ABSTRACT
Although tyranny existed throughout Greek history from the middle of the seventh century to the second century, ‘the age of tyrants’ is a term used by modern historians to refer to a period of time when many of the leading Greek cities were ruled by a tyrant, beginning with Cypselus of Corinth around 650 and ending with the fall of Peisistratus’ sons at Athens in 510. This ‘age of tyrants’ was a transitional stage in the political development of the ‘polis’, bringing to an end the old aristocratic order and laying down the foundations for the middle-class, hoplite-dominated constitutions that followed the collapse of tyranny. A Greek tyrant was not necessarily a brutal ruler, as the modern sense of the word would suggest, but an individual who had seized power, usually through a military coup, and ruled as an autocrat outside the institutions of the state. The first generation of tyrants for the most part was noted for the mildness of their rule, as they depended upon the goodwill of the people to maintain their position; it was usually the second generation (most tyrannies only lasted for two generations) that showed all the hallmarks of the traditional wicked tyrant, leading to their overthrow. The major difficulty in assessing the causes of tyranny arises from the
problems of the available primary sources. The most detailed evidence for the rule of individual tyrants comes from Herodotus, whose history was written probably in the third quarter of the fifth century (450-425) and reflects the oral tradition about the tyrants that was current in the fifth century. His account of the rule of the later tyrants, such as the Athenian Peisistratids who fell in 510, is for the most part reliable, as Herodotus’ birth (traditionally given as 484) was close to the events that he describes; but there are inevitably distortions, exaggeration and even a ‘fairy-tale’ style about the earlier tyrants, such as Cypselus who seized power around 650. Thucydides’ theme was the Peloponnesian War and consequently his account of early Greek history is brief and superficial. The main history of this period was written by Ephorus of Cyme around the middle of the
fourth century; only fragments of his work survive, but later historians writing about early Greece used his work extensively. Ephorus’ history has worth but, like that of Herodotus, should be used with caution – there is a need to sift the facts from the legends. The evidence of the fourth-century philosophers about tyranny provides
some useful insights. Plato in the Republic is more concerned about their (lack of) worth as a form of government, contrasting the wicked tyrant with the good king, than their history. Aristotle in the Politics (1310b-1315b) is far more useful in his analysis of the nature of tyranny. However, Aristotle’s distinction between the tyrants of old and the tyrants of his era also causes problems – he includes Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse from 405 to 367, among the tyrants of old, although he was a near-contemporary of Aristotle, and consequently seems to be using Dionysius’ fourth-century career as a model for the seventh-and sixth-century tyrants. The contemporary evidence for the age of Greek tyranny comes from three poets: Tyrtaeus of Sparta, who explicitly reveals the importance of the middleclass ‘hoplites’ for the safety of the state and implicitly their growing class consciousness; Alcaeus of Mytilene, the opponent of the tyrants Pittacus and Myrsilus, whose values and prejudices help to explain the hostility that was felt towards aristocratic government; and Solon of Athens, whose poems highlight the internal problems that made tyranny inevitable, unless they were remedied. Their evidence is very useful in providing an insight into the tensions of their individual cities, but it lacks the analytical rigour of historiography and must be used with care when investigating other cities’ revolutions. It is the aim of this chapter, using the above primary sources, to discuss the tyrannies of Pheidon of Argos, Cypselus of Corinth and Cleisthenes of Sicyon, where three factors – military, economic and ethnic, respectively – were prevalent in their seizure of power; the tyranny of Peisistratus in Athens and the benefits that the tyrants brought to their cities will be discussed in Chapter 6. Aristotle is most helpful in identifying the typical characteristics of a
tyrant and the means by which they came to power:
It is clear from the above quotation that the vast majority of tyrants had come from the ruling classes, but had rejected the current aristocratic government in favour of a regime which protected the people from the aristocrats, with themselves as the leader of the oppressed: hence their broad popular appeal. It is now appropriate to give concrete examples of individual tyrants and of the specific causes that allowed them to become the leaders of the people.
