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Transcriber’s note:
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Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single
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THE ORIGIN OF TYRANNY
Cambridge University Press
C. F. Clay, Manager
London: Fetter Lane, E.C. 4
[Illustration]
New York: The Macmillan Co.
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Toronto: The Macmillan Co. of Canada, Ltd.
Tokyo: Maruzen-Kabushiki-Kaisha
All Rights Reserved
THE ORIGIN OF TYRANNY
by
P. N. URE, M.A.
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Professor of Classics, University College, Reading
Cambridge
At the University Press
1922
Printed in Great Britain.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
The views expressed in the following chapters were first published in
the _Journal of Hellenic Studies_ for 1906 in a short paper which gave a
few pages each to Samos and Athens and a few sentences each to Lydia,
Miletus, Ephesus, Argos, Corinth, and Megara. The chapters on Argos,
Corinth, and Rome are based on papers read to the Oxford Philological
Society in 1913 and to the Bristol branch of the Classical Association
in 1914.
As regards the presentation of my material here, it has been my
endeavour to make the argument intelligible to readers who are not
classical scholars and archaeologists. The classics have ceased to be a
water-tight compartment in the general scheme of study and research, and
my subject forms a chapter in general economic history which might
interest students of that subject who are not classical scholars. On the
other hand classical studies have become so specialised and the
literature in each department has multiplied so enormously that unless
monographs can be made more or less complete in themselves and capable
of being read without referring to a large number of large and
inaccessible books, it will become impossible for classical scholars to
follow the work that is being done even in their own subject beyond the
limits of their own particular branch. For these reasons ancient
authorities have been mainly given in literal English translations, and
when, as happens in almost every chapter, information has to be sought
from vases, coins, or inscriptions, I have tried to elucidate my point
by means of explanatory descriptions and illustrations.
The work has involved me in numerous obligations which I gladly take
this opportunity of acknowledging. In 1907 I received grants from the
Worts travelling bachelors’ fund of Cambridge University and from
Gonville and Caius College to visit Greece for the purpose of collecting
archaeological evidence upon the history of the early tyranny. This
purpose was partially diverted because shortly after reaching Greece I
became associated with the late Dr R. M. Burrows in the excavation of
the Greek cemetery at Rhitsona in Boeotia and in the study and
publication of the pottery found there. This pottery dates mainly from
the age of the tyrants, and the results of my work at it appear in
several of the succeeding chapters. To Dr Burrows I owe also the
encouragement that led me to start working on the early tyranny: my main
idea on the subject first occurred to me when I was lecturing on Greek
history as his assistant at University College, Cardiff.
I have also received much assistance at various times and in various
ways from Professor G. A. T. Davies, another former colleague of mine at
Cardiff, and from several of my Reading colleagues, particularly
Professor W. G. de Burgh, Mr D. Atkinson, and my wife. Many other debts
are recorded in the body of the book: but considering how many and
various they have been, I can scarcely hope that none has been passed
over without acknowledgement.
But of all my obligations the earliest and chiefest is to Sir William
Ridgeway. It is to the unique quality of his teaching at Cambridge that
I owe the stimulus that suggested to me the explanation here offered of
the origin of tyranny.
P. N. URE.
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE,
READING.
_October 1920._
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I INTRODUCTION 1
II ATHENS 33
III SAMOS 68
IV EGYPT 86
V LYDIA 127
VI ARGOS 154
VII CORINTH 184
VIII ROME 215
IX SICYON, MEGARA, MILETUS, EPHESUS, LEONTINI, AGRIGENTUM,
CUMAE 257
X CAPITALIST DESPOTS OF THE AGE OF ARISTOTLE, THE MONEY POWER
OF THE RULERS OF PERGAMUM, PROTOGENES OF OLBIA 280
XI CONCLUSION 290
APPENDICES 307
INDEX 339
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
1 Lophos Loutrou from Daskalio station 42
2 On the road from Daskalio station to Plaka 42
3 Kamaresa 43
4 Kitsovouno from Kamaresa 43
(Figs. 1–4 from photographs by the author)
5 Corinthian terra cotta tablet depicting a miner at work 46
(_Antike Denkmäler_, I)
6 Coin of Athens with Athena and owl 53
(Macdonald, _Evolution of Coinage_)
7 Athenian coins: the wreath on the head of Athena 56
(_Bulletin de Correspondance hellénique_, XXX)
8 Persian “archer” 57
9 Samian coin with Samaina and Messanian coin with hare 75
(Hill, _Historical Greek Coins_)
10 Aiakes, father of Polycrates 82
(_Athenische Mitteilungen_, 1906)
11 Psamtek I 86
(Petrie, _Hist. Egypt_, III)
12 Vase with cartouche of Bocchoris found at Tarquinii 94
(_Monumenti Antichi della R. Acc. dei Lincei_, VIII)
13 Rhodian or (?) Milesian vase found at Naukratis 111
(Gardner, _Naukratis II_. By permission of the Egypt
Exploration Fund)
14 Fikellura or (?) Samian vase found at Daphnae 113
(Petrie, _Tanis II_. By permission of the Egypt Exploration
Fund)
15 Naukratite vase found at Rhitsona in Boeotia 115
(_Journ. Hellenic Studies_, 1909)
16 Perfume vase found at Naukratis 119
(Gardner, _Naukratis II_. By permission of the Egypt
Exploration Fund)
17 Greek wine jar found at Naukratis 120
(Petrie, _Naukratis I_. By permission of the Egypt
Exploration Fund)
18 Corinthian vase with cartouche of Apries 124
(_Gazette Archéologique_, 1880)
19 Coins of (_a_) Gyges (?), (_b_) Croesus 127
(Macdonald, _Evolution of Coinage_)
20 Early Aeginetan “tortoises” 154
(Babelon, _Traité des Monnaies Gr. et Rom._)
21 Bundle of spits found in the Argive Heraeum 163
22 Corinthian vase found at Corinth 185
(From a photograph supplied by Miss Walker of the American
School of Archaeology at Athens)
23 Corinthian terra cotta tablet depicting a potter at his wheel 186
(_Gazette Archéologique_, 1880)
24 Corinthian terra cotta tablet depicting the interior of a
kiln 186
(_Antike Denkmäler_, I)
25 Coins of Corinth 188
(_Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Corinth_)
26 Coins of Cypsela 200
(_Abhandl. Bayerische Akad. Phil. Class._ 1890)
27, Attic vase paintings, perhaps depicting cypselae
28 202
(Saglio, _Dict. d. Antiq._ figs. 2964, 2965)
29 Attic vase painting, perhaps depicting a cypsele 203
(Saglio, _Dict. d. Antiq._ fig. 937)
30 Vase on stove found at Iasos 205
(_Jahrb. d. arch. Inst._ 1897)
31 Relief, perhaps depicting a small cypsele 206
(_Revue Archéologique_, 1869)
32 _Aes signatum_ 220
(Haeberlin, _Aes Grave_)
33 _Aes grave_ with wheel 232
(Hill, _Historical Roman Coins_)
34 Corinthian vase found at Tarquinii 241
35 Corinthian terra cotta tablet depicting the export of vases 242
(_Antike Denkmäler_, I)
36 Proto-Corinthian vase found in the Roman Forum 249
(_Notiz. d. Scavi della R. Acc. dei Lincei_, 1903)
37 Ionic terra cotta antefix found in Rome 250
(_Monumenti Antichi della R. Acc. dei Lincei_, XV)
38 Similar antefix found in Samos 251
(Boehlau, _Aus ion. u. ital. Nekropolen_)
39 Terra cotta head found on the Roman Capitol 252
(_Monumenti Antichi della R. Acc. dei Lincei_, XV)
40 Stone head found on the Acropolis at Athens 253
(_Athenische Mitteilungen_, 1879)
41 Vase in Attic black figure style found on the Quirinal 254
(_Monumenti Antichi della R. Acc. dei Lincei_, XV)
42 The Capitoline wolf 254
(How and Leigh, _Hist. of Rome_. By arrangement with Messrs
Longmans Green & Co.)
