The tyrants were great patrons of the arts in their cities. The temples which they built were works of art in their own right; and these and other structures commonly required decoration. Thus, the treasury of the Sicyonians at Delphi, probably erected during the tyranny of Cleisthenes, displayed metopes - relief panels - which depicted scenes from the saga of the Argonauts (for illustrations, see H. Knell, Mythos und Polis [Darmstadt, 1990], figures 27-30). Apart from the architectural arts, the tyrants employed sculptors and jewelers. Both Cypselus and his son Periander dedicated a statue at Olympia (Strab. VIII 3,30, p. 353, and Ephorus, BNJ 70, fr. 178). Herodotus can actually mention the name of the jeweler - Theodorus, son of Telecles, of Samos - who wrought for Polycrates of Samos the famous ring which Polycrates cast into the sea (Hdt. III 41-42).
The tyrants also fostered the nonvisual arts. Many employed court poets: Arion of Methymna worked at the court of Periander of Corinth (Hdt. I 24); Ibycus of Rhegium worked at the court not just of Polycrates of Samos (Fr. 1 Page) but also at that of the Sicyonian tyrants (Fr. 308 and 322 Page). The Peisistratids in Athens allegedly sponsored the redaction of the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey (Cicero, De oratore, III 137; Anthologia Palatina, XI 442). During the Peisistratid tyranny the poet Thespis also produced the first tragedy at Athens (Charon of Lampsacus, BNJ 262, Fr. 15; Marmor Parium, BNJ 239, A ep. 43).
The most spectacular example of the tyrants' sponsorship of poets is probably the victory-ode which Pindar of Thebes, the greatest of the Greek lyric poets, was commissioned to write for Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, when the latter won in the chariot race at Olympia - the first Olympian Ode. This complex poem, brimming with praise for Hiero, was probably set to music and performed in Hiero's honor in Syracuse; and the performance was certainly designed to impress Hiero's greatness upon all his subjects. Here it emerges directly that the tyrants commonly expected a return on their investment in the arts. An astonishing amount of early Greek art and poetry is in any case due to the tyrants' willingness to fund such works, whether in their immediate self-interest or not.
The sheer scale of all these projects - temples, fountainhouses, breakwaters, and so on - impresses; as does, in comparison, the absence of such projects from the decades preceding the tyrannies. The tyrants, unlike the regimes which had gone before, must have marshaled their communities’ resources for such projects (instead of for “conspicuous consumption”). Several factors aided the tyrants in this design. First, the tyrants occasionally had at their disposal large amounts of property which they had confiscated from their aristocratic opponents. In Athens the Alcmaeonids had owned large estates at the time when they went into exile during Peisistratus’ tyranny. This land did not lie fallow for
Four decades until they returned; and most scholars have generally assumed that Peisistratus disposed of much of this property. Cypselus in Corinth appears to have confiscated much property (Hdt. V 92e), and later historians working from Herodotus’ account assumed that it was the property of his opponents, the Bacchiads, whom he deposed, that he confiscated (Nicolaus of Damascus, BNJ 90, Fr. 57).
Second, the tyrants in Athens levied a 5% tax on produce (Thuc. VI 54; cf. [Arist.], Ath. Pol. 16, where the figure is 10%). Although Thucydides in retrospect characterized this as a modest levy, it may have represented a novelty at the time - because of the absence of coinage (see chap. 8), there may not have been any such tax, at least not a universal one, before the tyrants. In any case, Peisistratus is known to have supported small landholders as best he could, and in later times the countryfolk looked back on his reign as a golden age ([Arist.], l. c.). That detail, given the hatred for the tyrants later on, is unlikely to have been invented and vouches for the essence of the information in the Ath. Pol. If Peisistratus really did carry out, as usually supposed, a full-scale redistribution of the land which he confiscated from the Alcmaeonids, then he probably did put many of these small landholders back onto the land, and even a modest 5% tax on the produce from their farms may have brought not just increased, but also regular, amounts into the treasury for the tyrants to disburse.
The tyrants chose, as shown above, to invest these resources to a large extent in extravagant building projects. First, the people who worked to build the temples had to receive remuneration for their labor, and this provided employment for much of the population which was not or no longer involved directly with agricultural production. The workers’ pay could then be used to buy food and other goods - that is to say, much of the tyrants’ outlay for erecting the temples flowed back into community’s economy, especially into the farms. The overall effect, presumably, was to stimulate agricultural production as well as to create demand for manufactured goods which in turn allowed for more specialized employment.
Finally, a few less tangible benefits of all of these projects require at least a brief mention. Large, splendid buildings could easily become a source of pride for the community. When one reads Herodotus’ account of Polycrates’ splendid buildings on Samos - the Temple of Hera, the breakwater in the harbor, the tunnel of Eupalinus -, one cannot fail to notice Herodotus’ local informants’ pride in their community’s architectural and engineering achievements (Hdt. III 60). The tyrants’ building projects helped engender a sense of community.
World History
