by Oswyn Murray
The legend of Kypselos is good evidence for his status as a popular leader, and for the fact that he was a new man, outside or (rather typically) only partly connected with the aristocracy. The oracle addressed to his father runs:
Eetion, no one honours you though you are most honoured.
Labda is with child: she will beget a millstone, and it
will fall on the monarchic men, and bring judgement on Corinth.
(Herodotus 5.92)
The last sentence is ambiguous between ‘judgement’ and ‘justice’; but the oracle is favourable, though whether it came before or after the revolution is unclear: it could be argued that Delphi supported the coup, as she supported so many other manifestations of the hoplite consciousness. Beyond such speculations, the nature of Kypselos’ support can only be guessed from the characteristics of Corinth as a city, both before and during the tyranny.
The commercial and artistic dominance of Corinth which had begun under the Bacchiads continued under the tyrants. Kypselos and his son founded a number of colonies at the mouth of the Adriatic (Leucas, Anactorium, Ambracia, Apollonia, Epidamnus), which had the double advantage of lying on the route to Italy and opening up north-west Greece, a source of raw materials such as timber and the flowers from which Corinthian perfumes were made; Corinthian trade penetrated far into the interior, as the early Greek bronzes found at Trebenishte show. In the north-east the tyrants also founded Potidaea among the earlier Euboean towns on the Chalcidice, which became one of the richest and most powerful cities of the area. The Corinthian colonies of this period seem to have been much more tightly controlled than was normal; many of their coinages in the sixth century were centrally minted to the Corinthian design of a winged Pegasus, with mere lettering to denote the individual city; and as late as the fifth century they were receiving magistrates sent out from Corinth. It seems that the tyrants regarded such foundations as commercial outposts rather than independent cities.
Trade was clearly a major interest of the tyrants. Corinthian pottery remained the most widespread in the Mediterranean until the mid sixth century: its popularity is party due to artistic excellence, but rests also on a flourishing manufacturing industry and the dominance of Corinthian shipping especially in the west; a group of sixth century buildings excavated in Corinth has produced such a diversity of pottery, from Etruria, Chios, Ionia, Athens and Sparta, that it has tentatively been identified as a ‘traders’ complex’. The tyrants also exploited new areas: mutual friendship between Periandros and Thrasyboulos of Miletus put an end to the old rivalries of the Euboean period, and opened the eastern Mediterranean; Potidaea gave access to the raw materials of the north-east. Periandros built a dragway across the Isthmus roughly on the line of the modern canal, a stone track with grooves for the wheels of trolleys on which boats were dragged across from one gulf to the other. He also had close relations with the most important of the non-Greek kings, Alyattes of Lydia; and his interest in the newly opened Egyptian trade is shown by the name of his nephew and short-lived successor in the tyranny, Psammetichos, called after Psamtik king of Egypt. Corinth here and elsewhere was competing with the other mainland trading power, Aegina; it is in this period that her friendship with Aegina’s neighbour and potential rival, Athens, began. Corinthian influence on Athenian pottery is marked; Periandros was arbitrator in a dispute between Athens and Mytilene over control of Sigeum on the route to the Black Sea and adjudged effectively in favour of Athens; Athens herself moved from the Aeginetan to the Corinthian weight-standard in the 590s.
The artistic benefits of this commercial prosperity are found especially in the Corinthian sphere of influence. Delphi remained favourable:
Fortunate is the man who now enters my house Kypselos son of Eetion, ruler of famous Corinth.
(Herodotus 5.92)
Kypselos built there the first Treasury, to hold his dedications; it is notable that this was where the rich gifts of the kings of Lydia, from the proverbial Gyges onwards, were stored (Herodotus 1.14). But by the end of the tyranny Apollo had turned against the Kypselids; he allowed the Corinthians to remove Kypselos’ name from the building (Plutarch, Oracles at Delphi 400e), and another line was added to the oracle: Kypselos was fortunate, ‘he and his sons, but the sons of his sons no longer’.
