In his admittedly cursory sketch of affairs in Greece from the Trojan War down to the onset of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides (1.13.1) considers the establishment of tyranny to constitute an especially important chapter. Tyrannies were established, he says, when state revenues increased and lasted until shortly before the Battle of Marathon in 490 (1.18.1). Although the chronology is disputed, the earliest tyrants seem to have been Cypselus at Corinth, around 650, and Orthagoras at Sicyon and Panaitios at Leontini in the last quarter of the seventh century (the controversial dating of Pheidon of Argos is discussed in more detail in Excursus I).
Any analysis of tyranny is rendered especially difficult due to a strongly negative source tradition, according to which every unspeakable vice becomes attached to the figure of the tyrant. One example is Phalaris, who, according to Eusebius, seized the tyranny at Sicilian Acragas in 571/0 and whose habit of roasting alive his opponents in a hollow bronze bull is already noted by Pindar (Pyth. 1.95-6). Another is Cypselus’ son Periander. According to Herodotus (3.48), it was only the intervention of the Samians that prevented Periander from having 300 sons of Corcyrean noblemen sent to Sardis for castration as eunuchs. He was also accused of having murdered his wife, Melissa, of having had sexual intercourse with her dead body, of gathering the women of Corinth together and stripping them naked, of banishing his younger son, Lykophron, and of embarking on a program of extermination of his rivals (3.50; 5.92). And yet, Herodotus is also aware that Periander had a reputation as a shrewd arbitrator, adjudicating the dispute between the Athenians and the Mytileneans over Sigeum (5.95), while later tradition even included him among the seven sages of Greece (Diogenes Laertius 1.13, 30, 40-42). Conflicting traditions seem also to have existed regarding Cypselus. Herodotus comments on the evils that he was fated to inflict upon the Corinthians and how he drove many of them into exile and deprived even more of their lives. In oracular prophecies, supposedly delivered prior to his seizure of the tyranny, he is described as a “mighty lion, eater of raw flesh,” who “will loosen the knees of many” and as a “rolling rock” that “will fall upon the monarchical men.” And yet this last prophecy, delivered by the Pythian priestess at Delphi, also predicts that he will “set Corinth on the path of justice,” while a further oracle, said to have been delivered to Cypselus himself, describes him as “fortunate, both he and his children, but not the children of his children” (5.92.b-e) - a reference to the fact that the tyranny of the Cypselids was overthrown in the third generation.
It is now generally agreed that the tyrants were normally members - albeit marginalized ones - of the aristocracy. Herodotus (5.92) says that Cypselus’ mother was a Bacchiad but that none of the Bacchiadae would marry her because she was lame and so was given instead to Aetion, son of Ekhekrates. If true, Cypselus’ mixed parentage might explain his hostility towards the Bac-chiadae, but it is also possible that it was invented afterwards to account for this. At any rate, Nicolaus of Damascus (fr. 57.1-7) believed that Cypselus launched his coup with (non-Bacchiad) aristocratic support. The Argive ruler Pheidon was supposedly descended from Temenos (Ephorus fr. 115), while Pisistratus derived his lineage from the descendants of Nestor who ruled over early Attica (Herodotus 5.65.3). Even were we not to take literally Alcaeus’ sneers (fr. 348) against Pittacus’ low birth, his marriage into the family of the Penthilidai clearly qualified him for membership of the elite, just as Theagenes of Megara, whatever his origins, was evidently regarded highly enough by the Athenian aristocrat and Olympic victor Cylon, who married his daughter. Interestingly, Cylon himself attempted, without success, to establish himself as tyrant of Athens ca. 630 (Herodotus 5.71; Thucydides 1.126.3-12; Plutarch, Sol. 12). The capacity of intermarriage for recruiting newcomers into the elite is precisely what the poet of the Theognidea (183-92) attacks when he writes “It is wealth that they honor; an esthlos marries the daughter of a kakos and a kakos the daughter of an agathos. Wealth mixes up the descent group.”
The only apparent exception to this rule would be the Orthagorid dynasty at Sicyon, west of Corinth. A papyrus, discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt and possibly deriving from the Universal History of Ephorus, narrates that the first tyrant, Orthagoras, was the son of a cook named Andreas (FGrH no. 105, fr. 2). This information has often been placed alongside a Delphic oracle, recorded by Herodotus (5.67.2), in which Cleisthenes, perhaps the great-nephew of Orthagoras, is greeted as a “stoner” - the implication being that, in combat, those who hurl stones and other missiles are those who are too poor to afford the equipment of an infantryman. But it is entirely possible that the tradition concerning the Orthagorids’ humble origins is a fabrication, invented after the fall of the tyranny. The papyrus’ description of how Orthagoras’ courage in battle earned him swift promotion, eventually resulting in his being elected polemarkhos or supreme military commander, looks suspicious. The insult leveled at Cleisthenes might refer to the type of punishment he inflicted on his rivals rather than a specific mode of combat and, in any case, Cleisthenes’ standing in the Panhellenic community would seem to be vindicated by the fact that he gave his daughter to Megacles from the influential Athenian family of the Alcmaeonidae (see below).