43 Dipylon vase 314
(_Companion to Greek Studies_, Cambridge)
44 Proto-Corinthian vase 315
(_Journ. of Hellenic Studies._ By permission of the Council
of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies)
45 Dipylon Ships 322
(_Rev. Arch._ XXV, 1894; _Athenische Mitt._ 1876; _Arch.
Zeitung_, 1885; Perrot and Chipiez, _Hist. de l’Art dans
l’Antiquité_)
46 Vase painting signed by Aristonothos 323
(Walters and Birch, _Hist. of Ancient Pottery_)
τοῖσι ἐμφανέσι τὰ μὴ γιγνωσκόμενα τεκμαιρόμενος.
HDT. II. 33.
Chapter I. _Introduction_
Δόξαιεν γὰρ ‹ἂν› οὐδὲν λέγειν δίκαιον οἱ διὰ τὸν πλοῦτον ἀξιοῦντες
ἄρχειν.
ARISTOT. _Pol._ III.
1283_b_.
Φαῦλον τὸ τὰς μεγίστας ὠνητὰς εἶναι τῶν ἀρχῶν.
ARISTOT. _Pol._ II. 1273_a_.
[Sidenote: The seventh century B.C. is the age]
The seventh and sixth centuries B.C. constitute from many points of view
one of the most momentous periods in the whole of the world’s history.
No doubt the greatest final achievements of the Greek race belong to the
two centuries that followed. But practically all that is meant by the
Greek spirit and the Greek genius had its birth in the earlier period.
Literature and art, philosophy and science are at this present day
largely following the lines that were then laid down for them, and this
is equally the case with commerce. [Sidenote: (_a_) of the first known
metal coins,] It was at the opening of this epoch that the Greeks or
their half hellenized neighbours the Lydians brought about perhaps the
most epoch-making revolution in the whole history of commerce by the
invention of a metal coinage like those that are still in circulation
throughout the civilized world.
It was no accident that the invention was made precisely at this time.
Industry and commerce were simultaneously making enormous strides. About
the beginning of the seventh century the new Lydian Dynasty of the
Mermnadae made Sardis one of the most important trading centres that
have arisen in the world’s history. The Lydian merchants became
middlemen between Greece and the Far East. Egypt recovered its
prosperity and began rapidly to develop commercial and other relations
with its neighbours, including the Greeks. Greek traders were pushing
their goods by sea in all directions from Spain to the Crimea. Concrete
evidence of this activity is still to be seen in the Corinthian and
Milesian pottery of the period that has been so abundantly unearthed as
far afield as Northern Italy and Southern Russia. It was a time of
extraordinary intellectual alertness. Thales and the numerous other
philosophers of the Ionian School were in close touch with the merchants
and manufacturers of their age. They were in fact men of science rather
than philosophers in the narrow modern sense of the latter word, and
most of them were ready to apply their science to practical and
commercial ends, as for example Thales, who is said to have made a
fortune by buying up all the oil presses in advance when his
agricultural observations had led him to expect a particularly plentiful
harvest[1]. A corner in oil sounds very modern, and in fact the whole of
the evidence shows that in many ways this ancient epoch curiously
anticipated the present age.
[Sidenote: and (_b_) of the first rulers to be called tyrants.]
Politically these two centuries are generally known as the age of
tyrants. The view that the prevalence of tyranny was in some way
connected with the invention of coinage has been occasionally
expressed[2]. Radet has even gone so far as to suggest that the first
tyrant was also the first coiner[3]. He does not however go further than
to suggest that the tyrant started a mint and coinage when already on
the throne.
[Sidenote: The new form of government was, I believe, based on the new
form of capital.]
The evidence appears to me to point to conclusions of a more
wide-reaching character. Briefly stated they are these: that the seventh
and sixth century Greek tyrants were the first men in their various
cities to realize the political possibilities of the new conditions
created by the introduction of the new coinage, and that to a large
extent they owed their position as tyrants to a financial or commercial
supremacy which they had already established before they attained to
supreme political power in their several states.
In other words their position as I understand it has considerable
resemblances to that built up in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
A.D. by the rich bankers and merchants who made themselves despots in so
many of the city states of Italy. The most famous of these are the
Medici, the family who gave a new power to the currency by their
development of the banking business, and mainly as a result of this
became tyrants of Florence. Santo Bentivoglio of Bologna passed from a
wool factory to the throne. Another despot of Bologna was the rich
usurer Roméo Pepoli. At Pisa the supreme power was grasped by the
Gambacorti with an old merchant named Pietro at their head. At Lodi it
was seized by the millionaire Giovanni Vignate. The above instances are
taken from Symonds’ sixth class of despots of whom he says that “in most
cases great wealth was the original source of despotic ascendancy[4].”
[Sidenote: This view deserves examination in the light of the modern
financial revolution,]
Still closer analogies lie at our very door. It is a commonplace that we
are in the midst of an industrial revolution. This modern movement was
already beginning a century ago, when Byron pleaded the cause of the
frameworkers before the House of Lords. There are of course obvious
differences between the two revolutions. That of the seventh and sixth
centuries B.C. was mainly financial, that of the present time is mainly
industrial. But the difference is not so great as it at first sight
appears[5]. The invention of a metal coinage was accompanied by great
industrial changes[6], and we can no more divide sharply the financial
and industrial activities of the great houses of archaic Greece than we
can separate the banking and the mercantile enterprises of the great
families of the cities of Italy at the time of the renaissance, such as
the wealthy Panciatighi of Florence, who lent money to the emperor
Sigismund and exported cloths to London, Avignon and North Africa[7]. On
the other hand the modern industrial movement, with its development of
machinery and its organization of masters and men into trusts and trade
unions, has been accompanied by a revolution in the nature of the
currency. The modern financial revolution began at the same time as the
industrial. [Sidenote: which has replaced metal coins by paper,] Its
earliest phases are described and discussed in William Cobbett’s _Paper
against Gold_[8]. Since Cobbett’s days the paper currency which so
distressed him has developed enormously. Even before 1914 we were told
that “Gold already acts in England only as change for notes[9].”
It is not necessary here to examine in detail the various forms taken by
this new paper currency. It is enough to point out that it enables
property to be transferred and manipulated far more rapidly and on far
larger a scale than was previously possible[10]. Only one other point in
the history of the new currency needs to be here mentioned. It cannot be
better expressed than in the words used by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer in the House of Commons on November 28th, 1914:
I have been much struck since I have been dealing with these
transactions (bills of exchange) with how little even traders who
form a part of this great machinery know about the mechanism of
which they form an essential part.... I do not think that the
general public—and I am putting myself among them—ever realized the
extent to which the business not merely of this country, but of the
whole world, depended upon this very delicate and complicated paper
machinery.
