by Oswyn Murray
Though much of the evidence for this redefinition of status in economic terms comes from the sixth century, the political reforms of Solon show that in some cities the process was already far advanced by the end of the seventh century; and it may well be significant that one of the earliest tyrannies arose in the most commercially advanced city of the period, Corinth. But although both here and in Athens one can suspect the existence of a group of dissatisfied rich excluded from political power, this seems to be a consequence of an exceptionally inflexible aristocracy of birth: elsewhere, as the poetry of Theognis suggests, the entry of non-aristocratic rich men into the governing class was resented and caused tension, but did not often lead to revolution. It is more plausible to relate the phenomenon of tyranny generally to the emergence of greater freedom of thought and more flexible social relations consequent on economic change, than to see the tyrants specifically as the leaders of the wealthy against the aristocracy.
More probable is the theory that connects this style of popular dictatorship with the emergence into politics of the hoplite class. Aristotle recognized a close relationship between military organization and type of government:
The first type of constitution among the Greeks after kingship was formed from the warriors, initially from the cavalry (for the strength and dominance in warfare belonged to the cavalry; hoplites are useless without a formation, and such skills and tactics did not exist originally, so that cavalry was the strong arm), but as the cities increased in population and those who carried arms gained importance, more persons gained a share in political power.
(Politics 4.1297b)
In general here and elsewhere Aristotle is right to see a connection between the military arm of the state and its constitutional organization, from the early aristocracies through the hoplites to the ‘naval mob’ of the Athenian democracy; and although neither he nor any other ancient writer fits early tyranny into this scheme, the tyrants clearly emerged at the point of transition from aristocracy to hoplite constitution. When therefore Aristotle says that ‘in the old days, tyrannies arose when the same man was popular leader and general’ (Politics 5.1305a), the natural inference is that the tyrants should be seen as the leaders of the hoplite class against the aristocracy: their success in overthrowing the traditional state would then lie in their being able to call on a new group of supporters, more powerful than the band of warriors which the aristocracy could muster – the hoplite class as a whole, that is the people (dēmos) under arms.
The evidence for this theory is circumstantial rather than direct. It is true that both Kypselos of Corinth and Orthagoras of Sicyon are alleged to have begun their careers as military leaders, but this is probably fourth century invention (below p. 148), and attempts to give the theory greater precision have to rely on the elusive career of Pheidon of Argos. The old oracle quoted in chapter 5 shows that the Argives succeeded the Euboeans as the leading warriors in Greece: the fact that the hoplite double-grip shield was called ‘Argive’, and the warrior burial of about 725 from the Argolid with its fine breastplate perhaps lend substance to the notion that this change may relate to a change in tactics, towards the hoplite phalanx. Parallels elsewhere (for instance Charlemagne’s creation of a heavy-armed infantry in France at the end of the eighth century AD) suggest that such a radical reorganization of military tactics, involving the inclusion of a new group in warfare with the compulsion to provide their own equipment, is likely to have required a strong central government. From Aristotle’s description, Pheidon of Argos appears as an early tyrant who belonged to the class of ‘kings going beyond custom and aiming at more despotic rule’; scattered information elsewhere suggests that he was a very successful military leader. Herodotus describes him as ‘the man who established the system of measures for the Peloponnesians and performed the most arrogant action of any Greek, when he turned out the Eleians who manage the Olympic Games and held them himself (6.127); other less trustworthy sources attribute to him interference in Aegina and Corinth. Evidence which goes back to the Olympic victor lists and is likely to be reliable suggests that there was a disturbance of the normal games in the 28th Olympiad (or four-year Olympic cycle: 668), and perhaps also in the 8th Olympiad (748). In 669 the Argives won a major victory over the Spartans at the battle of Hysiai (Pausanias 2.24.7). These disparate pieces of evidence have been combined to suggest that it was Pheidon who created the first hoplite army, used it to dominate his own city and large areas of the northern Peloponnese, defeated the Spartans at Hysiai, and in the next year marched across the Peloponnese to celebrate the Olympic Games. But the story has its difficulties. No one actually says that it was Pheidon who won Hysiai, which is surprising, given the tendency to remember victorious generals; moreover other conflicting evidence for Pheidon’s date suggests that he was either some fifty years later (Herodotus implies that he was a contemporary of Kleisthenes of Sicyon in the sixth century – perhaps a mistake) or fifty years earlier (Ephoros, whose date is obviously a guess). The evidence is confused; and although the picture of Pheidon as the first tyrant and the inventor and leader of the hoplites is plausible, it must remain a hypothesis.
