Aristocratic prominence had been founded first on the ideal of the warrior chief, capable of great feats of arms, and, secondly, on control of land (without which the warrior role could not have been sustained). Noble birth also counted and aristocratic clans were often bound together through a common lineage. The more fragmented world of the seventh century, with its creation of new communities and the steady growth of trade, released new energies that undermined aristocratic power. Some cities managed to adapt peacefully to the challenge of these new forces. The Bacchiadae of Corinth provide an excellent example of a self-regulated group, based on their lineage as ‘descendants of Heracles’, who maintained power through the successful sharing of magistracies. A government where power was in the hands of an aristocratic council or shared between aristocratic families could be broadened to include citizens of wealth or those who provided military service.
In many cities, however, the tensions were not contained or defused. In Aegean Greece in particular, in the century after 650 bc a succession of city governments were overthrown by ambitious individuals who exploited popular resentments with the aristocracy to seize power. These were the tyrants. Corinth was the first tyranny, followed by its neighbours Sicyon and Megara. The earliest Athenian tyrant was Peisistratus, who seized power permanently, after several abortive attempts, in 546. There were tyrannies on the Aegean islands, Samos and Naxos, for instance, and in the Ionian cities of the coast of Asia Minor.
The word tyrannos, ‘tyrant’, is another of those Greek words that originate in the east, possibly from Lydia. Originally it may have meant no more than a ruler, but as Greek democracy developed and all forms of one-man rule became abhorrent the Greeks themselves gave the word the connotations that still surround it today. The use of an imported word implies that the Greeks saw the ‘tyrants’ as distinct from other forms of ‘one-man’ rule they might have experienced, such as the hereditary king, the basileus. In the very limited later sources that survive, tyrants are often portrayed in a stereotypical way, with their individualism and lack of restraint contrasted with the cooperative behaviour expected of the ‘ideal’ citizen. Among their excesses were sexual ones. Intercourse with a dead wife and with a mother are among those aberrations recorded. Once the stereotype had developed, it was there to project on later rulers. Philip and Alexander of Macedon are branded as tyrants in fourth-century Athens and there is an echo of such a projection in the assassination of Julius Caesar (see p. 438). Once the stereotype is acknowledged to be a later development, however, it becomes clear that not all tyrants of the seventh and sixth centuries were particularly oppressive. Many glorified their cities and were important patrons of the arts—although the evidence suggests that tyrants did tend to become tyrannical with time.
Several factors may have encouraged the rise of tyrants. The new overseas settlements provided a different model of society, one that showed that an aristocracy was dispensable (although there are cases in the western cities where aristocracies did emerge), and which provided opportunities for those with ambition. The growth of trade and the rise of new interest groups may have increased social tensions. Interestingly, however, from what little is known about the origins of individual tyrants, it does not appear that they were necessarily drawn from a class of new rich. Many, in fact, seem to have been men of aristocratic birth who for some reason or other had found themselves excluded from power. In the Ionian cities of Asia Minor a tyrant may have been no more than a leader of an aristocratic faction in conflict with others. In other cases there are hints that a tyrant had a successful military background before seizing power, and in this case he may have been the direct representative of the hoplites or at least able to call on the loyalties of men he may have led. In other cases Aristotle notes the power of their rhetoric and their ability to ‘win the people’s confidence by slandering the notables’. The general pattern is, therefore, of determined individuals, ready to manipulate traditional or non-traditional means of support to take power unconstitutionally. The implication is that aristocratic oligarchies refused to give way and no other alternative
Method of political change was available. Yet the overthrow was often destructive. In Mytilene, the tyrant Theagenes, who came to power c.640, slaughtered the cattle of the rich and there are reports of mobs storming into aristocratic households and demanding that they be given banquets! No wonder the lyric poets Sappho and Alcaeus sing of the aristocrats having to flee the city.
One of the best-recorded examples of tyranny is that of Cypselus at Corinth. By the mid-seventh century there were signs that the vigour of the Bacchiadae was weakening. They lost control of their colony Corcyra (on the modern Corfu) and proved unable to prevent the rise of the neighbouring cities of Argos and Megara. They were losing credibility. The legends suggest that Cypselus’ mother was of the Bacchiadae clan, but as she was lame she had been forced to marry outside the clan, thus depriving her son of any chance of a share in political power. This may provide a reason for his determination for revenge. Other sources suggest he may have built up popular support as a military commander at a time when Corinth’s forces needed boosting. Whatever the truth, about 657 Bc he overthrew the Bacchiadae, sent the clan into exile, and shrewdly distributed their land among his supporters.
Cypselus appears to have had a realistic approach to power. Like many tyrants, he appreciated the need to win, or at least to be seen to be winning, the support of the gods, and he made rich dedications at both Delphi and Olympia. At home he glorified himself and his dynasty through temple building. Many of the features of Doric architecture, so widely copied throughout the mainland and the Greek west, originated in Corinth (possibly as the result of contact with Egypt: see p. 188). Cypselus and his son Periander, who succeeded him peacefully thirty years later, also successfully boosted the commercial wealth of the city. Corinthian settlements extended into the northern Aegean and the Adriatic, and were kept under closer control than the colonies of any other Greek city, sharing coinage and even having their magistrates sent out from Corinth. The influence of one trading partner, Egypt, was such that Periander called his nephew Psammetichus, after the Egyptian king.
