This remarkable distinction aroused envy against Aristeides and it is reported that Themistocles circulated a rumor that by determining and judging causes in private, he was undermining the courts of judicature and was secretly making way for a monarchy in his own person, so the jealousies of the populace were so aroused against him that it was decided to recall this upright judge. Plutarch relates the pathetic circumstance, connected with the degradation and ostracism of this Just Judge, that while the voting was taking place, in the railed market-place, Aristeides was approached by an illiterate citizen, who handed him his _ostracon_, or sherd and directed him to write his own name upon the shell. Without disclosing his identity, Aristeides asked the man if the Judge had ever done him any injury, when the voter replied: “None at all, neither know I the man; but I am tired of hearing him everywhere called _The Just_.”[22] Aristeides made no reply to the man, but wrote as he directed and returned the sherd to him, with his name written upon it. The six thousand votes, necessary to procure his removal, or recall, having been polled, he departed from his beloved Athens, praying, with uplifted hands, that the Athenians might never have occasion to remember Aristeides.[23] The ostracism of Aristeides did not last for the ten years, for which his punishment was decreed, under the Grecian law, however, for three years later, when the Persian king, Xerxes, invaded Greece, Aristeides returned and when the Persians were overcome he was completely reinstated in the good graces of his countrymen and took a leading part in the affairs of the government of Athens, without resentment, for he sought no other gratification than that of serving his country with fidelity and honour. Themistocles was another of the great citizen jurists of Athens to suffer the recall or ostracism, by popular vote, while this ancient law obtained in Greece. As an index to the character and uprightness of this distinguished Athenian, it is reported that before entering upon the trial of a cause in which the poet Simonides, of Ceos, was interested, when requested, by his friend, to overlook the underlying principles of the law, in the consideration of the cause, this virtuous judge replied: “Simonides, you would be a bad poet, if your lines ran counter to the just measure and rules of your art, nor should I be a good magistrate, if, for favor, I made false law.”[24]