4. The research novelty of the monograph is defined by the following circumstances:
— it is the first in Russian literature and one of very few in world literature (after a break of several decades) comprehensive and full-scale study of ostracism. The history of the institution is investigated on up-to-date level, in detail and in the whole complex of all aspects;
— the author draws intensely not only data of narrative tradition, but also material of ostraka, which is only presently beginning to be introduced into scholarly circulation on a large scale. Accordingly, ancient historians have almost not yet used that material;
— the author attempts to reconstruct as fully as possible the chronological sequence of events connected with the history of Athenian ostracism;
— the author suggests new interpretations and solutions for a number of problems: historical roots of Athenian ostracism, its chronological and substantial relation to analogous procedures in other Greek cities, reconstruction of wording in the law that introduced ostracism, means of political propaganda during the periods of ostracism, the dates of some ostrakophoriai, factors that favoured cessation of ostracism.
Therefore, both statement of questions and principal conclusions are new in scholarly respect.
5. The monograph consists of the introduction, surveys of sources and literature on ostracism, five chapters that are subdivided into sections, the conclusion, six appendices (three textual excurses, collection of narrative testimonies on ostracism in Russian translation, statistical catalogue of ostraka, and chronological table), bibliography and a list of abbreviations.
In the Introduction the author grounds the choice of the research theme and its importance, emphasizes the subject, purposes and tasks of the study, its structure and methodological base. In addition, a preliminary working definition of ostracism is given.
6. Then there follows a section on «Source base of the study». First, the narrative tradition on ostracism is considered. This tradition (ancient and continuing it Byzantine) may be characterized in the following way. The source complex in question is very extensive in all respects: chronological (it embraces texts from 5 century B.C. to 15 century A.D., that is, stretches for two millenniums), genre and thematic (we have works of historians, philosophers, philologists, orators, poets, dramatists, on the whole representatives of virtually all genres of ancient literature), and, what is especially significant, in substantial respect: it treats in one or another degree of most key problems of ostracism history.
We included 181 texts by 68 writers in the collection of testimonies that is supplemented to the book. Naturally, among numerous authors who refer to ostracism there are the most important ones: they preserved particularly valuable information. Of the Classical Greek writers, historians Herodotus, Thucydides, Androtion and Theopompus, playwrights Aristophanes and Plato, the orator Andocides, philosophers Aristotle and Theophrastus should be mentioned; of the Hellenistic and Roman ones — historians Philochorus and Diodorus, biographers Nepos and Plutarch, lexicographers Pollux, Harpocration and others. Among the latest sources, belonging to Late Antiquity and Byzantine times, we should mention anonymous scholiasts and authors of glossaries (Hesychius, the patriarch Photius, the Suda and others), who rest upon works of earlier writers that are by now lost.
So narrative sources in our possession are representative for the range of problems we are dealing with. They allow to exercise a full-scale investigation and to come to responsible and reasoned conclusions. At the same time, the complex of those sources is not boundless, and there is in fact no hope of any considerable increase. However, this circumstance can be also added to positive factors that favour successful work. Of course, it is a pity that much is lost, but now we have a clearly outlined circle of testimonies, and this allows not to "sink" in an immense sea of facts and opinions.
On the other hand, there are factors that impede research. Fragmentary character of the tradition on ostracism should be mentioned. Unfortunately, that tradition came to us by no means in all its links, and it has many gaps. In the present condition of sources, we cannot draw full and comprehensive picture of haw Greek notions about ostracism were developing. On some details of ostracism history we have no or almost no information; on others we have some information, but it is too general and scanty; on still others information in our possession does not seem to be quite authentic. Therefore, we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that on some aspects of our topic only hypothetical judgments are possible, which do not claim to be final and unreserved and which may always be questioned. Fortunately, it does not apply to most important and fundamental aspects of ostracism, its essence, functioning and evolution; such aspects are elucidated by tradition, as a rule, more or less sufficiently.