It is certainly true that contemporary poetry gives the dēmos a new prominence, and the word is clearly relevant to the question of the support given to tyrants. It is often used of the people as a whole, and especially of the people as opposed to the aristocracy; sometimes it seems to refer to the lower classes alone, but there is no sign that it could refer solely or primarily to a hoplite group distinguished from both aristocrats and lower classes. It is in fact unlikely that there was any clear social distinction between hoplites and the rest of the people initially, since the group of hoplites was itself a new creation; only later could the hoplites begin to see themselves as an elite apart from the rest of the dēmos. The tyrants certainly appealed to men well below the hoplite census: Theagenes rose to power in Megara after slaughtering the flocks of the wealthy (Aristotle, Politics 5.1305a), and Solon couples the desire for tyranny with a redistribution of land which would have appealed primarily to the landless or the urban poor: ‘I did nothing foolish, nor did I wish to act by force and tyranny, or that the good should have equal shares with the base in this rich land of ours’ (Frag. 34.7–9). The conclusion to be drawn is surely that Aristotle and other ancient sources were right to see the early tyrants as leaders of the dēmos in general against the aristocracy; but the most important section of the dēmos was the hoplites, without whom the people would have been powerless. The consequence of the new military tactics was that men from the people were armed and trained alongside the aristocrats; initially they would support a champion who asserted the rights of the people against the aristocracy, just as later they would themselves be the protagonists in securing for their organization, the people’s assembly, the central role in the state. In each case the absence of any established distinction of status between hoplites and the rest of the people meant that, in acting for themselves, the hoplites acted for the dēmos as a whole.
In the search for general explanations, less rational factors should not be forgotten. The new equality of the colonial settlements was achieved under aristocratic leaders who distributed the land to their followers. The traditional society was disappearing and old norms were increasingly disregarded: the aristocracy was losing its economic and military justification. In this situation the Greek cities showed the typical political instability of emergent societies under the stress of radical change: the tyrant was no different from the modern dictator. Part of the cause lay in an aristocracy no longer united in defence of its traditional prerogatives, and in the willingness of individuals to use the new forces in society to overthrow their own class. Once the possibility of tyranny had become established, two further factors began to operate, as they operate, today. One was fashion: the existence of a dictatorship encourages others to aim at power for themselves. And the second was a form of mutual self-help between tyrants: Theagenes of Megara tried to set his son-in
-law up at Athens; Thrasyboulos of Miletus and Periandros of Corinth overcame the traditional hostility between their cities, which went back at least as far as the Lelantine War; Lygdamis of Naxos helped both Peisistratos of Athens and Polykrates of Samos to gain power. These two last examples show the instability of contemporary politics: though Peisistratos had some support within Attica, he finally seized power with massive help from other cities, and at the head of a large body of mercenaries; while Polykrates gained control of Samos with only fifteen hoplites (Herodotus 3.120). But in both cases their subsequent actions show that they had widespread popular support: it is clear that the early tyrannies never wholly lost the characteristics of popular dictatorships.
Such popular support presupposes attention to local discontents: the particular grievance is at least as important as any general tendencies in the explanation of tyrannies. Local factors can be categorized broadly as social or economic, as ethnic, or finally as a transformation of the old aristocratic struggles for power. Corinth, Sicyon and Lesbos offer the best documented examples of each.