In modern treatments, a great deal of attention is given to distinguishing the tyrant from the monarch. Both are, in principle, hereditary and both are viewed as wielding absolute power, but the former is supposed to rule unconstitutionally and often with an appetite for capricious and unbridled violence while the latter exercises authority according to custom. This definition is reasonable enough, provided we recognize that the notion of “constitutionality” was still only rudimentarily developed in the seventh century and that the capacity for violence was not limited to tyrants, even if it was often a necessity in overthrowing a former regime. In fact, tradition credits some tyrants with a special concern for justice: as we have seen, the Delphic Oracle is supposed to have predicted that Cypselus would “set Corinth on the path of justice”; the Orthagorids of Sicyon were said to have “treated their subjects moderately and in many respects enslaved themselves to the laws” (Aristotle, Pol. 5.9.21); and Pisistratus later had the reputation for administering everything “according to the laws,” even attending court to defend himself on a homicide charge (Aristotle, AC 16.8). But it is also important to point out that the tendency to draw a sharp distinction between monarchy and tyranny is, in large part, a legacy of fifth - and especially fourth-century reflections on the matter.
Crucial here is a passage from the Politics, where Aristotle observes that the earliest tyrannies arose “from basileis who exceeded their ancestral prerogatives and aimed at a more despotic power”; Aristotle’s prime example is Pheidon of Argos (5.8.3-4). Thucydides (1.13.1) also believed that hereditary kingship had given way to tyrannies. These supposedly historical examples generated more abstract philosophical speculation on the tendency of monarchies to degenerate into tyrannies but that does not in itself guarantee their historical credentials. In fact, as we have seen, the evidence for hereditary kingship in early Greece is, outside Sparta, extremely slight. It is also probably significant that the word tyrannos seems, from the outset, to have been particularly associated with the absolute monarchies of the Near East: the term first appears in a fragment of Archilochus (fr. 19), in a context which also refers to the Lydian ruler Gyges, and it is often suspected that it is a loanword of Lydian or Phoenician origin. That the Greeks should borrow a word to describe an autocratic regime only really makes sense if this was a system of government with which they were relatively unfamiliar. Similarly, when Archilochus (fr. 23) compares a woman’s domination to tyranny, it is the quality of absolute rule rather than unconstitutionality that he has in mind. The poet of the Theognidea (51-2) uses the word mounarkhoi (“monarchies”) for what we would describe as tyrannies and even Herodotus often appears to use the terms basileus and tyrannos interchangeably. By Aristotle’s day, kingship was a very real feature in several parts of the Greek world and it was, therefore, essential to distinguish it from the negative connotations that had attached themselves to certain types of absolute autocracy in Greek thought. The important point is that, initially at any rate, the concept of tyranny does not appear to be contrasted with hereditary monarchy but with the pre-existing order - i. e. rule by a relatively circumscribed group of aristocrats in which the most important offices were shared on the principle of rotation.
Sure enough, Aristotle also notes that “some [tyrannies] arose from those chosen to fill the chief magistracies. . . and others from oligarchies that selected one of their own to the greatest offices” (Pol. 5.8.3). As examples, he cites the tyrants of the Ionian cities - which presumably included Thrasybulus of Miletus, a contemporary of Periander (Herodotus 5.92.z) - and Phalaris. We have already seen that, according to tradition, Orthagoras seized the tyranny while he occupied the office of polemarkhos; Nicolaus of Damascus (fr. 57.5) reports that Cypselus too was polemarkhos when he launched his coup, although this is not a detail that is found in Herodotus’ account. And Pittacus was, according to Aristotle (Pol. 3.9.5-6), initially elected to the office of aisymnetes - a constitutionally ordained office designed to deal with emergencies. In many - if not all - cases, then, tyrannies arose when individual aristocrats decided to not “play by the rules,” refusing to cede to their peers the offices to which they had been appointed. Although not normally classified as a tyranny in the literature, this is clearly the situation described in the Aristotelian Athenian Constitution (13.2), where Damasias, elected archon for 582/1, remained in office for two years and two months before being forcibly removed.
