e, that, by determining and judging all matters
privately, he had destroyed the courts of judicature, and was secretly
making way for a monarchy in his own person, without the assistance
of guards. Moreover, the spirit of the people, now grown high, and
confident with their late victory, naturally entertained feelings of
dislike to all of more than common fame and reputation. Coming together,
therefore, from all parts into the city, they banished Aristides by the
ostracism, giving their jealousy of his reputation the name of fear of
tyranny. For ostracism was not the punishment of any criminal act,
but was speciously said to be the mere depression and humiliation of
excessive greatness and power; and was in fact a gentle relief and
mitigation of envious feeling, which was thus allowed to vent itself
in inflicting no intolerable injury, only a ten years' banishment.
But after it came be exercised upon base and villainous fellows, they
desisted from it; Hyperbolus, being the last whom they banished by the
ostracism.

The cause of Hyperbolus's banishment is said to have been this.
Alcibiades and Nicias, men that bore the greatest sway in the city, were
of different factions. As the people, therefore, were about to vote the
ostracism, and obviously to decree it against one of them, consulting
together and uniting their parties, they contrived the banishment of
Hyperbolus. Upon which the people, being offended, as if some contempt
or affront was put upon the thing, left off and quite abolished it.
It was performed, to be short, in this manner. Every one taking an
ostracon, that is, a sherd, a piece of earthenware, wrote upon it the
citizen's he would have banished, and carried it to a certain part of
the market-place surrounded with wooden rails. First, the magistrates
numbered all the sherds in gross (for if there were less than six
thousand, the ostracism was imperfect); then, laying every name by
itself, they pronounced him whose name was written by the largest
number, banished for ten years, with the enjoyment of his estate. As,
therefore, they were writing the names on the sherds, it is reported
that an illiterate clownish fellow, giving Aristides his sherd,
supposing him a common citizen, begged him write Aristides upon it; and
he being surprised and asking if Aristides had ever done him any injury,
"None at all," said he, "neither know I the man; but I am tired of
hearing him everywhere called the Just." Aristides, he