The earliest tyranny for which reasonable evidence survives is that of Corinth. Although the name ‘Korinthos’ has the typical pre-Greek ending ‘-nth-’ and there are considerable earlier remains there, the area was not important during the Mycenean period; despite the magnificent natural fortress-citadel of Acrocorinth, there are only scattered Mycenean finds, and the reference in Homer to ‘rich Corinth’ as a minor dependency of Agamemnon (Iliad 2.570) is merely a late attempt to create a heroic past from nothing. The earliest significant settlement relates to the coming of the Dorians in about 900; finds at the great Corinthian sanctuary of Hera, across the bay at Perachora, start around 850 and show that the community had few outside contacts or artistic skills. Suddenly from 750 onwards the remains change character: scarabs, ivories, amulets and imported vases and pins demonstrate widespread contacts as far as the near east; during the next century Corinth became the most important port and most prosperous city in Greece. The reasons are obvious: Thucydides emphasizes the position of Corinth both for north-south land trade and for east-west sea trade (1.13). The trade-routes in western metals and eastern luxury goods, pioneered by Euboeans, rapidly came to focus on Corinth; the voyage round the south Peloponnese was long, stormy and dangerous, and it was simpler either to drag small ships across the Isthmus or unload and reload. Similarly Corinth benefited from western colonization. She not only colonized some of the best sites herself; she also probably did most of the transporting of non-Corinthian colonists, who would take ship from Corinth. In this movement she gained equally with Delphi, across the gulf and a last port of call for religious reasons. Once the colonies were established, all supplies and all trade with them passed through Corinth and were carried on Corinthian ships.
It is not therefore surprising to find Corinth the centre of the orientalizing movement. It was here that the rituals of the reclining banquet first found artistic expression at the end of the seventh century, in a series of mixing bowls for wine and water which depict the group activity for which they were designed: the earliest and best example is the Eurytios vase (plate 4b), showing Herakles and Iole at a banquet in the house of Eurytos. It was here too that alone in Greece the eastern practice of ritual temple prostitution was established, in the main city temple of the goddess Aphrodite on Acrocorinth. In Greek art Corinth was the first city to produce high class pottery on a large scale and export it to the Greek settlements of east and west: her pottery dominates at Al Mina from the first quarter of the seventh century and at all the western sites from their foundation. The creators of this commercial prosperity and artistic activity were an aristocratic genos called the Bacchiadai. It was Bacchiad nobles who founded the colonies at Corcyra and Syracuse; the geographer Strabo says ‘wealthy and numerous and nobly born, they exploited the harbour-trade without limit’ (378). Herodotus claims of his own day that the Corinthians are unique in that they ‘least of all Greeks have a prejudice against craftsmen’ (2.167), and the attitude goes back to this early period; already in the eighth century an abnormally high proportion of the best Corinthian pottery was being exported, and was probably made for export: the trade was a specialized one in small highly decorated pots containing luxury items such as scented oils. There is the famous story of the Bacchiad Damaratos, who was engaged in the trade with Etruria, and, when the tyranny came, settled in exile at Etruscan Tarquinia with a number of Corinthian artists, introduced pottery and terracotta sculpture to Italy, and fathered Tarquin king of Rome (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 3.46).
The Bacchiads were an exclusive group, forbidding marriage outside the gēnos, and described as ‘monarchic men’ in a contemporary Delphic oracle. This exclusiveness was undoubtedly one reason for their overthrow; but other factors must have been the spread of wealth through trade, shipping and craftsmanship, and the continuing contact with the new equality of the colonial west. Towards the end of their rule they may have become less successful: Thucydides appears to date the earliest sea-battle known to about 664; it was between Corinth and Corcyra, which would imply at least temporary loss of control of one of Corinth’s most important colonies and the western trade route. But in fact the two dates given in this passage (1.13) are forty years apart, and probably computed on a forty-year generation system; both would certainly be much more comprehensible scaled down by about seventy years. More significant may be the memorial to Orsippos of Megara, an Olympic victor in 720, who ‘freed the most distant boundaries for his fatherland when hostile men had seized much territory’ (G. Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca no. 843): border wars between Megara and Corinth may well have accelerated the introduction of hoplite tactics to the area.