Each one who studies ostracism deals inevitably with the problem of reasoned making into mutual agreement of contradicting testimonies. Among them are, inter alia, disagreement between Androtion and Aristotle on the problem of the date ostracism was introduced, between Philochorus and Plutarch about the meaning of number 6000 as applied to ostracism, and so on. At the present stage the task is, as far as we can judge, not so much statement of one writers' error and the other's rightness (in a lot of cases we simply have yet no possibility to estimate who is right and who is wrong), as exposing causes of disagreement, tracing the tradition under this or that evidence, if possible up to its origins. The task is certainly difficult but not always impossible to carry out, and in virtually any case such an approach leads to definite positive results.
While studying ostracism, such methods must prove to be most efficient, which are connected with complex and synthetic use of all source types in order to reconstruct integral and non-contradictory picture of events. In particular, extremely important for supplementing and correcting data of narrative tradition is analysis of other source material. We turn now to describing the latter, and first of all we should emphasize that the most significant of non-narrative sources are certainly ostraka, inscribed sherds used by Athenian citizens for voting at ostracisms.
At present more than 10000 ostraka have been discovered, although far from all of them have been properly published. Those ballots belong in all respects to most valuable sources on the theme we deal with. Information that is obtained through studying them can and must be drawn intensely and on the full scale in the course of consideration and solution of all problems relating to ostracism, as this information verifies, supplements and often corrects evidences of written tradition. Ostraka are especially useful for investigating such questions as prosopography of Athenians ostracized, means of political struggle and political propaganda at the time of ostracisms.
At the same time, when using ostraka as a source, some cautions are necessary. One should be conscious of difficulties and not yet solved (or unsolvable in principle) problems raised by that artifacts. We mean chiefly difficulties of chronological character, as for a number of reasons (first of all for insufficient clearness and reliability of applied dating criteria — archeological, paleographical, etc.) the date of many ostraka is inexact or debatable.
7. There follows the «Survey of historiography». Research works devoted specially to ostracism started to appear already in the last half of the 19 century (K. Lugebil, I. M. J. Valeton, A. Martin). In the first half of the next century several fundamental monographs on ostracism were published (J. Carcopino, A. Calderini), although by the present time they should be considered in some measure outdated. The reason lies not in shortcomings of those books, which were for their time important steps forward, but in the fact that new huge source material has appeared since their publication. We mean discoveries of ostraka that increased very much our knowledge of ostracism and must not now remain unconsidered. During last several decades almost no comprehensive monographic studies of ostracism appeared. The book by E. Vanderpool (1970) is rather popular, the monograph by R. Thomsen (1972) deals with only one specific problem (the origin of ostracism), and the book by M. Lang (1990) is not an investigation but a publication of ostraka from the Athenian Agora. As regards the most recent monograph by S. Brenne (2001), although its title includes the word «ostracism» the book in fact deals with another circle of problems (prosopography and onomastics). None of the above-mentioned books, notwithstanding all their merits, can be named a synthetic study of ostracism, a kind of new «landmark» in investigating that institution.
Presently the study of ostracism in world scholarly literature is developing in several main directions: publishing ostraka from Athens (E. Vanderpool, D. J. Phillips, M. Lang, F. Willemsen, S. Brenne, G. Nemeth, J. McK. Camp); scrupulous analysis of narrative tradition on ostracism, attempts to solve contradictions among different ancient writers (R. Werner, A. E. Raubitschek, J. J. Keaney, R. Develin, К. H. Kinzl, and, most recently and profoundly, the volume «Ostrakismos-Testimonien I», 2002, prepared by a group of Austrian and German scholars under the guidance of P. Siewert); studies of individual ostracisms, their chronology and historical context (L. Piccirilli, P. Krentz, G.A. Lehmann, B. M. Lavelle, К. H. Kinzl, P. J. Rhodes); efforts to define the place of ostracism in the system of Athenian democracy and in the public life of classical Athens (A. E. Raubitschek, D. Kagan, C. Mossé, L. G. H. Hall, P. Siewert, H. B. Mattingly, M. R. Christ, D. C. Mirhady). In virtually all of these directions significant achievements have been reached; all the more urgent a new general and comprehensive monograph on ostracism appears to be. The aim of the present book is to fill that gap.