Tyrant
A tyrant, in the modern English usage of the word, is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defend their positions by resorting to repressive means. The original Greek term meant an absolute sovereign who came to power without constitutional right, yet the word had a neutral connotation during the Archaic and early Classical periods. However, Greek philosopher Plato saw tyrannos as a negative form of government, and on account of the decisive influence of philosophy on politics, deemed tyranny the "fourth and worst disorder of a state."
The philosophers Plato and Aristotle defined a tyrant as a person who rules without law, using extreme and cruel methods against both his own people and others. The Encyclopédie defined the term as a usurper of sovereign power who makes "his subjects the victims of his passions and unjust desires, which he substitutes for laws".
In the late fifth and fourth centuries BC, a new kind of tyrant, one who had the support of the military, arose – specifically in Sicily.
One can apply accusations of tyranny to a variety of types of government:
- to government by one individual
- to government by a minority
- to government by a majority
Etymology
The word derives from Latin tyrannus, meaning, and this in turn from the Greek τύραννος ; is of Pre-Greek origin, perhaps from Lydian. The final -t arises in Old French by association with the present participles in -ant.
Definition
"The word 'tyranny' is used with many meanings, not only by the Greeks but throughout the tradition of the great books." The Oxford English Dictionary offers alternative definitions: a ruler, an illegitimate ruler, an absolute ruler, or an oppressive, unjust, or cruel ruler. The term is usually applied to vicious autocrats who rule their subjects by brutal methods. Scholar Paul Rahe has asserted that tyrannical rule "in one form or another" has "been the norm throughout human history", and added that "it is not apt to disappear."Greco-Roman culture
and Sicilian tyrants were influential opportunists that came to power by securing the support of different factions of a deme. The word tyrannos, possibly pre-Greek, Pelasgian or eastern in origin, then carried a neutral censure; it simply referred to anyone who obtained political power in a polis by extralegal means. Support for the tyrants could come from fellow oligarchs, from the growing middle class or from the peasants who had no land or were in debt to the wealthy landowners.The Greek tyrants stayed in power by using mercenary soldiers from outside of their respective city-state. To mock tyranny, Thales wrote that the strangest thing to see is "an aged tyrant", meaning that tyrants do not have the public support to survive for long.
Archaic tyrants
One of the earliest known uses of the word 'tyrant' was by the poet Archilochus in reference to king Gyges of Lydia. Gyges obtained his power by killing King Candaules and marrying his queen.The heyday of the Archaic period tyrants came in the early 6th century BC, when Cleisthenes ruled Sicyon in the Peloponnesus and Polycrates ruled Samos. During this time, revolts overthrew many governments in the Aegean world. Chilon, the ambitious and capable ephor of Sparta, built a strong alliance amongst neighboring states by making common cause with these groups seeking to oppose unpopular tyrannical rule. By intervening against the tyrants of Sicyon, Corinth and Athens, Sparta thus came to assume Hellenic leadership prior to the Persian invasions. Simultaneously Persia first started making inroads into Greece, and many tyrants sought Persian help against popular forces seeking to remove them.
Corinth
Corinth hosted one of the earliest of Greek tyrants. In Corinth, growing wealth from colonial enterprises, and the wider horizons brought about by the export of wine and oil, together with the new experiences of the Eastern Mediterranean brought back by returning mercenary hoplites employed overseas created a new environment. Conditions were right for Cypselus to overthrow the aristocratic power of the dominant but unpopular clan of Bacchiadae. Clan members were killed, executed, driven out or exiled in 657 BC. Corinth prospered economically under his rule, and Cypselus managed to rule without a bodyguard. When he then bequeathed his position to his son, Periander. Periander was less popular than his father and was reputed to be more brutal.Nevertheless, under Cypselus and Periander, Corinth extended and tightened her control over her colonial enterprises, and exports of Corinthian pottery flourished. However, tyrants seldom succeeded in establishing an untroubled line of succession. Periander threw his pregnant wife downstairs, burnt his concubines alive, exiled his son, warred with his father-in-law and attempted to castrate 300 sons of his perceived enemies. He retained his position. Periander's successor was less fortunate and was expelled. Afterward, Corinth was ruled by an oligarchy that would eventually be overthrown in a pro-democratic revolution in the 4th century.
Athens
Athens hosted its tyrants late in the Archaic period. In Athens, the inhabitants first gave the title of tyrant to Peisistratos who succeeded in 546 BC, after two failed attempts, to install himself as tyrant. Supported by the prosperity of the peasantry and landowning interests of the plain, which was prospering from the rise of olive oil exports, as well as his clients from Marathon, he managed to achieve absolute power. Through an ambitious program of public works, which included fostering the state cult of Athena; encouraging the creation of festivals; supporting the Panathenaic Games in which prizes were jars of olive oil; and supporting the Dionysia, Peisistratos managed to maintain his personal popularity.He was followed by his sons, and with the subsequent growth of Athenian democracy, the title "tyrant" took on its familiar negative connotations. The murder of Peisistratos' son, the tyrant Hipparchus by Aristogeiton and Harmodios in Athens in 514 BC, and were referred to since as the "tyrannicides". In 510 Hippias, the brother of Hipparchus, was expelled by a combination of intrigue, exile and Spartan arms. The anti-tyrannical attitude became especially prevalent in Athens after 508 BC, when Cleisthenes reformed the political system so that it resembled demokratia. Hippias offered to rule the Greeks on behalf of the Persians and provided military advice to the Persians against the Greeks.