Apparently it needed a European war to bring home to the modern world of
commerce the nature of its currency. This fact should warn us against
expecting to find in early Greece any very clear recognition of the
revolution in the currency that then took place. When gold and silver
coins were first circulated they had a corresponding effect to the
modern issues of paper. They enabled property to be transferred with
greater ease and rapidity. We may be sure however that the character and
possibilities of the new currency did not at once receive universal
recognition[11]. The merchants in the bazaars of Lydia and Ionia who
best understood how to make use of it must have profited enormously.
[Sidenote: and led many people to fear a new tyranny of wealth.]
The experts in the new finance of the last two generations have been
exercising a profound influence upon politics and government. There are
many people, particularly in America, who believe that there is a
possibility of this influence becoming supreme. It is worth while
quoting a few of these opinions:
This era is but a passing phase in the evolution of industrial
Caesars, and these Caesars will be of a new type—corporate
Caesars[12].
The flames of a new economic evolution run around us, and we turn to
find that competition has killed competition, that corporations are
grown greater than the state and have bred individuals greater than
themselves, and that the naked issue of our time is with property
becoming master instead of servant[13].
For some months past the sugar trust has been the Government of the
United States[14].
In 1884 there seems even to have been an idea of running a Standard Oil
senator for the United States presidency. “Henry B. Payne is looming up
grandly in the character of a possible and not altogether improbable
successor to Mr Tilden as the Democratic candidate for the
presidency[15].”
The danger of supreme power in America passing into the hands of a few
capitalists has even been publicly acknowledged by a President of the
United States during his period of office. “Mr Wilson also discussed the
division between capital and labour. He dwelt for the greater part of
the speech on the effort of ‘small bodies of privileged men to resume
control of the Government,’ and added: ‘We must again convince these
gentlemen that the government of this country belongs to us, not to
them[16].’”
Similar views are expressed by French, German and Italian writers.
According to the most brilliant of modern Frenchmen the government of
France has in some recent periods been in the hands of three or four
groups of financiers[17]. Salvioli in his _Capitalism in the Ancient
World_ speaks of the “kings of finance who exercise in our states a
secret but pervading sway[18].” Even the warlike von Bernhardi fears an
impending “tyranny of capital[19].”
These quotations might be multiplied[20], but enough have been given to
show that the opinion which they express is widely held. There is no
need to discuss the honesty of particular expressions of it. If any of
them could be shown to have been insincere, it would be only additional
evidence of the plausibility of the opinion. Nor is this the place to
discuss from a more general point of view the extent to which that
opinion has been or seems likely to be verified. To have indicated how
widely prevalent is the fear of an impending “new tyranny of wealth[21]”
or “tyranny of capital[22]” is by itself enough to show that the
relation between the tyranny and the new form of wealth that arose in
the seventh and sixth centuries before our era is a subject that
deserves investigation, and to show also that the particular view as to
those relations that is maintained in these pages has _a priori_
plausibility[23].
[Sidenote: The evidence:]
It should however be said at once that my view appears to have been held
by no one who has published opinions on the subject from the fourth
century B.C. onwards. This however is not fatal. Later in this chapter
reasons will be suggested for holding that the true character of the
early tyranny was lost sight of in the days of Plato and Aristotle. Why
truer views on this particular subject should be recovered precisely at
the present period may be sufficiently explained by the modern financial
revolution, which makes it possible to approach the question from a
point which has scarcely been accessible during the last two thousand
years. With this warning we may proceed to state the nature of the
evidence in favour of this view that the earliest tyrannies were founded
and based on wealth.
(1) The greater part of it is drawn from anecdotes and incidental
statements of fact about particular seventh or sixth century tyrants
preserved in Herodotus and later Greek and Latin writers. The various
tyrants are dealt with individually in the remaining chapters of the
book.
(2) Glimpses into the economic and political life of the seventh and
sixth centuries are occasionally to be got from the scanty remains of
the poets of the period, supplemented by cautious references to later
writers. It will be convenient to examine at once this more general
evidence.
[Sidenote: (_a_) statements from the extant writings of the sixth
century (Solon and Theognis),]
The only two writers of the age of the tyrants of whom more than the
merest scraps have come down to us are Solon[24] and Theognis[25]. Both
deal professedly with the social and political problems of their day.
But both address audiences who are familiar with those problems. Even if
their whole works had been preserved instead of a few hundred lines in
either case, we should not expect to have the fundamental problems
explicitly stated. It would be possible to read a large selection of
articles and speeches by quite the best journalists and politicians on
many recent political measures and at the end of it to be left in
uncertainty as to the content and purport of the measure in question. We
must expect the same difficulty in reading Solon and Theognis. And it
must be confessed that we find it. But there is nothing in the extant
fragments of either writer which discredits the theory. More than that
there are passages in both of them that become of the utmost
significance if the early tyrants owed their power to their previous
wealth but are rather pointless on any other hypothesis.
Solon’s position in relation to the tyranny is explained in the chapter
dealing with Athens. But a few lines may be quoted here:
But of themselves in their folly the men of the city are willing
Our great city to wreck, being won over by wealth.
False are the hearts of the people’s leaders[26].
By the wreck of the city the poet means the establishment of a tyranny,
as is indicated by another couplet:
Great men ruin a city: for lack of understanding
Under a despot’s[27] yoke lieth the people enslaved[28].
These last two lines were presumably written after Peisistratus had made
himself tyrant of Athens. Solon’s fears had been realized. The citizens
had been “won over by wealth” to “wreck their great city.” Is not the
best sense made out of these lines by assuming that what Solon feared
and what actually happened was that the popular leader had made use of
his wealth to establish himself as tyrant? Neither the “people’s
leaders” of the first quotation nor the “great men” of the second are
specifically stated to have been extremely rich, but to quote again the
words of Solon, both may be plausibly identified with the foremost of
Those who had power and made men to marvel because of their riches[29].
The political aim of Theognis was to prevent a recurrence of tyranny in
Megara[30]. What does the poet bid his townsmen beware of? Not of
eloquence, not of violence, not of rashly appointing a lawgiver or
αἰσυμνήτης. All his warnings are directed against wealth. The whole town
of Megara had become commercial[31]. Birth had lost its prestige, and
wealth acquired unprecedented power. He complains how
Tradesmen reign supreme: the bad lord it over their betters[32].
This is the lesson that each and all must thoroughly master:
How that in all the world wealth has the might and the power[33].
Many a bad man is rich, and many a good man needy[34].
Not without cause, O wealth, do men honour thee above all things[35].
Most men reckon the only virtue the making of money[36].
Everyone honours those that are rich, and despises the needy[37].
When he explicitly alludes to the dangers of the establishment of a
tyranny, his references to wealth are no less prominent:
Neither exalt thou in hope, _by yielding to gain_, any tyrant[38].
Cyrnus, this city is pregnant. I fear lest a man it may bear us
Swollen with insolent pride[39], leader in stern civil strife[40].
The couplet last quoted almost certainly refers to a possible tyrant.
Insolent pride (ὕβρις) is one of the tyrant’s stock characteristics[41].
There is no reference to wealth in this particular context. But there
can be little doubt that this same character is also referred to earlier
in the poem. Who, the poet asks, can preserve his reverence for the
Gods:
When that a man unjust and presumptuous, one that regardeth
Neither the wrath of a man, no, nor the wrath of a God,
_Glutted with wealth_ waxes proud and insolent[42]?
In this last passage the pride and insolence are directly attributed to
enormous wealth.
Or again:
Be thou sure that not long will that city remain unshaken,
Even though now it may lie wrapped in the deepest repose,
Soon as soever to those that are bad these things become pleasing—
Gains that, whenever they come, bring with them ill for the state.
