Sphinx

Wouldn’t it improve British politics (and probably the politics of many other Western democracies) enormously if we reintroduced the Athenian practice of ostracism – holding a vote to decide which disruptive and problematic individual should be packed off into exile for ten years? Actually my reaction when this was raised casually in a Facebook discussion this morning was: no, I can’t think of anything about this that isn’t deeply problematic – but, at the risk of using a sledgehammer to crack the proverbial nut, and not at all because I’m procrastinating about writing a lecture and revising a chapter, the reasons why it wouldn’t work are worth a brief discussion…

(1) Most of what we hear about it in ancient sources suggests that it didn’t work then. Okay, it depends how you define ‘work’ – maybe it did add to the gaiety of the polis – but if we take the conventional view that ostracism was intended either to break a deadlock between two powerful politicians before it degenerated into outright factionalism or to get rid of people suspected of plotting a tyranny, then we hear of only a couple of (possibly, keeping in mind source issues) successful examples, and various anecdotes about how it could be manipulated (most obviously, Nicias and Alcibiades combining to ensure that Hyperbolus was ostracised instead of either of them) or deeply frivolous (the well-known story of someone voting to ostracise Aristides because they were sick of hearing him referred to as ‘the Just’). We could expect a modern ostracism to be at least as frivolous and manipulated, driven by the agenda of the tabloids and the echo chambers of social media. The idea of getting shot of Nigel Farage may be very appealing, but it’s at least as likely that we’d end up losing Caroline Lucas.

(2) In fifth-century Athens, exile meant exile: of course the man in question could continue to communicate with his friends and allies by letter, but that was slow – and the exercise of serious political influence in anything other than exceptional circumstances (Alcibiades in exile is the obvious case) depended on presence, in the assembly and the agora, giving speeches and engaging with people. We have numerous technological means whereby Piers Morgan is out of the country and still seems to be in urgent need of ostracism; ditto Farage. Maybe we could apply this on a smaller scale to appearances on the BBC – but again, the risk of losing voices that speak against the dominance of the majority is considerable.

(3) Athenian politics was a very small world in comparison to ours; this isn’t an issue of voting technology, but rather of the idea that removing one individual could make a significant different to the general political discourse and behaviour. Perhaps a yearning for ostracism is also a yearning for a simpler world in which the fundamental divisions of Brexit – a collapse into factionalism if ever there was one – could be resolved by exiling Farage or Johnson or May, in the way that exiling either Nicias or Alcibiades would perhaps have given Athens a clearer sense of direction. But Thucydides makes it clear that events then were driven by greater forces than a couple of individual politicians; they were figureheads and representatives as much as actors, and that is still more true for today’s crowd. May acts the way she does partly because of the knowledge that there are plenty of colleagues waiting behind her for their chance; and the moment you try to think of the identity of the Chief Remoaner, the man whose exile would decapitate the whole resistance movement, the absurdity of the idea becomes clear. Tim Farron? A.C. Grayling?

Of course, there is probably a better case that ostracism may be effective in a smaller-scale context where individual personalities do carry greater weight; in an office or department, for example, or as an answer to the ongoing agony of the Labour Party…