Sicilian tyrants
The best known Sicilian tyrants appeared long after the Archaic period. The tyrannies of Sicily came about due to similar causes, but here the threat of Carthaginian attack prolonged tyranny, facilitating the rise of military leaders with the people united behind them. Such examples of Sicilian tyrants are Gelo, Hiero I, Dionysius the Elder, Dionysius the Younger, and Agathocles of Syracuse. The dangers threatening the lives of the Sicilian tyrants are highlighted in the moral tale of the Sword of Damocles.Later tyrants
Under the Macedonian hegemony in the 4th and 3rd century BC a new generation of tyrants rose in Greece, especially under the rule of king Antigonus II Gonatas, who installed his puppets in many cities of the Peloponnese. Examples were Cleon of Sicyon, Aristodemus of Megalopolis, Aristomachus I of Argos, Abantidas of Sicyon, Aristippus of Argos, Lydiadas of Megalopolis, Aristomachus II of Argos, and Xenon of Hermione.Against these rulers, in 280 BC the democratic cities started to join forces in the Achaean League which was able to expand its influence even into Corinthia, Megaris, Argolis and Arcadia. From 251 BC under the leadership of Aratus of Sicyon, the Achaeans liberated many cities, in several cases by convincing the tyrants to step down, and when Aratus died in 213 BC, Hellas had been free of tyrants for more than 15 years. The last tyrant on the Greek mainland, Nabis of Sparta, was assassinated in 192 BC.
Roman tyrants
Roman historians like Suetonius, Tacitus, Plutarch, and Josephus often spoke of "tyranny" in opposition to "liberty". Tyranny was associated with imperial rule and those rulers who usurped too much authority from the Roman Senate. Those who were advocates of "liberty" tended to be pro-Republic and pro-Senate. For instance, regarding Julius Caesar and his assassins, Suetonius wrote:Citizens of the empire were circumspect in identifying tyrants. "Cicero's head and hands cut off and nailed to the rostrum of the Senate to remind everyone of the perils of speaking out against tyranny."
Josephus identified tyrants in Biblical history including Nimrod, Moses, the Maccabees and Herod the Great.
Greek political thought
The Greeks defined both usurpers and those inheriting rule from usurpers as tyrants. Polybius indicated that eventually, any one-man rule governing form would become corrupted into a tyranny.The Greek philosophers stressed the quality of rule rather than legitimacy or absolutism. "Both Plato and Aristotle speak of the king as a good monarch and the tyrant as a bad one. Both say that monarchy, or rule by a single man, is royal when it is for the welfare of the ruled and tyrannical when it serves only the interest of the ruler. Both make lawlessness – either a violation of existing laws or government by personal fiat without settled laws – a mark of tyranny."
In the classics
Tyranny is considered an important subject, one of the "Great Ideas" of Western thought. The classics contain many references to tyranny and its causes, effects, methods, practitioners, alternatives. They consider tyranny from historical, religious, ethical, political and fictional perspectives. "If any point in political theory is indisputable, it would seem to be that tyranny is the worst corruption of government – a vicious misuse of power and a violent abuse of human beings who are subject to it." While this may represent a consensus position among the classics, it is not unanimous – Thomas Hobbes dissented, claiming no objective distinction, such as being vicious or virtuous, existed among monarchs. "They that are discontented under monarchy, call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy, call it anarchy..."The first part of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy describes tyrants in the seventh level of Hell, where they are submerged in boiling blood. These include Alexander the Great and Attila the Hun, and share the level with highway robbers.
Niccolò Machiavelli described tyrannical rule in The Prince, while never actually using the word "tyrant", instead referring to such individuals as "princes". This is regardless of the legitimacy of the ruler's position -- in his Discourses on Livy he even sometimes calls leaders of republics "princes". He also does not share in the traditional view of tyranny, and in his Discourses he sometimes explicitly acts as an advisor to tyrants.
The Ancient Greeks, as well as those who lived in and governed the Roman Republic, became generally quite wary of many people seeking to implement a popular coup. Shakespeare portrays the struggle of one such anti-tyrannical Roman, Marcus Junius Brutus, in his play Julius Caesar.
In Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, Chapter III, Augustus was shown to assume the power of a tyrant while sharing power with the reformed senate. "After a decent resistance, the crafty tyrant submitted to the orders of the senate; and consented to receive the government of the provinces, and the general command of the Roman armies..." Emperors "humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed." The Roman Empire "may be defined as an absolute monarchy disguised by the forms of a commonwealth."