For from these arise factions, murders of men by their kindred,
Despots withal[43].
What are the gains that lead up to tyranny? Is it not most probable that
they are some form of payment received by the commons (“those that are
bad”) from the would-be tyrant[44]?
Solon and Theognis wrote with the examples of Gyges, Pheidon,
Orthagoras, Cypselus, Theagenes and the rest of the seventh century
tyrants before them[45]. If they constantly feared that some wealthy
tradesman[46] would make himself tyrant, it must surely have been
because the tyrants had sprung from or been allied with this new class
of wealthy traders and financiers.
[Sidenote: (_b_) the fifth century writers (Thucydides, Herodotus,
Pindar),]
The view here set forth as to the basis of the tyrant’s power finds
nothing to contradict it in the fifth century references to the early
tyranny. On the contrary such few references as are explicitly made to
the origin of the tyranny by writers of the fifth century bear it out.
“Is it not folly,” says Oedipus to Kreon in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ of
Sophocles, “this attempt of yours, without a host of followers and
friends to seek a tyranny, a thing that’s gained only with hosts of
followers and money[47]?” “When Greece,” says Thucydides, in his
introductory sketch of early Greek history, “had grown more powerful,
and was still more than before engaged in the acquisition of wealth,
tyrannies were established in the cities[48].” Herodotus gives no
account of the rise of tyranny, but a large proportion of the evidence
as to the careers of individual tyrants is derived from his work.
Perhaps the fifth century writer who might be expected to throw most
light on the question is Pindar, who visited the courts of the Sicilian
tyrants and wrote odes in their honour. His poems contain many
references to the supreme importance of wealth:
Wealth adorned with virtues
Brings opportunity for this and that[49].
Ever in the quest of noble achievements
Toil and outlay strive after the issue[50].
So elsewhere[51] in a similar spirit he describes Hiero’s great victory
over the Etruscans as “the crown of his lordly wealth.” The Syracusan
monarchs of the early fifth century seem to have had fewer affinities
with the commercial tyrants of the two preceding centuries than with the
military despots of a later age. It is therefore all the more
significant that wealth is so frequently regarded by Pindar, who more
than any other writer represents the transition from the sixth century
to the fifth, rather as a means to power than as one of its rewards.
Later documents, as has been said already, give a different account of
the early tyrants’ antecedents. But here and there statements are to be
found in them that, though perhaps reconcilable with other views, only
become fully significant on the commercial theory.
Isocrates for instance speaks of the “huge wage bills and expenditures
of money by which all modern dynasts maintain their power[52].” He wrote
these words between 342 and 339 B.C.[53], but as his modern times are
contrasted with those of Agamemnon and he himself was nearly thirty
years old at the close of the fifth century, his modern dynasts may well
include sixth century tyrants like Peisistratus and Polycrates, the more
so as “dynasts” arose so seldom in fifth century Greece.
[Sidenote: (_c_) some statements of fourth century writers,]
Aristotle preserves the tradition that the early tyrants were good
business men. He speaks of “rendering account of their receipts and
expenditure, as has been done already by certain of the tyrants. For by
this kind of administration he would give the impression of being a
manager (οἰκονόμος) and not a tyrant[54].”
That the early tyrants had previously been men of wealth is also perhaps
to be inferred from certain remarks of Aristotle about the “lawgivers”
of the same period. The general character of these “lawgivers” is a
matter of some dispute; but they appear to have differed from the
tyrants in at least two points. They governed by general consent and
they marked an earlier stage in the economic evolution of the city
state[55]. They are perhaps to be compared with the “arbitrators”
between employers and employed who in recent times have sometimes
enjoyed considerable influence[56]. When Aristotle[57] emphasizes the
fact that the best “lawgivers” were all drawn from the citizens of
moderate means (ἐκ τῶν μέσων πολιτῶν) he is making a fairly pointless
remark unless the same could not be said of the tyrants of the period.
That Aristotle did actually recognize the connexion between tyranny and
extremes of wealth and poverty is shown by another passage of the
_Politics_[58]:
For this reason it is very fortunate when those engaged in politics
have moderate but sufficient means, for where some have very great
possessions and others none, the result is either extreme democracy
or unmitigated oligarchy or tyranny, which is caused by both
extremes. For unbridled democracy and oligarchy lead to tyranny, the
intermediate and more closely allied forms of government do so far
less.
The philosopher himself may have pictured some of the early tyrants as
having risen from being penniless demagogues. The difficulties in the
way of accepting the view that a poor man ever became a tyrant before
the democratic development of the fifth century will be set forth later
in this chapter. If there is any basis of fact for Aristotle’s
statement, the early tyrants must have come from among the wealthiest of
the citizens.
[Sidenote: (_d_) evidence as to industrial conditions during and after
the age of the tyrants,]
There is nothing surprising in this conclusion. In the age that saw
merchants like Solon made practical dictators in their native
cities[59], and philosophers like Thales anticipating the Rockefellers
by making a corner in oil[60], there must have been individuals with
something of the abilities of these great men, but little of their
disinterestedness, who would be quick to grasp the possibility of
reaching through the corner to the crown.
At a later date cornering became less easy. In fifth century Athens
there were statutes and magistrates (σιτοφύλακες) to prevent corners in
corn, and we still have a speech of Lysias directed against some
speculators who had bought beyond the legal limit. The context of a
passage in this speech suggests that the general controllers of the
market (ἀγορανόμοι) were expected to be on their guard against corners
in other articles[61].
The detailed evidence in favour of this view is given in the chapters
that follow. It will be found however that these men who made themselves
tyrants through their riches were not all of them mere speculators. Some
at least had acquired their wealth from trade or industry. This means
that they were large employers of labour. There are reasons for thinking
that from this point of view they would be politically far more
influential than their successors in business in the days of the
Athenian democracy.
The big merchants and manufacturers of the fifth and fourth centuries
relied largely, and more and more as time went on, on servile labour.
The thousand miners whose services Nikias commanded were all slaves. Six
hundred slave miners were owned by his contemporary Hipponikos and three
hundred by Philemonides[62]. The hundred and twenty hands in the shield
factory of the orator Lysias were all slaves[63]. So too were the
fifty-two in the knife and bedstead factories inherited by
Demosthenes[64], and the nine or ten in the boot-making establishment of
Timarchus[65], as also those in the flute-making establishment from
which the father of Isocrates made his living[66], and the sail-makers
and drug-pounders who appear in Demosthenes _contra Olympiodorum_[67].
These instances might be multiplied[68]. Slaves were of course only a
form of wealth[69]. As human beings they were entirely without influence
on politics. It would have been another matter if Nikias had had a big
constituency of miner citizens at his entire disposal. That I believe
was one of the great differences between Nikias and Peisistratus and
generally speaking between the captains of industry in the fifth and
fourth centuries and their predecessors in the seventh and sixth. The
evidence is not decisive, but as far as it goes it all points in this
direction.
At Athens in the generation that preceded the tyranny it is reported of
Solon that “he encouraged the citizens to take up manual trades[70],” a
policy perhaps to be connected with his release from debt and
semi-slavery of the “pelatai” and the “hektemoroi[71],” since fresh
employment had possibly to be found for many of these liberated serfs.
It is further reported of Solon that he offered the citizenship to any
who “transplanted themselves to Athens with their whole family for the
sake of exercising some manual trade[72].” Aeschines quotes Solon, laws
attributed to whom were still in force when the orator flourished, to
the effect that “he does not drive a man from the platform” (_i.e._ he
allows him to speak in the assembly of citizens) “even if he is
practising some handicraft, but welcomes that class most of all[73].”