The sack of Corinth by the Romans in 146 was the most notorious act of artistic vandalism in the ancient world; with the subsequent Roman colony on the site, it ensured that almost nothing survives of early Corinth. But it was there under the tyranny that Greek monumental architecture emerged with the creation of the Doric temple. The major innovations are connected with the use of clay in building and decoration. The invention of clay roofing tiles (called Corinthian) and the use of side colonnades gave the typical low-pitched roof supported by columns of the classical Greek temple; various elements of the roof were decorated with clay mouldings, and Pindar also claims that the addition of sculptures in the end pediments was a Corinthian innovation (Olympians 13.30): more specifically the Roman writer Pliny attributes the invention of clay modelling and ornaments to Boutades of Sicyon, who worked in Corinth (Natural Histories 35.151–3). Certainly the earliest evidence for decorated temple architecture comes from the Corinthian sphere of influence, and is either terracotta or painted: in Aetolia the terracotta revetments found at Calydon were made to order in Corinth and numbered for assembly on the site (‘twenty-first on the west’), while the metopes on the temple at Thermum about 630 were of local clay painted by a Corinthian artist. In Etruria, terracotta modelling for architecture and monuments continued, but in Greece it was replaced by stone: the first major example to survive is the temple of Artemis at Corcyra of about 580 (p. 242). In both clay and stone, Corinthian influence imposed a certain uniformity on early Greek temple decoration; but at Corinth itself only the culmination of this activity survives, in the seven columns still standing of the temple of Apollo, built a generation after the fall of the tyranny.
Other evidence shows the wealth and magnificence of Corinth under the tyrants: they dedicated a colossal statue of Zeus at Olympia, and built major public works at home; their court was a centre of patronage. Arion of Lesbos, the half-legendary inventor of the dithyramb (an elaborate form of acted choral lyric, and the alleged origin of tragedy) who was rescued from drowning by a dolphin, worked at the court of Periandros (Herodotus 1.23f); and Periandros himself captured popular imagination sufficiently to be enrolled as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. But Aristotle shows the darker side of his tyranny, attributing to him the invention of all the typical devices of the tyrant to maintain power by bribery, terror and surveillance (Politics 5.13131a – b). The stories told by Herodotus of the end of Periandros’ rule are more spectacular, and therefore perhaps truer to the age: he murdered his wife, deposed his father-in-law Prokles tyrant of Epidaurus, and quarrelled with his only talented son. In an attempt to placate the spirit of his wife he resorted to necromancy, caused the women of Corinth to assemble, stripped them naked and burned their clothes as an offering to her; when his son was murdered on Corcyra, he captured the island, and sent 300 Corcyrean noble youths to be castrated in the service of his friend Alyattes of Lydia; they were rescued by the Samians on the way (Herodotus 5.92; 3.48ff). This episode repays analysis: the Bacchiads had fled to Corcyra, and it was probably now that Periandros sought to bring them under Corinthian control: this may be the first recorded sea-battle known to Thucydides (1.13), which would fall shortly after 600 (reducing Thucydides’ date from 40-year to 30-year generations); in rescuing the Bacchiad children, the Samians were remembering their old friendship with Bacchiad Corinth in the Euboean period. But on any account Periandros exemplifies the fact that the tyrant stood outside the law, acknowledged no check on his power, and therefore ultimately outraged the community he ruled. The tyranny of Corinth disappeared without known incident within a few years of his death, to be replaced by a broad oligarchy of wealth.
The various ethnic strata of Greek peoples were suf
ficiently different in dialect and in religious and social customs to create conflict from time to time; the distinction between Dorians and Ionians was widely recognized and could cause problems, for instance at Cyrene (p. 122). But ethnic tension was a more serious and more permanent factor in the Peloponnese, where the Dorian invasion seems often to have created forms of serfdom through the enslavement of the original Achaean Greeks: the helots of Sparta are probably one such group, the gymnētes (naked ones) of Argos another. Both caused trouble: the helots were subsumed in the larger group of Messenians conquered by Sparta in the seventh century, and took part in their successive revolts; while the Argive slaves seized control of Argos for a period in the early fifth century. In the sixth century the Spartans were careful to claim hegemony of their Peloponnesian league as Achaeans not Dorians (below p. 263). Another group of non-Dorians seems to have constituted important support for the tyranny at Sicyon, which ruled for about a hundred years from the mid seventh to the mid sixth century.