In many senses, the appearance of tyranny represents a return to the situation that had prevailed before the emergence of an aristocracy, when political leadership was exercised by Homeric - and Hesiodic-style basileis. Indeed, the Delphic oracle actually greets Cypselus as basileus (Herodotus 5.92.e2). As with the earlier basileis, power resided in the personal, charismatic authority of the individual rather than the political office he held. And as with the basileis, this sort of authority was inherently unstable and was not normally transmitted over many generations. At Corinth, Cypselus ruled for thirty years and his son, Periander, for a little over forty, but Periander’s nephew Psammetichus was expelled after only three years (Aristotle, Pol. 5.9.22). Pisistratus is said to have died in 528/7, thirty-three years after first seizing the tyranny, and was succeeded by his sons, Hippias and Hipparchus (Aristotle, AC 17.1-3). But Hipparchus was assassinated in 514 and his brother lasted only another four years before being expelled by the Spartans (AC 19; Herodotus 5.55-65; see pp. 235-6). The tyranny of the Orthagorids seems to have been longer lived, lasting around a century (Aristotle, Pol. 5.9.21).
The populations over whom the tyrants ruled were, of course, considerably larger than the coteries that surrounded the Homeric basileis. But the means by which tyrants established and maintained their authority were broadly comparable with those employed by their chiefly predecessors. In the first place, considerable kudos was to be derived from martial and athletic prowess. Both Orthagoras and Cypselus are said to have originally distinguished themselves in the military sphere. Herodotus (6.126.2) notes that Cleisthenes of Sicyon won the four-horse chariot race at Olympia - probably in 576 - while, according to Pausanias (10.7.6), he had won the same contest at the Pythian Games at Delphi six years earlier in 582. The French excavators of Delphi believe that the remains of a square, colonnaded pavilion, dated on stylistic grounds to ca. 580 and found within the foundations of the later Sicyonian Treasury, may have been constructed by Cleisthenes to display his victorious vehicle.
Cleisthenes’ dedication at Delphi brings us to the second aspect in which tyrants legitimated their authority: self-publicity through munificence and
Figure 6.2 The diolkos on the Corinthian isthmus. Source: photo by author
Conspicuous display. The first monumental temple at Corinth is probably too early to be attributed to Cypselus, as may be the first temple to Poseidon at nearby Isthmia. But Cypselus was certainly credited with costly dedications at both Delphi and Olympia (Pausanias 5.17.5; Plutarch, Mor. 400d) and it was probably Periander who constructed the diolkos or paved slipway across the Corinthian isthmus (Figure 6.2). Whether or not they were involved in commissioning the late-sixth century Temple of Athena Polias on the acropolis (pp. 253-4), the Pisistratids were certainly responsible for beginning work on the massive temple of Olympian Zeus, even if it remained unfinished until the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. The second “dipteral” (double-colonnaded) temple of Hera at Samos was almost certainly initiated by Polycrates and major temples at Ephesus, Didyma near Miletus, Samos, and Acragas have all been plausibly associated with tyrannies; the same may be true of the colossal Temple G on the eastern hill at Selinus. At Olympia, Pausanias (6.19.7) describes a “Treasury of the Carthaginians” - actually, a small temple-like structure built by the Syracusan tyrant Gelon to commemorate his victory over the Carthaginians at Himera in 480 (p. 289). A little earlier, the addition of a portico to the Treasury of Gela, thereby endowing one of the earliest Olympian treasuries with a new prominence, is plausibly credited to Gelon’s former patron, Hippocrates, the tyrant of Gela. Certainly, Aristotle (Pol. 5.9.4) suggests that major construction projects were a typical strategy practiced by tyrants, although his explanation for it - a ploy to keep the populace busy and therefore avoid conspiracy - seems unconvincing given the lack of conclusive evidence for mass hostility to the early tyrants.
The tyrants also engaged in self-publicity through their patronage of the arts. The dithyrambic poet Arion of Methymna was entertained at the court of Periander (Herodotus 1.23-24); the lyric poet Anacreon of Teos was welcomed by both Polycrates of Samos (Herodotus 3.121) and Hipparchus of Athens (Plato, Hipp. 228b; Aristotle, AC 18.1); another lyric poet, Simonides of Ceos, was also welcomed by Hipparchus (AC 18.1) before his sojourn at the court of Skopas, the ruler of Crannon in Thessaly (Plato, Prot. 339a); and a number of nonAthenian sculptors, such as Aristion of Paros, are known to have been active in Attica during the period of the tyranny.