Solon himself, describing the various paths by which men pursue riches,
declares that
Another learns the works of Athena and Hephaestus of the many
crafts, and with his hands gathers a livelihood[74].
The tyrants themselves are repeatedly found making it part of their
policy to keep their subjects employed on big industrial concerns. In
more than one case we shall see their power collapsing just when this
policy becomes financially impossible[75]. This part of the tyrants’
policy is noticed by Aristotle, who quotes the dedications (buildings
and works of art) of the Cypselids at Corinth, the building of the
temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens by the Peisistratids, and the works of
Polycrates round Samos[76]. To these names we may add Theagenes of
Megara, Phalaris of Agrigentum, Aristodemus of Cumae, and the Tarquins
of Rome, all of whom are associated with works of this kind[77].
Aristotle says that the object of these works was to keep the people
busy and poor. This explanation is more than doubtful, as has been
already recognized[78]. It is not employment that leads to poverty. More
probably the tyrants pursued this industrial policy because, to quote an
expression used in another context by Plutarch, “stimulating every craft
and busying every hand it made practically the whole city wage earners
(ἔμμισθον),” employed, as in the case Plutarch is describing, by the
government of the state. In other words may not the tyrants have been
building up an industrial state of employee subjects who in their turn
involved an army of “customer subjects[79]”? The words just quoted come
from the life of Pericles[80] and refer to the way that he employed the
poorer citizens (τὸν θητικὸν ὄχλον) in the rebuilding and adornment of
Athens. Among the people so employed he mentions carpenters, sculptors,
coppersmiths, stone masons, dyers, moulders of gold and ivory, painters,
embroiderers, engravers, merchants, sailors, wheelwrights, waggoners,
drivers, rope-makers, flax workers, leather cutters, road-makers,
miners. We still possess fragments of the accounts of payments made to
these workmen or their successors some years after Pericles’ death[81].
The Alcmaeonids, the family to which Pericles belonged, had been
opponents of the house of Peisistratus for ages, and had consistently
fought it with its own weapons. Pericles himself was commonly called the
new Peisistratus[82]. His public works were a continuation of those of
Peisistratus[83]. The whole situation as well as our scanty information
about industrial conditions in the age of the tyrants alike suggest that
in this use of public works to convert the industrial classes into an
army of his own employees, which is what they very nearly were[84],
Pericles was in a very particular sense a new Peisistratus.
To judge too from the purely industrial evidence Pericles seems to have
been continuing the traditions of an earlier age. It is true that free
labour was largely employed on the restoration of the great sanctuary at
Eleusis some eighty years after the operations just referred to. An
inscription relating to the wages paid during this later undertaking
shows that the employees included 36 citizens, 39 resident aliens, 12
strangers, 2 slaves, besides 57 persons of uncertain status[85]. But
this evidence only tends to show that building was always a free man’s
trade[86]. We must beware of arguing from one trade to another or from
one particular trade to trade in general. There were doubtless many
subtle shades of status depending on the nature of either the work or
the profits[87]. As servile industry develops, it drives free labour
from work thought to be particularly damaging to body or mind such as
employment underground in mines. Speaking generally, however, there are
signs that in Athens at least between the days of the tyranny and those
of the Periclean democracy the conditions of free labour had been
radically changed. This is most obvious as regards the status of the
citizen artizan[88]. Solon refers to him without a trace of contempt and
is careful to maintain his political dignity. In so doing he appears to
have been conservative and simply following the tradition of the Homeric
age, when a prince was proud to make his own bedstead or build his own
house and a princess took pleasure in acting as palace laundress[89]. In
Attica at any rate manual labour appears to have enjoyed an equally
honourable reputation from the heroic age onwards till the end of the
age of the tyrants[90]. In the good old days, so Plato declares in the
_Critias_[91], “the other classes of citizens were engaged in
handicrafts (δημιουργίαι) and agriculture.” The earliest division of the
free population, ascribed to the half historical Theseus, comprised
three classes—nobles, farmers, and artizans (δημιουργοί)[92]. When
Solon, who was himself a merchant[93], reorganized the population he
divided it (or perhaps simply preserved an existent division) into four
classes, of which the lowest were θῆτες or day labourers[94]. The names
of the others (pentekosiomedimnoi, hippeis, zeugitai) show that this
class must have included all the artizans, the men who, in the
lawgiver’s own words, “learn the works of Athena and Hephaestus of the
many crafts.” This description of the ancient Athenian craftsmen as sons
of Pallas and Hephaestus recurs in Plato[95]. A class that is described
in this way plainly rests under no stigma. As Wallon puts it, “le
travail, loin d’être un titre d’exclusion, était un moyen d’arriver au
pouvoir[96].” Some five years after Solon’s legislation the old
classification of the free population as nobles, farmers and artizans
(δημιουργοί) reappears and the artizans secure two out of ten seats on
the board of chief magistrates[97].
But in the fifth century this has changed. Contrast the tone of Solon
with that of Xenophon[98], who states that some citizens “actually” live
by handicrafts, and that mechanical occupations are rightly held in
contempt by civilized communities. When Socrates has demonstrated to
Alcibiades that the Athenian ecclesia is made up of working men
(cobblers, criers, tent-makers and the like), he proceeds to this
inference: “if you have a contempt for them individually, then you must
have a contempt for them as a body[99].” This contempt for manual work
appears in Aristophanes, as for instance in his constant contemptuous
references to Euripides’ mother, who had been a greengrocer[100]. It is
recognized and discussed by Herodotus, who regards it as of
comparatively recent growth: as he puts it, “most of the Greeks have
learned to despise artizans[101].” His view is supported by Isocrates,
who when describing the state of things that prevailed in the Athens of
Solon and Cleisthenes, declares that “the propertied classes, so far
from despising those who were not so well off, ... relieved their
necessities, giving some of them farms at moderate rents, sending out
others to travel as merchants, supplying others with capital for their
various employments (ἐργασίας)[102].” The passage just quoted is no
doubt tendencious. But, as maintained by Mauri[103], it does indicate
that labour was not despised in archaic Athens. More than that it
suggests that in the days of Solon and Cleisthenes there was a good deal
of free labour under the patronage, if not in the actual employment, of
rich individuals. The transformation that began in the fifth century
seems to have occurred gradually. It had not been completed when
Herodotus wrote. Among the Athenian citizens who just at that time were
being employed by Pericles on the Athenian acropolis we have seen from
Plutarch that there were included carpenters, smiths, and leather
workers. In the next generation we find Xenophon declaring that most of
those who understand these crafts are servile. The words are put into
the mouth of Socrates, who was the younger contemporary of Herodotus by
some fifteen years[104]. Socrates and Xenophon however sometimes voice
the earlier view. In the _Apology_ for instance artizans are compared
favourably with politicians, poets, and the like[105]. Similarly in the
_de Vectigalibus_ of Xenophon, in which the writer expresses some of his
own personal views, artizans are placed with no suggestion of
inferiority in the company of sophists, philosophers, poets, and
sight-seers[106]. In Plato, except for the passage just quoted from the
_Apology_, manual labour is consistently condemned as unworthy of a free
man in a free city[107]. He would have no member of a state or even the
slave of a citizen among those engaged in manual trades[108]. He admits
that there is nothing inherently ignoble in trade, but explains at
length how all trading has in fact become so[109]. Trade has come to
imply money-making and to mean that the city where it flourishes is
“infected with money of silver and gold, than which, speaking generally,
no greater evil could arise for a city that aimed at producing just and
noble characters[110].” When Plato is building up his ideal state wage
earning is left to those citizens who are mentally deficient[111]. Plato
is above all things an independent thinker with no great respect for the
masses and less still for popular opinion. But in this particular point
his views do not seem to be unusual. He is echoed again and again by
Aristotle: “Citizens ought not to live the life of an artizan or
tradesman[112].” “Farmers and artizans and all the working-class element
must exist in cities: but the real constituents of the city are the
military class and the parliamentarians[113].” “The best city will not
make the artizan a citizen[114].” “The city where the artizans are
numerous and men at arms are few cannot attain to greatness[115].” The
speech of Demosthenes against Euboulides makes it plain that in the
fourth century a doubtful claim to Athenian citizenship might be damaged
by pointing out that the claimant was a small tradesman. “It is your
duty,” the orator makes his client say to the jury, “to uphold the laws
and not to regard as outlanders people who work for their living (τοὺς
ἐργαζομένους)[116].” Aristotle and Euboulides would have agreed with
Pollux[117], our earliest lexicographer (second century A.D.), that
thetes is a name for free men who out of poverty do slave’s work for
money (ἐπ’ ἀργυρίῳ δουλευόντων).
