The So-Called “Buleutic Ostracism” and the Ekphyllophoria: Vaticanus Graecus 1144 and Other Late Byzantine Nonsensical Reports on the Athenian Ostracism

Abstract

In 1894, Leon Sternbach (1864-1940) published the editio princeps of the concluding part of the fifteenth-century Byzantine manuscript known as Vaticanus Graecus 1144 (ff. 215v-225v), which contains an interesting collection of excerpts. Excerptum 213 reached the wider scholarly world only after being reprinted and interpreted in 1972 by John J. Keaney and Antony E. Raubitschek. Ever since the Vaticanus has occupied a very special place in scholarly debates about the law of ostracism in Athens, and it seems that in recent decades some scholars tend to take it as somehow trustworthy and hence attesting the existence of a law or custom predating the attested law of ostracism. Accordingly, the notion of the so-called “bouleutic ostracism” has become increasingly popular. On this theory, Athenian ostracism was originally voted on by the Boule and only later transferred to the Athenian people at large. In my paper, I intend to show that Excerptum no. 213 on ostracism is a worthless (albeit highly interesting) mix of known pieces of information from other Roman and Byzantine sources and that it was conceived at some point in late Byzantine scholarship by misinterpreting, ingeniously manipulating, or conflating, well-known elements of the ancient lexicographical traditions. If I am right, the phantom of the “buleutic ostracism” should be laid to rest.