As other tyrannies appeared in the Greek world, Cypselus and his successors built up links with them. It was almost as if the tyrants felt themselves members of an exclusive club. They would help each other seize and maintain power. Sometimes two tyrants would make a friendship that transcended a traditional hostility between two cities. Periander of Corinth and Thrasybulus of Miletus provide one example. This might suggest the vulnerability of the tyrants but, contrary to the stereotype of the unrestrained despot, some did recognize the rule of law. In Sicyon, on the Corinthian gulf, the tyrant Orthagoras was a rare example of a man who had worked his way up from the bottom. He is recorded as being the son of a cook whose prestige came from his qualities as a fighter and later military commander. The dynasty persisted and his grandson Cleisthenes (whose grandson of the same name was to play a crucial role in Athenian democracy) was even more successful as a general, expanding his city’s territory and challenging the growing power of Argos. He knew how to act on the Panhellenic stage and entered the winning teams for the four-horse chariot races at Delphi (582) and Olympia (576). In effect he was
Acting as an aristocrat and his rule seems too restrained to fit into the normal picture of a ‘tyranny. Aristotle records that the dynasty ‘treated their subjects moderately and in many respects enslaved themselves to the laws.
Similarly on the island of Samos the ‘tyranny’ of Polycrates, 538-522, was more of a flamboyant glorification of the island than a dictatorship. Polycrates had recruited a group of hoplites to help him overthrow what seems to have been a discredited aristocracy. He closed down the wrestling grounds where aristocrats traditionally met but did little more in the way of repression. His building works won the admiration of the historian Herodotus. A long dam was built against the harbour entrance to give it added protection and water was brought into the city through an aqueduct that ran a thousand metres under the city from a reservoir. His fellow citizens supported him, apart from a few disgruntled aristocrats, among them one Pythagoras who left for exile in Italy (see below p. 198). Polycrates then tried to exercise supremacy over the Aegean. His pretensions aroused suspicion, from Sparta and Corinth on the mainland, and from the Persians who feared a strong Greek power on the coastline of Asia Minor. It was a Persian satrap who lured Polycrates onto the mainland, captured and tortured him to death, and displayed the body on the mainland opposite Samos. To his own people Polycrates may not have been tyrannical but by attempting to create an empire, he certainly was in the eyes of other Greeks.
Ultimately tyranny could not be sustained within the city. While Cypselus is recorded as moving freely in Corinth, his successor, Periander, was forced to use a bodyguard. He is seen as the archetype of the wicked tyrant. Herodotus recounts lurid stories of him killing his wife and attempting to castrate 300 noble youths of Corcyra (Corfu), a Bacchiadae stronghold. (The purpose was to send them in this mutilated form as a gift to Periander’s ally, Alyattes, king of Lydia.) When the tyranny entered a third generation under Psammetichus it was doomed. Psammet-ichus was assassinated some four years after coming to power, in about 582 Bc. In the neighbouring city of Sicyon tyranny was similarly overthrown in 555. By 550, with the exception of Athens, where the Peisistratid tyranny lasted until 510, tyrannies were a thing of the past on mainland Greece. They lasted longer in Asia Minor.
For all their efforts to boost trade and glorify their cities, the tyrants never succeeded in creating an ideology of leadership that inspired loyalty from one generation to the next. Once a tyrant became a petty dictator or time dimmed the glamour of a young popular leader, there was no tradition able to sustain tyrannical rule. In many ways tyranny can be seen as the last magnificent gestures of aristocrats who had eclipsed their fellows in pursuit of personal glory. There was no attempt to enforce more progressive policies, such as redistributing land or creating constitutions. So the tyrants always found difficulty in keeping the sustained support of the mass of citizenry. When tyrannies collapsed, a body of citizens who were committed to their city remained in place to take over.
This was the crucial point. As individual tyrants were overthrown, Greek city life might have degenerated into civil war between rival factions. In fact, the tyrants
Were usually replaced by oligarchies or even democracies. The polis, as has been said, was not simply a set of buildings. It was a community of citizens who shared a range of experiences, in the army, in kinship groups, in age-classes, and marriage alliances. The result was a continual round of gatherings that served to reinforce the cohesion of the citizen community (or at least its adult males), and it was precisely this cohesion that the tyrants failed to break down or exploit for their own benefit. It was natural that the government of the city itself should devolve onto part or even the whole of the citizen body in the shape of oligarchical (Greek oligos: few; archos: ruler) or democratic (Greek demos: people; kratia: power) rule. It was also natural that the citizen community should define itself in contrast to the outsider. As a male body, it segregated and secluded the female. As a body of free men, it felt no inhibitions about reinforcing this status by consolidating slavery. As Moses Finley put it, ‘one aspect of Greek history is the advance, hand in hand, of liberty and slavery’ The misdeeds of the tyrants, some certainly exaggerated for effect, helped define the democrat.
World History
