The reader of this book may notice that it dedicates relatively little space to the well-known tools of Athenian ostracism: the ostraka, or ceramic sherds, on which the Athenians scratched names of unpopular, or perhaps too popular, politicians. This is because the idea of this book originates in the conviction that previous explanations of the mechanisms and genesis of the Athenian ostracism are not sufficient and that there are still many questions about ostracism to which no satisfactory answers, or indeed answers of any sort, have been provided. This standstill seems natural, given that scholars of Athenian democracy had long been awaiting, with ever-increasing appetite, a full scholarly publication of the largest collection of the Athenian ostraka: the sherds from the Kerameikos.