Thirdly, just as the Homeric basileis legitimated their authority by the connections they established, through intermarriage and guest-friendship, with their peers in other regions, so too did the tyrants. Although this was a common elite practice in the seventh and sixth centuries, it is one that is given considerable attention by our literary sources. The most famous example is the one-year contest that Cleisthenes is said to have organized to pick a husband for his daughter, Agariste. Herodotus, who recounts the story, says that suitors traveled from all over Greece as well as from southern Italy to prove themselves worthy husbands; in the end, the honor was awarded to the Athenian Megacles, son of Alcmaeon, after the “favorite,” Hippokleides, disgraced himself over dinner (6.126-30). The narrative details of the story should not be taken too seriously (see p. 159), but it is entirely credible that Cleisthenes should have wanted to forge an influential marriage alliance for himself. Theagenes, as we have seen, married off his daughter to the Athenian Cylon; Periander’s wife, Melissa, was daughter of Prokles, the tyrant of Epidaurus (Herodotus 3.50); Terillos, the tyrant of Sicilian Himera gave his daughter in marriage to Anaxilas, the ruler of Rhegium, while Gelon married the daughter of Theron of Acragas (Herodotus 7.165; Timaeus FGrH no. 566, fr. 93a). Thrasybulus of Miletus was the guest-friend of the Lydian king Alyattes (1.22.4) and Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, maintained a guest friendship with the Egyptian Pharaoh Amasis until the latter broke it off (3.39.2). Seldom able to count on the support of their fellow aristocrats at home, such prestigious connections were indispensable to the tyrants. Pisistratus, for example, rewarded Lygdamis of Naxos for his earlier support by helping establish him as tyrant of his native island (Herodotus 1.61, 64). Lygdamis, in turn, is supposed to have assisted Polycrates in seizing power on Samos (Polyaenus, Strat. 1.23).
Fourthly, just as the authority of the basileus was based on a reciprocal relationship with the laos, so the tyrants typically relied on the popular support of the demos, whose interests they were expected to champion. According to Aristotle, “the greatest number of tyrants have risen, so to speak, from leaders of the people, winning trust by slandering the nobles” (Pol. 5.8.3; cf. 5.4.4). Pisistratus, Theagenes, and Dionysius of Syracuse are all cited as examples, to which we can probably add Telys of Sybaris, described as a demagogos who persuaded the Sybarites to expel the 500 richest citizens and confiscate their property (Diodorus 12.9.2). Cleisthenes, too, is said to have “promoted the interests of the demos in most respects” (5.9.21). Whereas the power of the aristocracies had rested on mutual support among peers against those deemed to be kakoi or deiloi, the tyrants returned to a system in which it was the support of retainers and clients that was essential for survival. But that support could only endure as long as the tyrant retained his personal authority.
Although Thucydides treats tyranny as a largely undifferentiated phenomenon, he makes exception for the tyrants of Sicily, who attained far greater power and whose rule continued even after the Spartans had suppressed tyrannical regimes in mainland Greece (1.17, 18.1). It is not, as has sometimes been suggested, that tyranny was a “late” development in the west: Panaitios is supposed to have seized power at Leontini before the end of the seventh century and early sixth-century tyrannies are attested for Acragas and possibly Selinus, whereas Athens and Samos were not subject to outright tyranny until shortly after the middle of the sixth century. Nor does Thucydides seem to take into account the continued existence into the fifth century of tyranny in Asia Minor and its offshore islands - indeed, this is an area that seems to have held little interest for the historian until relatively late in his career. It is, however, the case that when the cities of the Greek mainland faced the Persians in 480 (see Excursus IV) they were, unlike their Sicilian counterparts, no longer under tyrannical rule and it is also true that, while mainland Greek tyrants were generally concerned only with their immediate neighbors, the tyrants of Sicily entertained more imperialist ambitions (Map 5.1).
The model for a peculiarly Sicilian brand of tyranny seems to have been forged by Hippocrates, son of Pantares, who succeeded his brother Kleandros as tyrant of Gela in about 498 and who is said to have captured the cities of Naxos, Zancle, Leontini, and Camarina (Herodotus 7.154), giving him control of much of eastern Sicily. Much of that control then passed to Gelon, son of Deinomenes, who seized control of Gela after Hippocrates’ death, probably in 491; in about 485, he proceeded to capture Syracuse, from where he ruled for seven years, entrusting Gela to his brother Hieron (7.155-6; Aristotle, Pol. 5.9; Diodorus 11.38.7). Herodotus describes Gelon as both the “tyrant” and “ruler” (arkhon) of Sicily and no doubt that was a role that he was happy to project. Certainly, with the destruction of Megara Hyblaea and Camarina (Herodotus 7.156.2), his control extended across the entire eastern half of Sicily, save for Zancle, which had been captured by Anaxilas of Rhegium shortly after 490 and refounded as Messene (Thucydides 6.4.6). By 480, however, Gelon’s influence had extended further westwards, largely due to his alliance with Theron of Acragas and his acceptance of the surrender of Selinus after the latter’s defeat at the Battle of Himera (p. 289).