The origins of the rise to power of this Orthagorid dynasty are obscure. Orthagoras is said to have been the son of a cook who distinguished himself as a frontier guard, rose to be guard commander and was elected polemarchos (F.G.H. 105 Frag. 2, an anonymous papyrus from Egypt): the story is remarkably similar to that told of the rise of Kypselos, and almost certainly also derives from Ephoros’ anachronistic views of the causes of tyranny. Aristotle (Politics 5.1315b) is more reliable in attributing the success of the Orthagorid tyranny to their popularity and mildness, and to the military abilities of Orthagoras’ most famous successor, Kleisthenes (about 600–570).
It is the actions of Kleisthenes which suggest the ethnic source of support for the tyranny. Herodotus attributes to him various attempts to break free of Argive influence in connection with a war against Argos: he forbade the recitation of the Homeric poems on the grounds that they glorified Argives; he banned tragic choruses in honour of Adrastos (an Argive who according to myth became rule of Sicyon), and tried to expel the hero from his shrine in the Gathering Place; when he was prevented by the Delphic oracle, who said ‘Adrastos was ruler of Sicyon but you are merely a stone-thrower’ (that is, too low-born to be even a warrior), Kleisthenes imported the Theban statue of Melanippos, Adrastos’ mythical opponent, and gave him a shrine in the council-house. All these actions are anti-Argive rather than anti-Dorian; they are an assertion of cultural and religious independence. But Kleisthenes also renamed the three Dorian tribes in Sicyon with the insulting names, ‘pig-men’, ‘donkey-men’ and ‘swine-men’, while calling his own tribe Archelaoi, ‘rulers of the people’. These names continued for sixty years after his death, well beyond the fall of the tyranny; and even then four tribes, three Dorian and one non-Dorian, were retained (Herodotus 5.67–8). Kleisthenes or the tyrants before him may have been responsible for the creation of this non-Dorian tribe, and so for the extension of citizen rights to non-Dorians; but his actions at least make it clear that he regarded himself as a leader of the non-Dorian element in the population.
The city of Mytilene on Lesbos was ruled by an aristocratic genos like the Bacchiadai of Corinth, the Penthilidai, who claimed descent from the Homeric heroes through Penthilos, son of Orestes and the legendary leader of the original settlement; according to Aristotle (Politics 5.1311b) it was their habit of arbitrarily beating people with clubs that caused their overthrow. Mytilene was clearly less advanced than Corinth both politically and economically, and their fall left merely groups of feuding aristocrats: Alkaios belonged to one of these groups, and his poetry is the basis for attempts to reconstruct the complicated struggles of the period from about 620 to 570.
The feuding aristocratic families of Mytilene were deeply divided; apart from Alkaios and his brothers, we know by name the Kleanaktidai, surviving members of the Penthilidai, and probably the Archeanaktidai. Alkaios gives a vivid picture of the life style of these aristocrats:
The great house gleams with bronze, all the roof is well furnished with bright helmets; white horse-hair plumes nod down from them, ornaments for the heads of men. Bronze shining greaves hang round and hide the pegs, a fence against the strong dart. Corslets of fresh linen and hollow shields are thrown down; beside them are blades from Chalcis, beside them many a belt and tunic. These we must not forget since first we undertook this task.
(Fragment 357 = 54D)
The description shows how close the aristocracy of Lesbos still was to the Homeric world: these arms in the great hall supplied bands of hetairoi who fought for their leaders. The same world is mirrored in the comments of Sappho about the various rival female groups in the city: female society was in fact modelled on the male warrior bands, with the same intensity of homosexual emotions, and merely a different social function: the women were organized to worship Aphrodite, in the sacred band or thiasos, and to compete in song and dance, rather than for fighting. It is a striking example of the transference of male values into the female world, and shows how dominant the values were.
To these or similar aristocratic families belonged the various tyrants who emerged. The Penthilidai had originally been overthrown by ‘Megakles and his friends’. The next development we hear of is the expulsion of the tyrant Melanchros by Pittakos and the brothers of Alkaios about the year 610 (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers 1.74). There followed the war between Mytilene and Athenian settlers at Sigeum in the Troad: both sides claimed mythological justifícation for their actions in the events of the Trojan War, although the serious point at issue was clearly increasing Athenian interest in Black Sea corn. During the war Pittakos killed the Athenian leader in single combat, and Alkaios threw away his shield (Herodotus 5.94; Strabo 599):
Alkaios is safe, his weapons of war are not. The Athenians hung them up in the temple of the grey-eyed goddess.
