Despite their initial popularity, the tyrannies eventually fell. If they may be viewed as the last stage of kingship in Greece, then they were a priori hopelessly exposed to the same processes which had been making kingship obsolete in most of Greece. Unlike the older kings, the tyrants’ dynasties were young creations which ultimately could not credibly lay claim to the ancestral authority which the kings had once held. Moreover, the circumstances which called forth the tyrants and made them seem an improvement over unrestrained aristocratic rule in course of time passed - ironically, the tyrants’ policies had a good deal to do with their passing. After a tyrant had successfully “straightened” a city, what need had the city to continue to submit to his rule? In fact some cities had arranged for the lawful appointment of a “tyrant” and had carefully limited his term in “office.” Thus in Mytilene the tyrant Pittacus derived his absolute powers for a term of ten years (Diogenes Laertius, I 75 - granted, a late source) from a mandate of the Mytilenaeans:
They (i. e., the Mytilenaeans) established the base-born Pittacus as tyrant of the hamstrung and ill-fated city - and cheered him on, all of them together!
(Alcaeus, Fr. 348 Lobel-Page)
Alcaeus, a contemporary, bitterly opposed and hated Pittacus - hence his outrage at his townsmen’s act. Pittacus, all the same, laid down his position when those ten years were up. Likewise in Athens Solon (see chap. 8) received absolute powers to reform the state, though in his case he only had one year in which to carry out his reforms. Solon himself rejected the label of “tyrant” (Fr. 33 West), and no one in antiquity classed him as one; but ancient opinion need not bind scholarly judgment, and distinguishing credibly between Pittacus’ position in Mytilene and Solon’s in Athens presents insuperable difficulties. In brief, there were at least two “tyrants” with a fixed term in office.
The other tyrants, however, who had no such fixed term, may well have overstayed their welcome. As their rule went on, they were reluctant to give up power, and if challenged, they had to engage in repressive measures to retain it. The matter is especially clear in the case of the Peisistratids in Athens. Towards the tyranny’s end, after his brother’s assassination, the final tyrant, Hippias, engaged in repressive measures including judicial executions of those whom he suspected of plotting against him (Hdt. V 55 and Thuc. VI 59). Other tyrants elsewhere may have acted similarly as their subjects began to chafe under their rule. Such actions, of course, could only undermine the tyrants’ position even more.
To take one more example: In Asia Minor, in the final years of the sixth century, the tyrants were clinging to power only because the Persians, who had conquered the region in the mid-sixth century, were propping them up, evidently in the mistaken belief that the Greeks themselves preferred them as the traditional form of government (see also chap. 9). The Persians restored at least one deposed tyrant dynasty (Hdt. III 139sqq.) and supported another’s desire to be restored (Hdt. V 96); in one case (Mytilene) they actually established a new tyranny (Hdt. V 11). As Histiaeus, then tyrant of Miletus, pointed out to his fellow tyrants in Asia Minor:
Each one of us rules as tyrant over his city thanks to Darius (the current King of Persia); if Darius’ power were removed, neither I myself would be able to rule over the Milesians, nor would anyone else elsewhere. For each of the cities would prefer to be under a democracy than under a tyranny.
(Hdt. IV 137)
When the Ionian Revolt broke out in 499 BC, it was directed in the first instance against the tyrants, all of whom lost their position as the revolt began (Hdt. V 36-38 and VI 13). One of them, Coes of Mytilene, was actually stoned to death as soon as his erstwhile subjects were able to lay their hands on him (Hdt. V 38). Again, the deep unpopularity of the tyrants’ rule in its final stages is palpable.
These final stages remained in the Greek collective memory; and later Greeks viewed the tyrannies through that distorting lens - hence the impassioned denunciations of tyranny at, e. g., Hdt. V 92. Hence also the many tales told of tyrants’ atrocities (for example, the hollow bronze statue of a bull in which Phalaris of Acragas allegedly had people roasted alive - e. g., Diod. XIX 108). Few of these stories are credible, but the overwhelmingly negative presentation of the tyrants in later Greek literature, ironically, provides one useful method for identifying genuine information about them: anything positive said about a tyrant is likely to antedate all the negative stories and thus to be contemporary with the tyrannies themselves.
World History