The Greeks despised the artizan largely because of his lack of leisure
and impaired physique which to their minds necessarily implied a lack of
culture and a weakened intelligence[118]. This being the ground of their
contempt, the feeling must plainly have grown up when the claims of
culture and of industry had become exacting. This means that it was
probably subsequent to and a result of the industrial developments of
the age of the tyrants; and this dating is confirmed by other
considerations.
The growth of contempt for labour has been explained by Drumann[119] as
due in part at least to the Persian wars and the resultant plunder,
which must have made a good many citizens financially independent. The
payment of the huge panels of jurymen, which at Athens did so much to
release the poorer citizens from the necessity to work, was an ultimate
outcome of the Persian wars. The Peloponnesian war may have completed
the process. It lasted through nearly thirty campaigns (431–404 B.C.)
and must have deeply disorganized the labour market. Slaves must in all
directions have supplanted the free men who were wanted for military
service, just as women took men’s places in the modern counterpart of
the Greek disaster[120]. The continued campaigning is sure to have left
many of the fighting men with a distaste for the dull routine of
industry[121]. In the _Plutus_ of Aristophanes, brought out in 388 B.C.,
Poverty argues against an even distribution of wealth on the ground that
it would destroy the slave trade and drive free men to manual labour as
smiths, shipbuilders, tailors, wheelwrights, shoemakers, brickmakers,
laundrymen, tanners and ploughmen[122]. Rather than return to their
trades they preferred active service in distant lands. When early in the
fourth century Agesilaus of Sparta was campaigning in Asia Minor against
the King of Persia we are told that most of his troops except his own
Spartans were potters, smiths, carpenters and the like[123]. Mechanical
occupations are said by Aristotle to have been in his own days in some
Greek cities mainly in the hands of slaves and outlanders: “in ancient
times in some cities the artizan element (τὸ βάναυσον) was servile or
alien, for which reason most of them are such now[124].” This growing
contempt and dislike for manual labour as such, combined with the
passion for freedom and independence, would make free citizens
particularly unwilling to become factory hands or miners or anything
that meant working under a master for a daily wage, the receipt of which
tended to be regarded as a degradation[125]. Ciccotti[126] observes that
piece work becomes much commoner at this period. He explains the
tendency in abstract Marxian principles. The change may be due to much
more human causes, such as the workman’s growing desire to work his own
hours at his own pace. The work that the free man refused to do was
undertaken by the growing population of slaves. There was at this time a
glut in the slave market, as is sufficiently proved by the single fact
that while the prices of all other commodities went up in the fifth and
fourth centuries, that of slaves went down[127]. Among the unpleasant
occupations that fell more and more completely into servile hands were
mining and quarrying[128], two of the occupations with which we shall
find that the early tyrants were most frequently concerned.
If therefore in the fifth and fourth centuries citizen craftsmen appear
to have worked mainly in small individual concerns[129], it by no means
follows that the same was the case in the seventh and sixth centuries.
The conditions during the later period were due to causes that only
began to operate during that period. On the other hand industry must
have begun to organize itself into considerable concerns somewhere about
the beginning of the earlier period, at the time of the developments
that are admittedly associated with the beginnings of tyranny. What was
the status of the employees in these earlier enterprises such as the
potteries of Corinth, the sixth century mines at Laurium, or the metal
and woollen works at Samos? Almost our only piece of direct evidence on
this subject is a statement of Alexis[130] that Polycrates the tyrant of
Samos, whose connexion with Samian industry is established in Chapter
III, “used to send for skilled artizans at very high wages (μετεστέλλετο
τεχνίτας ἐπὶ μισθοῖς μεγίστοις).” These highly paid artizans may have
been foreigners—Athenians, Milesians, or the like[131]—but they can
scarcely have been slaves. Indirect evidence in the same direction is
more abundant. Periander for example, the second tyrant of Corinth
(about 620–580 B.C.), is said to have forbidden the purchase of
slaves[132]. This regulation looks like an attempt towards the end of
the period of tyranny at Corinth to stem an influx of servile labour.
It is doubtful whether slave owning on a large scale existed at this
period[133]. The Greeks of the fifth and fourth centuries regarded
slavery as they knew it as a modern development[134]. Timaeus says[135]
that till recently the Locrians had a law and likewise the Phocians
against possessing either maid servants or slaves (οὔτε θεραπαίνας οὔτε
οἰκέτας) and that Mnason the friend of Aristotle having acquired a
thousand slaves was ill-spoken of (διαβληθῆναι) among the Phocians as
having deprived that number of the citizens of their daily bread. There
is much therefore to be said for the view expressed by Clerc[136] that
free labour flourished afresh in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.
with the overthrow of aristocracies, or in other words in the age of the
early tyrants. Ciccotti has recently well observed that in all the
literature from the hymn of Demeter to the writings of Plutarch slaves
occupy no place in the picture of social conditions at this period[137].
It was long ago recognized by Buechsenschuetz[138] that in preclassical
Greece the manual trades were in the hands of free men, but each man was
his own master, there being no factories or division of labour. In
classical times there was considerable division of labour and there were
businesses employing a large number of hands, but citizens seldom worked
in them. The age of the tyrants falls between the two epochs just
formulated. It is the one short epoch in Greek history when there were
probably considerable industrial enterprises employing citizen labour.
Thus it is the age in Greek history when apart from all details of
evidence there would be the greatest _a priori_ possibility of an
individual having secured the political power which may fall to the
employer of organized free labour on a large scale[139].
It is difficult in these days to realize how unique a situation is here
implied. We are apt to forget how completely slaves were excluded from
any part whatsoever in the life of the state. Politically they were
non-existent, and the whole free population was vitally concerned in
keeping them so. The slave was an essential form of property. To
question the institution of slavery in ancient Greece was like
questioning the fundamental claims of property in modern Europe. It was
a proclamation of war to the knife against the whole established order
of things. Individual slaves might win freedom and political rights, but
any organized effort at emancipation on the part of the slaves
themselves was put down with merciless severity. When in 71 B.C. Pompey
and Crassus had crushed the slave rebellion of Spartacus, the moderate
and statesmanlike revolutionary whose name has come again to such
prominence in recent days, six thousand of his followers were crucified
along the road from Rome to Naples. The distance is about 150 miles. At
the time therefore of this exemplary punishment if anyone had occasion
to pass along the road in question, one of the most frequented in the
whole Roman state, he would see some forty of these victims writhing in
agony or hanging dead upon the cross for every mile of his journey. No
piece of frightfulness quite so thorough and methodical is to be found
in all the frightful history of the present century. The punishment of
71 B.C. is typical of the whole attitude of the ancient republics of
Greece and Rome towards rebellious slaves. No wonder then if in their
history servile labour played no active part[140].