(Alkaios Fragment 428 = 49D)
When the war ended through the arbitration of Periandros, Pittakos’ prestige was clearly greater than that of Alkaios. A conspiracy was hatched between the two groups against the ruling tyrant Myrsilos; but Pittakos changed sides, and Alkaios and his supporters fled into exile. Alkaios describes the oath of the conspirators in his appeal for vengeance to the gods of Lesbos:
Come, with friendly spirit listen to our prayer, and from these toils and grievous banishment deliver us; but let the Avengers of the dead pursue the son of Hyrrhas (Pittakos), since once we swore in oath [……] that never would any companion of ours [……] but either dead and wrapped in earth we would lie defeated by the victors there, or else would slay them and deliver the people from its grievances. Yet the Pot-belly took no thought in his heart for this, but happily stamping underfoot his oaths, devours the city [……] against the law (?) […] Myrsilos […….]
(Fragment 129)
The plot was a typical aristocratic undertaking by companions sworn together; but the popular hero Pittakos deserted his oaths, and broke with his aristocratic friends to become a supporter of the tyranny.
Alkaios describes his exile:
I poor wretch live a rustic’s life, longing to hear the assembly summoned, Agesilaidas, and the council; what my father and my father’s father have grown old possessing among those citizens who wrong each other, from these am I excluded, an exile on the frontiers; like Onomakles solitary I settled here among the wolf thickets […] I dwell, keeping my feet far from troubles, where Lesbian girls with their trailing robes go to and fro being judged for beauty, and all around there rises each year the wondrous sound of the holy cry of women [….] from these many (toils) when will the Olympian gods deliver me?
(Fragment 130)
In this or another exile belong Alkaios’ visit to Egypt, and the service of his brother Antimenidas in the army of Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon during his Palestinian campaigns (below p. 232). Alkaios continued attacking Myrsilos and Pittakos, and warning the people; he was also happy to accept 2000 staters from the neighbouring king of Lydia for an assault on the city – the wages for at least as many hoplites for a month.
But the party of Alkaios won no favour in the city, and his poetry reveals why: the day of the aristocratic faction was over, and the people were on the other side.
Alkaios did his best to claim that he was working to free them; he is the first poet to use the metaphor of the city as ship of state, and portrays himself and his friends as struggling to help the ship in time of storm:
I do not understand the strife of the winds:
one wave rolls from this side,
one from that, and we in the midst
are driven on in our black ship
struggling in a tempest passing great.
The water is over the mast-step,
now the whole sail lets daylight through,
and there are great rents in it …
(Fragment 326 = 46D)
Alkaios claims to be ‘rescuing the dēmos from distress’, and he accuses Pittakos of ‘leading the dēmos to ruin’; he warns the people they are being deceived (Frag. 74). He clearly recognized their new political importance. But the hollowness of his claims was revealed when Myrsilos died: ‘Now we must get drunk, drink to excess, for Myrsilos is dead’ (Frag. 332). The people thought otherwise; they chose Pittakos as elected leader (aisymnetes) against the exiles for a ten year period: ‘the low-born Pittakos they have set up as tyrant of that city without spirit and heavy-fated, all together they cry his praise’ (Frag. 348).
The character of Pittakos clearly repays investigation. Alkaios calls him ‘low-born’; his father was allegedly a Thracian, his mother presumably aristocratic: he resembles Kypselos in being a fringe figure within the aristocracy. He was certainly prepared to play the aristocratic game, both early in his career and after Myrsilos’ death, when he married into the family of the Penthilidai (Frag. 70). Yet after his elected period of office (about 590–580) he resigned power, and lived as a private citizen; he also passed a number of individual laws designed to curb aristocratic social competition: he limited the expense of funerals, and clamped down on the chief activity of the aristocratic bands outside politics, by decreeing double fines for crimes committed when drunk. His popularity too is attested by his enrolment among the Seven Wise Men, and by the Lesbian grinding song: ‘grind, mill, grind, for Pittakos grinds too who rules over great Mytilene’ (Page, Lyrica Graeca Selecta no. 436). Pittakos was a peculiar type of tyrant, but his career demonstrates perhaps more clearly than any other how tyranny was an answer to the people’s need for leadership against the aristocracy, and its importance as a transitional phase.