Read Ebook: The Origin of Tyranny by Ure P N Percy Neville

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Ever in the quest of noble achievements Toil and outlay strive after the issue.

So elsewhere 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." He wrote these words between 342 and 339 B.C., 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.

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 and not a tyrant."

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.

There is nothing surprising in this conclusion. In the age that saw merchants like Solon made practical dictators in their native cities, and philosophers like Thales anticipating the Rockefellers by making a corner in oil, 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 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 were expected to be on their guard against corners in other articles.

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.

At Athens in the generation that preceded the tyranny it is reported of Solon that "he encouraged the citizens to take up manual trades," a policy perhaps to be connected with his release from debt and semi-slavery of the "pelatai" and the "hektemoroi," 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." 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" "even if he is practising some handicraft, but welcomes that class most of all." 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.

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. This part of the tyrants' policy is noticed by Aristotle, who quotes the dedications 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. 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. 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. 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 ," 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"? The words just quoted come from the life of Pericles and refer to the way that he employed the poorer citizens 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. 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. His public works were a continuation of those of Peisistratus. 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, Pericles was in a very particular sense a new Peisistratus.

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. 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.

It is doubtful whether slave owning on a large scale existed at this period. The Greeks of the fifth and fourth centuries regarded slavery as they knew it as a modern development. Timaeus says that till recently the Locrians had a law and likewise the Phocians against possessing either maid servants or slaves and that Mnason the friend of Aristotle having acquired a thousand slaves was ill-spoken of 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 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.

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.

Some parts of Greece never passed under a tyrant. The most conspicuous of these is Sparta. The Spartans never struck real coins. The iron pieces "heavy and hard to carry" that formed the classical Spartan currency seem to be a survival of a premonetary medium of exchange. Sparta was also practically without any urban population. 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.

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 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.

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?

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 "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.

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." 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. In ancient times Aristotle includes the fifth century , as is shown by his quoting Dionysius of Syracuse. 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.

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 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 blossoms out into a monarch ." 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, 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. 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 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."

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. 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. 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. 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." 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 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.

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 calls democracy "the last word in tyranny" . From the point of view of historical development the converse comes much nearer to the truth, and tyranny is the first word in democracy. 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, must be reading into more ancient times a state of things that only became prevalent shortly before their own. 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.

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. 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. These events were still in men's minds. Of the earlier tyrants they had only hazy notions. 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.

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?" Only a few pages later in the same work 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.

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 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. 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. 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.

Of all the tyrants of the seventh and sixth centuries none are so well known to us as those who reigned at Athens. No other city has left us so clear a picture of the state of things not only during the tyranny but also immediately before and after it. Solon lived to see Peisistratus make himself supreme. Herodotus, born a Persian subject about 484 B.C., must have had opportunities of questioning first-hand authorities on the later years of the Athenian tyranny, while his younger contemporary Thucydides was in a particularly favoured position for getting information on this subject through his relationship with the Philaidae, of whose rivalry with the Peisistratidae there will be occasion to speak later in this chapter.

This comparative abundance of information is the reason why Athens has been made the starting-point of this enquiry. But even so our knowledge is meagre enough. And there is a special reason for using it with caution. So far in the history of the world there has been only one Athens. The developments that took place in the city during the first two centuries of the democracy are without parallel. Can we be certain that Athens was not already unique in the period immediately preceding? One point in which the Athenian tyranny was exceptional meets us at the first glance. With the single exception of Samos, all the other famous tyrannies of the earlier type, at least in the Aegean area, arose in the seventh century. But apart from this fact it will be found that the tyranny at Athens in the sixth century followed the same course as it appears to have done at places like Corinth and Argos, Sardis and Miletus in the seventh. The more highly developed an organism is, the longer it takes to reach maturity. This is perhaps the reason why Athens in the sixth century appears in some respects to be a hundred years behind some of the cities whom she was destined so completely to eclipse.

Athens was not exclusively commercial. Her large territory made her partly agricultural. To this fact may be due her failure to compete commercially in the seventh century with cities like Aegina and Corinth. Hence too the late rise of the tyranny. It appears only when the commercial and industrial element had got the upper hand. There was indeed the attempt of Cylon, who conspired to make himself tyrant within a generation of the first appearance of tyranny on the mainland of Greece. But Cylon failed because, though wealthy and influential , he could not possibly, in the Athens of his day, be the leader of any dominant organized commercial activity. He was merely an ambitious member of the aristocracy , connected with the great band of merchant princes only by marriage. The attempt and its result are both what might have been expected from the position of Athens at the time.

Soon after Cylon's attempt Athens began to rival Corinth in the pottery trade, and the influence of the rich city merchants and exporters doubtless increased. But even in pottery the great vogue of Attic ware was still to come, and Solon's measures for encouraging the growth of olives and the export of olive oil also belong to this period: the importance of the landed aristocracy who owned the olive yards must have increased almost equally. No merchant therefore attempted by means of the wealth that he had amassed or the labour that he employed to seize the tyranny. The landed aristocracy were also wealthy and they too employed much labour, and it so happened that the best part of the Attic plain, where lay their estates, was situated round the city, as Cylon discovered to his cost when he seized the Acropolis. Tyranny was almost impossible.

The leading man at Athens was not a mere millionaire, as in the more exclusively trading states. Solon had indeed some experience of trade, but he was essentially a politician with a gift for finance, not a financier or merchant with political ambitions. He became not a tyrant but a lawgiver.