Two main accounts of the revolution at Corinth survive. Herodotus (5.92) describes how Labda, a lame Bacchiad girl, was rejected by the other Bacchiads and finally married Eetion, who was not even a Dorian in origin. Various Delphic oracles prophesied the future power of their son; and when he was born, the Bacchiads sent a posse to kill him. On their first attempt they were put off by the baby’s smile, and on the second he was hidden in a chest or large jar (whence his name Kypselos). When he grew up he was persuaded by an oracle at Delphi to seize power: ‘many of the Corinthians he drove into exile, many he deprived of their property, and very many more of their lives; he ruled for thirty years, died at the height of prosperity, and his son Periandros succeeded him’. Periandros was at first milder than Kypselos, but later much harsher.
The second account is found in scattered traces, and most completely in a late writer, Nikolaos of Damascus, private secretary to Herod the Great in the age of Augustus (F.G.H. 90 Frag. 57–60). This version derives from the fourth century historian Ephoros, who followed Herodotus on the birth and miraculous escape of the child, but went on to give a highly circumstantial account of Kypselos’ rise to power, in which he gained great popularity because of his mildness, was elected polemarchos (military leader), and as such administered the law kindly, formed a party and finally seized power. The reference to the military office of polemarchos is tantalizing; but unfortunately the worthlessness of the account in this and all other details is demonstrated by the fact that the polemarchos appears to have only civic duties: that cannot have been true before the classical period, and makes it clear that the whole narrative is constructed from fourth century analogies; the only point which can perhaps be salvaged is the contrast between the mild and loved Kypselos and the hated Periandros.
Herodotus’ version regards both men as villains, because the story of their rule is told by a Corinthian trying to dissuade the Spartans from restoring tyranny at Athens. But the legend of Kypselos’ birth shows clearly that he was a popular leader. It belongs to a group of legends whose structural function is to explain the rise of a new ruler, by relating the usurper in part to the old regime, but primarily to the protection of the gods and to his origins among the people. Typical elements are the exposure of the king-child, his miraculo
us survival, often through divine intervention such as by being suckled by animals sacred to the god, his education among the people and his final accession to power. The most famous examples of the story-type are perhaps Cyrus the Great (Herodotus 1.107ff), Romulus and Remus, Moses in the bullrushes, and the birth and upbringing of Christ; but versions involving 122 different persons have been collected. The myth is one of the best examples of the diffusion of a folk-tale motif from a single centre: it is confined to Europe and the near east; and although it has been thought to be Indo-European, the fact that it is absent from India and present in Semitic cultures suggests strongly that it derives from Mesopotamia. The earliest version is probably the story of the birth and upbringing of the first imperialist, Sargon King of Akkad:
My changeling (?) mother conceived me, in secret she bore me.
She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid.
She cast me into the river which rose not (over) me.
The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water.
Akki, the drawer of water, lifted me out as he dipped his ewer.
Akki, the drawer of water, [took me] as his son (and) reared me.
Akki, the drawer of water, appointed me as his gardener.
While I was a gardener, Ishtar (the goddess) granted (me) her love,
and for four and […] years I exercised kingship.
(J. B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p. 119)
The actual texts of this story are seventh century, but its origins are much earlier and probably Sumerian: the myth was diffused through the later cultures which came into contact with the area, Assyrian, Babylonian, Hebrew and Persian. It is natural to find the earliest Greek example of the myth at the city most receptive to oriental artistic influence.