Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

OSTRACISM-DEMOCRACY AND ENVY IN ANCIENT GREECE 247
Ostracism-democracy and envy in ancient Greece
To Svend Ranulf, the Danish sociologist and philologist, we owe the
most thorough investigations of the social history of envy in ancient
Athens. A central theme of his study is ostracism, a practice introduced
into Athens in the period following the battle of Marathon. This was a
measure which enabled the people-at least six thousand citizens-to
send any unpopular person into exile for ten years. From a legal standpoint
ostracism, so called from the potsherd used to record each vote
(ostrakon = a shell or potsherd), is a monstrous proceeding: it is a
punishment that is preceded neither by a crime nor by the formal passing
of sentence. Ranulf, however, regards this procedure as being completely
in accord with the Athenian mentality of the first half of the fifth century
B.C.:
For the edification of men, the gods, impelled by caprice or envy, bring
down disaster and sufferings not only upon offenders and their race, but
also upon perfectly innocent people. Men themselves as well as gods punish
offenders. It may, then, perhaps seem quite natural that men should also,
like the gods, occasionally vent their envy or their caprices on the innocent,
and that they should introduce Ostracism as an established official form in
which pious envy and arbitrariness could manifest themselves. 17
Ranulf compares this with the practices of the democratic citizens of
present-day republics and considers that this kind of ingratitude nourished
on envy and felt towards outstanding statesmen and generals is no
longer prevalent in the twentieth century. He cites examples of victorious
generals who are later called to fill the highest civil offices of state.
We can now supplement his list with the name of Eisenhower, although
this should immediately be balanced by recalling the fate of Winston
Churchill, whose electoral defeat in 1945 was interpreted by many
people as a reaction based on resentment, as fear of the wartime premier
who had acquired too much power. De Gaulle suffered a similar fate in
1946. In a way, too, the application of the American anti-trust laws
resembles the principle of Athenian ostracism. The anti-trust actions
17 Svend Ranulf, The Jealousy of the Gods and Criminal Law at Athens. A Contribution
to the Sociology of Moral Indignation, Vol. 1, London and Copenhagen,
1933, p. 133.