[Sidenote: (_e_) the history of the states where there was never a
tyrant,]
Some parts of Greece never passed under a tyrant. The most conspicuous
of these is Sparta[141]. The Spartans never struck real coins. The iron
pieces “heavy and hard to carry[142]” that formed the classical Spartan
currency seem to be a survival of a premonetary medium of exchange[143].
Sparta was also practically without any urban population[144]. It may be
more than an accidental coincidence that the most anti-tyrannical state
in Greece was without a real coinage, and backward in trade and
industry.
Another region where nothing is heard of early tyrants is Thessaly.
Thessaly had a large serf population called πενέσται, whose position
much resembled that of the Spartan helots[145]. Both were mainly
agricultural labourers, _asscripti glebae_. Such a population might
serve the purpose of a would-be military despot. Pausanias, the Spartan
generalissimo against the Persians, had dealings with the helots when he
was trying to make himself tyrant of all Greece[146]. But for a
commercial tyrant they would not be very useful material. The other
important district that seems to have been immune from tyrants is
Boeotia. It is natural to associate this immunity with the dominantly
agricultural character of the district where Hesiod wrote his _Works and
Days_[147].
[Sidenote: (_f_) steps taken to prevent a recurrence of tyranny.]
When the tyrants had been suppressed or expelled, or their families
became extinct, the government in most cases either reverted to an
oligarchy or developed into a democracy. Oligarchs and democrats (or at
least democratic governments) seem to have been equally inspired with a
hatred of the tyranny. The steps that they took and the fears that they
displayed under that influence may be expected to throw light on the
source of the tyrant’s power. Once more however it is necessary to limit
ourselves to the fifth century, when the conception of the tyrant had
not yet undergone the great change that came over it in the days of
Dionysius of Syracuse[148].
Of the oligarchic Greek states our knowledge is comparatively slight.
History has preserved for us no oligarchic counterpart to the picture
that we still possess of democratic Athens. But thanks to the _Politics_
of Aristotle, that precious storehouse of incidental statements and
remarks, the fact has come down to us that[149] “in many oligarchies it
is not allowed to engage in business (χρηματίζεσθαι, perhaps better
construed ‘money-making’), but there are laws forbidding it.”
Of the anti-tyrannical measures of democratic Athens during the century
that followed the expulsion of the Peisistratids we are better informed.
So are we also as to the measures taken in the early days of republican
Rome to prevent a re-establishment of the kingship. The evidence
supports the view that in both cases what the established government
mainly feared was the rich man becoming politically powerful by means of
his riches.
Only, if that view is right, why is it nowhere specifically formulated
in extant records?
[Sidenote: The evidence is not conclusive; but contemporary documents
are meagre and no Greek writers say much about economic
causes.]
One set of causes has already been incidentally indicated. The state of
things that could lead to a tyranny of the early type was passing away
at the time of the Persian wars. The payment of jurymen rendered a
recurrence of it in Athens finally impossible. Sparta had always been
equally averse from making either coins or tyrants. What Athens and
Sparta both disapproved of had little chance of finding a home in fifth
century Greece. It was during this period that Herodotus and Thucydides,
our earliest Greek historians, composed their works. Each wrote the
history of a great war. But even if their themes had been more peaceful,
it would be a mistake to imagine that their enquiries into economic
causes would have been any more searching. Cornford in his illuminating
study of Thucydides[150] complains of the general blindness of the
Greeks in this direction. This is hardly fair on the Greeks. Thucydides
and his successors are not unusually blind. It is the moderns who are
unusual in the way they fix their eyes upon this particular aspect of
history. Only in times of financial and industrial revolution does the
world at large become distinctly conscious of the financial and
industrial basis of its social and political organization. The
revolution now proceeding has produced this effect. It has led modern
historians to concentrate, perhaps unduly, upon the investigation of
economic causes and conditions. From this modern point of view the Bank
of England or the Standard Oil Company is as fruitful and important a
subject of historical research as the policy of a prime minister or the
strategy of a general. But this attitude is unusual. The financial
revolution associated with the realms of Gyges and Pheidon had been
accepted by the whole Greek world before the outbreak of the Persian
wars. For writers of the new epoch that began with Salamis and Plataea
economic conditions must have appeared a changeless and somewhat boring
factor. If the early tyrants had previously been kings of finance or
industry, we must not expect many statements or illustrations of the
fact in the _Persian Wars_ of Herodotus, or the _Peloponnesian War_ of
Thucydides. It should satisfy us if, as is the case, their allusions to
the tyranny are all in complete harmony with that hypothesis.
[Sidenote: The view is at variance with statements of Plato, Aristotle,
and subsequent writers:]
The writers of the fourth century offer a more serious difficulty. Both
Plato and Aristotle deal at some length with the origin of tyranny, and
both give explanations quite different from the one that is here
offered. As their accounts have been the basis of all subsequent views,
it is necessary to state briefly what they are.
According to Plato[151] “it is fairly plain that tyranny develops out of
democracy.”
When a tyrant comes into being, the root he springs from is the
people’s champion, and no other.... What then is the beginning of
the change from protector to tyrant?... The people’s champion
finding a multitude very ready to follow him ... enslaves and
slaughters, and hints at the abolition of debts and the partition of
land. When such a man so behaves, is he not subsequently bound and
doomed either to be destroyed by his enemies or to become tyrant and
be changed from a man into a wolf? This is what becomes of the
leader of the rebellion against the owners of property[152].
Plato goes on to describe how the tyrant either gets banished and
effects his return by force or avoids exile only by the famous expedient
of demanding a bodyguard.
Aristotle’s account is similar, but less rigid, and emphasizes the
military element. “In ancient times, whenever the same individual became
both demagogue and general, the result was a tyranny. It is fairly true
to say that the majority of the early tyrants have developed out of
demagogues[153].” Other tyrants he describes as establishing themselves
as such after having previously either reigned as kings or held for a
long period some important office[154]. In ancient times Aristotle
includes the fifth century (and perhaps the beginning of the fourth), as
is shown by his quoting Dionysius of Syracuse[155]. Plato’s treatment is
less historical, but as he specifically excludes the possibility of any
other sort of tyrant pedigree than that he gives, his account is plainly
meant to hold good for all periods[156].
[Sidenote: but their picture of the rise of tyranny clashes with known
facts about the period,]
In short both Plato and Aristotle regard their accounts of the
tyrant’s origin as being of general application. As such they have
always been accepted, and not at first sight without reason. The
Platonic-Aristotelian pedigree (with an alternative) is already
ascribed to the tyrant by Herodotus: “under a democracy it is
impossible for corruption not to prevail ..., until some individual,
championing the people (προστὰς τοῦ δήμου) blossoms out into a monarch
(ρεϡτε μούναρχος = tyrant)[157].” But what are the facts? The process
just described makes the early tyrant develop out of a demagogue who
is usually also a general. Demagogues may have existed in Greece
before tyrannies began to be established; but the evidence for their
having done so is extraordinarily meagre[158], and it is highly
doubtful whether Aristotle adds to it. He does not attempt a picture
of a seventh or sixth century demagogue. Those of his own day secured
their influence by confiscations effected through the popular
courts[159]. They are essentially the product of a full-blown
democracy, and pretyrannical democracies are extremely doubtful.