The cities conquered by Hippocrates do not seem to have been absorbed into a politically unified territorial state. While Naxos ceased to mint its own coinage in the early fifth century, it appears to have preserved some degree of autonomy in its internal affairs. Camarina was refounded as a new city in its own right, with Hippocrates honored as its founder (Pindar, Ol. 5.8; Thucydides 6.5.3). Furthermore, Camarina began to strike a series of didrachms (silver coins of two drachmas in value) on the Attic-Euboean weight standard, thereby conforming to the monetary system of Gela, which, at about the same time, began to mint its own didrachms, stamped with an armed horseman on one side and the front part of a man-faced bull on the other. Similarly, Zancle, which had been captured by Samians about five years before its refoundation by Anaxilas and also seems to have preserved a certain autonomy in the intervening period, ceased to mint on the Chalcidian weight standard and shifted to the Attic-Euboean system instead. The impression one gets is that Hippocrates was more interested in economic exploitation through indirect governance than in territorial control per se, seeking to convert wealth into liquid capital with which he could pay the mercenaries to whom he largely owed his hegemony. This is an imperial system that bears some resemblance to that of the contemporary Persian Empire and it has even been suggested that the idea was exported to the west by those Eastern Greeks, such as Skythes of Cos and Ainesidemos of Rhodes, who were part of Hippocrates’ inner circle and may have served as his “viceroys” in the subjugated cities (Herodotus 6.23.1, 7.154.1, 7.164.1).
Another respect in which the Deinomenid regime in particular resembles the Persian Empire is in the more or less forcible movement of populations. Upon securing the tyranny at Syracuse, Gelon transferred there the population of Camarina, which he had razed to the ground after it revolted in 490, more than half of the population of Gela, and the wealthiest citizens of Megara Hyblaea, all of whom were granted citizen rights; the rest of the Megarians were sold into slavery and transported abroad (Herodotus 7.156.2; Timaeus (fr. 19a)). Not everyone migrated against their will: Diodorus (11.72.3) claims that Gelon enfranchised more than 10,000 foreign mercenaries. One of these was almost certainly Praxiteles, son of Krinias, who dedicated a statue at Olympia in the early fifth century; the preserved statue base describes him as “Syracusan. . . and Camarinean” and notes that “he formerly dwelled in Arcadian Mantinea, rich in sheep” (IvO 266). In antiquity, Arcadia was famed - not entirely justly - for its agricultural impoverishment, which made it a key recruiting ground for mercenaries. The most plausible reconstruction of Praxiteles’ career is that he fought on the side of Hippocrates, for which he was granted citizenship at Camarina, and that he became a citizen of Syracuse when Gelon resettled the Camarineans there in the later 480s.
In assessing the impact of tyranny on the political development of the Archaic Greek world, it is important to recognize that it was not a universal phenomenon: according to one estimate, only twenty-seven out of hundreds of states are known to have been subject to a tyranny over a period of 150 years. On the other hand, in an environment where “micro-states” jostled with one another for space and where intercommunication was intensive, it was only natural that reforms and developments in one state might be emulated, adopted, or adapted by its neighbors, meaning that the measures tyrants took might often have repercussions beyond their home community. It is also important to remember that there is little evidence that tyrants entertained comprehensive programs of social and political reform. As Thucydides (1.17) notes, at least for the mainland, their primary concern was with their personal safety and with strengthening their family’s hold on power. That does not mean, however, that the measures they took were without significance for the future development of the Greek states. This is most obviously the case with the tyrants of Sicily, whose regimes continued into the fifth century. But it could also be argued that the democratic revolution of the late sixth and early fifth centuries in Athens would have been difficult - if not impossible - to achieve had it not been for Pisistratus’ rule (p. 258). That said, not every state which witnessed a tyranny was eventually destined for democracy: Corinth, save for very brief periods, was governed by oligarchies. The assassinations and exiles that tyrants undertook against their potential aristocratic rivals did not extinguish aristocracy itself. But they did weaken the authority of some of the leading families who had previously monopolized power and they also galvanized popular sentiment - a crucial step towards the crystallization of the political community.
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