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SUMMARY: The ostracism of Hyperboles, a ponêros and sykophant, realized a comic plot, bordered on pharmakos ritual, and inaugurated a period of increasingly violent stasis between chrêstoi and ponêroi that included the affairs of the Hermai and the Mysteries and the oligarchic takeovers of 411 and 404. The stasis ends with the labels ponêros and chrêstos negotiable. Over the next two generations, citizens of Hyperbolos' profile attained hegemony in Athenian society and the dikasterion evolved as the authoritative venue for the allocation of the labels. This marks the moment when ostracism is an institutional relic. This is the second and final part of a paper whose first part appeared in TAPA 134.1 (2004).
Before the mutilation of the Hermai and reports of the performance of the Mysteries in private homes, Alkibiades withstood charges of tyrannical ambition, and the demos did not act on its suspicions of the chrêstoi. The ostracism of Hyperbolos had anointed Alkibiades, nephew and ward of Perikles, Perikles' political heir, and he was entrusted to expand the empire to Sicily, Southern Italy, and Carthage-the vision, perhaps, of Kleon and Hyperbolos (e.g., Ar. Eq. 1084-89,1300-15). Alkibiades was the chrêsfos whose words and actions fulfilled the demos' fantasies of itself, "speaking like a demagogue but acting like a tyrant" ([And.] 4.27).4
The symbolic power of Alkibiades' four-horse chariot victory at Olympia was irresistible. Spartans dominated the event, winning seven of the previous eight contests from 448 to 420.5 Alkibiades' triumph presaged Athenian victory over Sparta. Nor could there have been a more auspicious prelude to an invasion of Sicily-whose tyrants loomed large in the epinician tradition (cf. E. Tr. 220-23; Plut. Them. 25.1)-than the most magnificent Olympic victory ever staged.6 In 415, the city's desire for archê was vested in Alkibiades, just as he would be the agent of sôtêria in 411 (Th. 8.53, 76.7, 81.1), 407 (X. HG 1.4.20), and 405 (Ar. Ra. 1418-32).7
Reports that the Spartans were at the Isthmos (Th. 6.61.2) and that Alkibiades' associates in Argos were thought to be plotting against the democracy there (6.61.3; D.S. 13.5.1) also damaged him, enabling his enemies to cast suspicion upon him from all sides (Th. 6.61.4). Moreover, Thucydides claims the demos now knew by oral report that neither it nor...