Athens is a special and only partial case, and even there, in spite of
Solon, Herodotus[160] can speak of Cleisthenes, who overthrew the
tyranny, as “the man who established the democracy.” The demagogues
from whom Aristotle derives his early tyrants are mainly military
demagogues: “the tyrant,” he says, “is also prone to make war[161].”
This statement is hardly borne out by the facts. As a body, in spite of
the times they lived in, the early tyrants were remarkable for their
works not of war but of peace[162]. Some of them indeed, as for instance
Orthagoras and Peisistratus, are reported to have distinguished
themselves as soldiers before they became tyrants. The warlike exploits
of the youthful Orthagoras are discussed below[163]. He cannot have been
really prone to militarism, since Aristotle declares that a successor of
his altered the character of the Sicyonian tyranny by becoming
warlike[164]. Peisistratus’ early feats of war are well attested.
Naturally enough he made political capital out of them. “He asked of the
people that he should receive from them a bodyguard, having previously
distinguished himself in the expedition against Megara, when he captured
Nisaea and performed other great deeds[165].” But earlier in the same
chapter Herodotus has made it perfectly plain that Peisistratus was not
a military despot. “Having formed designs on the tyranny he raised a
third faction, and having collected partizans, and posing as a champion
of the Hillmen, he devised as follows.” It was the faction of the
Hillmen and not[166] the Megarean expedition, that was the
stepping-stone to the tyranny. Who the Hillmen were is discussed in the
chapter on Athens. It has never been suggested that they were
military[167].
A military demagogue who makes himself tyrant is essentially the product
of an advanced democracy threatened by invasion from without. When the
tyrants of the seventh and sixth centuries secured their positions there
was no foreign invader without the gates and no democracy within.
Aristotle[168] calls democracy “the last word in tyranny” (ἡ τελευταία
τυραννίς). From the point of view of historical development the converse
comes much nearer to the truth, and tyranny is the first word in
democracy. [Sidenote: and is due to false generalizations from the
conditions of their own days,] The evolution of the tyrant as described
in Aristotle and Plato cannot have taken place until after the reforms
of Cleisthenes or precisely the period when the last of the early
tyrants was finally banished from Greece. The two philosophers, and
likewise Herodotus in the passage just quoted[169], must be reading into
more ancient times a state of things that only became prevalent shortly
before their own[170]. The words of Herodotus are put into the mouth of
Darius. This means that they really hang loose and may be influenced by
the careers of contemporary demagogues like Cleon.
[Sidenote: and particularly from the career of Dionysius of Syracuse.]
But the main source of error lies in Plato and Aristotle, and is still
more obvious. The most distinguished figure in the political history of
the early part of the fourth century was Dionysius of Syracuse.
Dionysius is, like Plato’s tyrant in the _Republic_, the product of
democracy: like Aristotle’s in the _Politics_ he begins his career as a
military demagogue. The resemblances are not accidental. Dionysius made
himself tyrant when Plato was just reaching manhood. Plato visited his
court and few political experiments have become more famous than Plato’s
attempt to turn the tyrant’s son into the ideal philosopher king[171].
Aristotle naturally shared his master’s interest in the famous
Syracusan. His _Politics_ bears frequent witness to the fact. It
contains only eight references each to the tyrant houses of Corinth and
Athens as against twenty to those of Syracuse (eleven to the Dionysii
and Dion, nine to the Deinomenidae). Of the three individuals,
Theagenes, Peisistratus, Dionysius, chosen to illustrate the way a
tyrant may be produced out of a military demagogue, Dionysius is the
only one whose career the process fits.
Other philosophers of the period wrote under the same dominant
influence, notably Aeschines the Socratic, and Aristippus, both of whom
had stayed with the tyrant[172]. Similarly with the fourth century
historians: their notion of a tyrant was Dionysius as described by that
potentate’s own historian, his fellow-citizen Philistus.
Everything tended to confirm this view. The greatness of Dionysius
naturally drew attention to that of Gelo and Hiero, his predecessors at
Syracuse. Gelo and Hiero were, like Dionysius, military despots. To
later generations they were the great soldiers who had saved Sicily from
the Carthaginians and Etruscans. Their contemporary Pausanias had tried
to raise himself from generalissimo of the Greek army to tyrant of all
Greece[173]. These events were still in men’s minds. Of the earlier
tyrants they had only hazy notions[174]. The best remembered were
probably the Peisistratids, both from their late date and from the fact
that they were Athenians. Peisistratus, as has been already noticed,
chanced early in his career to have distinguished himself as a soldier.
It so happened that Polycrates, the other great tyrant of the latter
half of the sixth century, also engaged in war. It was forced upon him
by the Persians. The evidence is all against the view that it was the
basis of his power. But the warlike achievements of these two rulers,
the last and perhaps the greatest of the earlier tyrants, lent colour to
Aristotle’s hasty generalizations[175].
Aristotle himself, speaking of the ways of maintaining a tyranny, says
that “the traditional method, in accordance with which most tyrants
conduct their government, is said to have been mainly instituted by
Periander of Corinth[176]?” Only a few pages later in the same work[177]
we are told that Periander abandoned the policy of his father Cypselus
and that he did so by becoming warlike or in other words by
approximating more to Dionysius of Syracuse. Once more then the typical
tyrant of Aristotle is a ruler who departs from the policy of a typical
founder of an early tyranny.
For an example of the victory of the Aristotelian view over the truth we
may compare Herodotus, I. 59, which states that Peisistratus, who had
fought against Megara, made himself tyrant by means of the faction of
the Hillmen, with Justin, II. 8, according to whom “Peisistratus, as
though he had conquered (the Megareans) for himself, not for his
country, seized by craft the tyranny.” Justin is a perversion of a
passage in Chapter 14 of the Aristotelian _Constitution of Athens_,
which states that Peisistratus, “having the reputation of being a great
friend of the people, and having greatly distinguished himself in the
war against Megara,” secured his bodyguard and the tyranny. Aristotle
misinterprets the Hillmen and exaggerates the importance of the Megarean
expedition. Justin omits the former altogether and makes the latter the
sole cause of Peisistratus obtaining the tyranny.
Aristotle’s conception of the tyrant class as drawn mainly from that of
the military demagogue was taken over by the Romans. In the chapter on
Rome it will be shown how little this conception fits in with the
Romans’ own early history. But the times before the great wars at Rome
(Samnite, Pyrrhic, Punic) are like those before the Persian wars in
Greece. They belong to a different epoch from those that follow. The
later history of the Roman republic harmonizes with Aristotle’s view.
The Gracchi may be represented as demagogues who failed to make
themselves supreme for lack of military power[178]. Marius, Pompey, and
Caesar succeeded in proportion as they realized the Aristotelian
combination. The fourth century conception was therefore unchallenged by
Roman writers, the more so since Dionysius appears for a while to have
dominated the Roman conception of a Greek tyrant[179]. Fortunately
however, owing to the careless way the Roman historians worked over
their material, they have left us glimpses of the different conditions
that had once existed.
The view that was thus disseminated in classical Greece and Rome was
naturally accepted by the scholars of the renaissance and has prevailed
ever since.