A few years after the glorious Athenian victory over the invading Persians at Marathon (490 BC), the young Pericles – perhaps in his early to mid-teens – learned that the Athenians had voted to ostracize his father, Xanthippus (485/4). Such a vote meant that his father, and undoubtedly Pericles and his mother, would have to leave their home and remain outside of Athens and Attica for the next ten years. Between 485/4 and 481/0, when the Athenians recalled those who had been ostracized, Xanthippus and his family lived as exiles in parts unknown.

We should recall that it was not “the government” that forced Xanthippus to flee his homeland. Athenian ostracism occurred because a majority of the regular Athenian citizens meeting in a special assembly voted that an individual should be forced to leave. The Athenians voting in favor of ostracism needed no reason for the expulsion beyond suspicion, jealousy, or mere distaste. At this assembly each Athenian wrote a name on an ostrakon (the piece of broken pottery that gives ostracism its name: see Figure III), and occasionally the voters would add a word or two to suggest their personal motivation for the expulsion (“the accursed,” “the Mede,” etc.).