, and Alcibiades ; of the first of whom Thucydides (i. 135) states, that his residence during ostracism was at Argos, though he was not confined to that city, but visited other parts of Peloponnesus. The last person against whom it was used at Athens was H3rperbolus, a demagogue of low birth and character, whom Nicias and Alcibiades conspired together to ostracise, when the banishment threatened each of themselves; but the Athenians thought their own dignity compromised, and ostracism degraded by such an application of it, and accordingly discontinued the practice. (Pint. Nic. c. 11, Alcib. c. 13, Arist. c. 7 ; Thuc. viii. 73.)
Ostracism prevailed in other democratical states as well as Athens ; namely, at Argos, Miletus, and Megara, but we have no particulars of the way in which it was administered in those states. Aristotle says (Pol. iii. 8) that it was abused for party purposes.
From the ostracism of Athens was copied the Petalism (TrsTaXicr^s’) of the Syracusans, so called from the 7reVaA.a, or leaves of the olive, on which was written the name of the person whom they wished to remove from the city. The removal, however, was only for five years ; a sufficient time, as they thought, to humble the pride and hopes of the exile. But petalism did not last long ; for the fear of this " humbling," deterred the best qualified amongst the citizens from taking any part in public affairs, and the degeneracy and bad government which followed, soon led to a repeal of the law b. c. 452. (Diod. xi. 87.)
In connection with petalism it may be remarked that if any one were falsely registered in a demus, or ward, at Athens, his expulsion was called 6/c^uAo^opta, from the votes being given by leaves. (Meier, His. Juris. Att. 83; Lys. c. Nicom. p. 844.)
The reader of Greek history will remember, that besides those exiled by law, or ostracised, there was frequently a great number of political exiles in Greece ; men who, having distinguished themselves as the leaders of one party, were expelled, or obliged to remove, from their native city when the opposite faction became predominant. They are spoken of as ol (pevyovres, or ol e/c7re(TcWe£, and us oi.
EXSILIUM. 5] 5
after their return (rj wafloSos), the word being applied to those who were instru mental in effecting it. [R. W.J
2. roman. In the later imperial period, exsi-Hum was a general term used to express a punishment, of which there were several species. Paulus (Dig. 48. tit. 1. s. 2), when speaking of those judicia publica, which are capitalia, defines them by the consequent punishment, which is death, or exsilium; and exsilium he defines to be aquae et ignis interdictio, by which the caput or citizenship of the criminal was taken away. Other kinds of exsilium he says were properly called relegatio, and the relegatus retained his citizenship. The distinction between relegatio and exsilium existed under the republic. (Liv. iii. 10, iv. 4 ; Cic. Pro P. Scxt. c. 12.) Ovid also (Trist. v. 11) describes himself, not as-exsul, which he considers a term of reproach, but as relegatus. Speaking of the emperor, he says,—
" Nee vitam, nee opes, nee jus mini civis ademit;" and a little further on,
" Nil nisi me patriis jussit abire focis. "• Compare also Tristia, ii. 127, &c.
Marcianus ( Dig. 48. tit. 22. s. 5) makes three divisions of exsilium: it was either an interdiction from certain places named, and was then called lata fuga, (a term equivalent to the liber a fuga or liberum exsilium of some writers) ; or it was an interdiction of all places, except some place named ; or it was the constraint of an island (as opposed to lata fuga).*
Of relegatio there were two kinds: a person might be forbidden to live in a particular province, or in Rome, and either for an indefinite or a definite time; or an island might be assigned to the relegatus for his residence. Relegatio was not followed by loss of citizenship or property, except so far as the sentence of relegatio might extend to part of the person’s property. The relegatus retained his citizenship, the ownership of his property, and ihe.patria potestas, whether the relegatio was for a definite or an indefinite time. The relegatio, in fact, merely confined the person within, or excluded him from, particular places, which is according to the definition of Aelius Gallus (Festus, s. Rele-gat-i), who says that the punishment was imposed by a lex, senatus–consultum, or the edictum of a magistratus. The words of Ovid express the legal effect of relegatio in a manner literally and techni-
* Noodt (Op. Omn. i. 58) corrects the extract from Marcianus thus : —" Exsiliuni duplex est: aut certorum locorum interdictio, ut lata fuga ; aut omnium locorum praeter certuni locum, ut insulae vinculum," &c.
The passage is evidently corrupt in some editions of the Digest, and the correction of Noodt is supported by good reasons. It seems that Marcian is here speaking of the two kinds of relegatio (compare Ulpian, Dig. 48. tit. 22. s. 7), and he does not include the exsilium, which was accompanied with the loss of the civitas; for if his definition is intended to include all the kinds of exsilium, it is manifestly incomplete ; and if it includes only relegatio, as it must do from the terms of it, the definition is wrong, inasmuch as there are only two kinds of relegatio. The conclusion is, that the text of Marcianus is either corrupt, or has altered by the compilers of the Digest.
LL 2
