Hyperbŏlus
(
Ὑπέρβολος). An Athenian demagogue in the Peloponnesian
War, of servile origin. In order to get rid of either Nicias or Alcibiades, Hyperbolus called
for the exercise of the ostracism. But the parties endangered combined to defeat him, and the
vote of exile fell on Hyperbolus himself—an application of that dignified punishment
by which it was thought to have been so debased that the use of it was never recurred to. Some
years afterwards he was murdered by the oligarchs at Samos, B.C. 411 (
Thuc.viii. 74).