Solon tried to provide for the difficulties that he saw resulting from the existence of two evenly matched parties, the landowners of the plain and the traders of the coast. The tyranny arose from the political organization of a new interest by Peisistratus, who, to quote the exact words of Herodotus:

While the coast men of Athens and those of the plain were at strife ... having formed designs on the tyranny, proceeded to raise a third faction.

To understand the position of Peisistratus and to ascertain the basis of his power it is obviously of the first importance that we should know who precisely were the men who made up this third faction. Unfortunately this question cannot be answered directly from the information that has come down to us. So before sifting the evidence that bears on it, it will be well to examine some later and better known phases of the tyrant's career.

After the tyrant had first established himself he is reported to have been twice banished and twice restored. After his second restoration "he proceeded to root his tyranny with many mercenaries, and with revenues of money, of which part was gathered from the home country, part from the river Strymon."

The Strymon flows through the famous mining district which was afterwards annexed by Philip of Macedon, and brought him his enormous wealth. It is scarcely conceivable that Peisistratus' revenues from this region came from any other source than the mines. Hence Guiraud, in his interesting but sober account of ancient Greek industry, has already been led to suggest that Peisistratus' Attic revenues were derived from a similar source, and that he worked the mines of Laurium.

Peisistratus was not using revenues from mines for the first time in his career, when he proceeded to "root his tyranny" in the manner just described. He had already used the same means to compass his second restoration. When driven from Athens for the second time he had "proceeded to the parts round Pangaion, where he made money, and having hired soldiers he went back to Eretria, and in the eleventh year made his first attempt to recover his position by force." Herodotus appears to think that all the period of exile was spent at Eretria; but he too states it to have been spent in collecting money . The result was that "he now held the tyranny securely." Mt Pangaion is the name of the great mining district to the East of the lower Strymon. The mention of it confirms the view that Peisistratus had a personal connexion with the Thracian mines. Eretria, on the West coast of Euboea, is an obvious place from which to swoop down on East Attica, but on the other hand in Euboea too there were mining districts, and Eretria had a settlement just to the East of Mount Pangaion, if Svoronos is right in his very plausible identification of the modern Kavalla with the "Skabala: a place of the Eretrians" of Stephanus Byzantinus.

About the tyrant's first restoration there is only a story in Herodotus which the historian himself describes as a "very silly business." Its consideration is best left over till we have dealt with his original seizure of the throne. If for this earlier stage of his career the evidence is less specific, we must not be surprised. Like Augustus, Peisistratus was careful, especially at first, to observe the outward forms of the constitution which he overthrew, so that the realities of the situation would not be patent to everybody.

In a paper that I published in 1906 these facts were made the basis of a new explanation of the Hillmen of Peisistratus. According to the view there put forward the most important section of Peisistratus' followers were the miners who worked the famous silver mines of South Attica, and it was as leader of this mining population that Peisistratus raised himself to the tyranny. At the time this view was little more than a conjecture, topographically dubious. Of the only two places, Plotheia and Semachidai, known to have been situated in the Hill Country, Plotheia had been shown by tombstones to lie somewhere between Marathon and Kephisia, and as this fact seemed to confirm the theory of an exclusively Northern Hill Country, Semachidai, for the site of which as within the limits of the three trittyes of its tribe no evidence was available, was placed up in the North in the inland trittys. But that this location was wrong is made practically certain by the discovery of an inscription, published in 1910 by the Greek scholar Oikonomos, that bears directly on the point. It dates from 349-8 B.C. and defines the position of various mining concessions. One of them is described as near Laurium and bordered on the South by the road leading past Rhagon to Laurium and the Semacheion.

The Semacheion is convincingly explained by Oikonomos as the shrine of Semachos, who gave his name to the deme Semachidai. From this fact he proceeds quite logically to argue that we must decide on a more Southerly position for that deme than those proposed by Milchhoefer and Loeper, "since the mine to the South of which Semachidai lay, was situated in the neighbourhood of Laurium." Semachidai belonged to the tribe Antiochis. In the electoral organization of Cleisthenes the coast trittys of the tribe Antiochis occupied the Western part of the mining district, including the villages of Amphitrope , Besa, and Anaphlystus. Thus Oikonomos' conclusions are confirmed by the fact that his Semacheion falls within the borders of Antiochis. But whereas technically this mining district formed the coast trittys of the tribe, we have the evidence of Philochorus, writing early in the third century B.C., that it was spoken of as part of the Epakria or hill country.

How suitable this name was may be illustrated from the Semacheion inscription itself, in which the sites of mining claims are three times defined by reference to a ridge or hill crest .

It has sometimes been forgotten in the discussion of these names that we are dealing with common nouns that were used by the Greeks with different connotations at different places and periods like the English downs or forest. Epakria appears to have been used in more than one sense even within the limits of Attica. Possibly the name was applied at large to any region of ????. If we prefer to assume that it spread from a single district the balance of probabilities points to the name having spread Northwards from the district round Sunium.

From yet another point of view the words Diakria, Hyperakria, Epakria favour the mining interpretation. The inhabitants of El Dorado of Greek legend, the land of the Golden Fleece, are said to have occupied the ???? of the Caucasus.

Views in the Laurium mining district.

In the light of this probability that the Diakrioi occupied the mining district of Attica, and of the fact that their name means hill men, it is interesting to note that the Idaean Dactyls, who "are said to have been the first miners," are stated also to have been men of the mountains, and that in German and Welsh the words for miners mean literally "hill men."

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