Aristotle is most helpful in identifying the typical characteristics of a tyrant and the means by which they came to power:
The tyrant is installed in power from among the people (‘demos’) and the masses against the wealthy so that the people (‘demos’) suffer no injustice at their hands. This is clear from the events of history. For almost all of the tyrants have gained power from being, in a manner of speaking, leaders of the people, gaining their trust by slandering the wealthy. For some tyrannies were established in this way when their cities had already become great; but others before them came about from kings going beyond custom and aiming at more despotic rule; others arose from those who were elected to the chief office of state … and others from oligarchies choosing one of their number to be the top official for the greatest offices of state. For, by these means, it was possible for all of them to achieve their aim easily, if only they wanted it, because they already possessed the power either of kingship or of a particular political post. Pheidon in Argos and others became tyrants in this way when they were already kings; while the Ionian tyrants and Phalaris rose from public office; Panaitois in Leontini, Cypselus in Corinth, Peisistratus in Athens, Dionysius at Syracuse and others arose in the same way from being leaders of the people.
(Aristotle, Politics 1310b)
It is clear from the above quotation that the vast majority of tyrants had come from the ruling classes, but had rejected the current aristocratic government in favour of a regime which protected the people from the aristocrats, with themselves as the leader of the oppressed: hence their broad popular appeal. It is now appropriate to give concrete examples of individual tyrants and of the specific causes that allowed them to become the leaders of the people.
Pheidon of Argos: the military cause
The majority of modern historians incline to the view that the major innovation in military tactics – hoplite warfare – came about in the first quarter of the seventh century. Previously, the main defence of the state had rested upon the aristocracy that supplied the individual expert warriors, who probably rode on horseback to the battleground but fought on foot with opposing warriors of the same class: a fighting style that Homer portrays so vividly in the Iliad. However, the new style of fighting involved a greater number of men (often as much as a third of the citizen population), heavily armed with the same weapons and body armour, and fighting in a closely packed formation or phalanx, usually eight rows deep. In contrast to the former mode of fighting where individual courage and expertise were vital for military success, the key hoplite qualities were steadfast courage and discipline in holding the battle-line, since any uncoordinated movement, forwards or backwards, by individuals would split the tight formation and fatally weaken it. This point was emphasized by Tyrtaeus:
Those who display the courage to go into close combat in the front line, standing side by side with each other, die in fewer numbers and save those behind. But when men tremble, the courage of all is destroyed.
(Tyrtaeus fr. 11. 11–14)
It was the creation of this new fighting force, with its involvement of a greater number of citizens participating in the defence of the city, that has led many scholars to believe that there was a military cause for tyranny.
The essence of the disagreement between modern historians – whether the hoplites played a role in the rise of tyranny – revolves around the date of their introduction into Greek warfare and their effect upon tactics. One school of thought (e.g. Snodgrass) holds the view that the hoplite ‘panoply’–helmet, corselet, greaves, sword, spear and shield – was introduced piecemeal over a long period of time from c.750 to c.650; and that there was a transitional stage of tactics between the former aristocratic individualistic duels and the later middle-class hoplite phalanxes. The individual warriors, initially aristocrats, but later substantial landowners, adopted individual items of the distinctive hoplite panoply as they became available in 750–650, and fought in a fairly close formation until c.650, when fighting in the closely packed hoplite phalanx became standard tactics. Consequently, hoplite warfare and the growing class-consciousness of the middle classes, which arose later as a result of the introduction of hoplite warfare, came too late to be a factor in the early tyrannies of Pheidon of Argos, Cypselus of Corinth and Orthagoras of Sicyon. In fact, it was the tyrant in power who brought about the hoplite phalanx, and not vice versa.
The other school of thought (e.g. Cartledge, Salmon) believes that there was a sudden change to hoplite tactics between 700 and 675 because, although there was on-going experimentation in the use of weapons throughout 750 to 650, the invention of the two most distinctive pieces of hoplite armour, the shield and the Corinthian helmet which appear on vases for the first time around 700, could only be effective in a closely packed hoplite phalanx. The hoplite shield was different from its predecessors in that it had a double grip, one at the centre for the forearm, and the other at the rim for the hand; the earlier shields had only a hand grip at the centre. As a result, the hoplite shield was much heavier and less manoeuvrable, much better designed for holding close to the body, for frontal defence and for pushing. This shield, when held in place, only needed half of its structure to protect the front of the hoplite, although it afforded no protection to his spear arm and right flank; its other half, to the left of the hoplite, was wasted space with regard to the holder’s own defence needs. However, in a hoplite phalanx, this unnecessary space was of vital importance to and was primarily designed for the protection of the right flank of the next hoplite to the holder’s left, and so on down the line. In addition, if neither phalanx broke in the first clash of front lines, the heavy shield came into its own as an offensive weapon, as reported in the hoplite battle of Delium in 424:
But the right wing, where the Thebans were, was getting the better of the Athenians, pushing them back step by step and keeping up the pressure … and, because of such a manoeuvre [i.e. the use of cavalry] and the Thebans pushing them on and breaking their line, the flight of the whole Athenian army took place.
(Thucydides 4.96. 4–6)
In the same way the Corinthian helmet, shaped from a single sheet of bronze which covered the whole head apart from a T-shaped opening for the eyes and mouth, would only have been effective in frontal hand-to-hand fighting where the severely restricted vision and hearing were of far less importance than protection for the whole head and neck. Consequently, the hoplite phalanx made its first appearance soon after 700, was widely employed in the second quarter of the seventh century (675–650) and therefore was available to play a part in the political upheavals of the seventh century.
However, Morris has challenged the views of these two schools of thought by rejecting the whole concept of a ‘hoplite reform’ in military tactics. He believes that the Greeks had always fought in massed ranks, and that the weapon changes from 750 to 650 only mark an improvement in the quality of the weaponry and not a change in military tactics. It is argued that a fundamental misunderstanding of Homer and the conventions of eighth- and early seventh-century vase-painters has led to the belief that so called ‘pre-hoplite’ warfare only consisted of individual duels between aristocrats, with no fighting role for the rest of the people apart from throwing stones and shouting encouragement. A careful study of Homer shows that his battles were extensive in time and location, and that massed rank tactics were always employed; but that his ‘freezing’ of the action on different (but concurrent) individual duels, purely for literary and artistic purposes, has misled scholarly opinion on the nature of Homeric warfare. Furthermore, until the creation of the Chigi vase in c.660–650 which was the first to show clearly warriors in a closely packed formation, it had been the convention to portray each massed and opposing rank by the painting of the two nearest warriors, engaged apparently in individual combat. Therefore, the theory of a military cause of tyranny, which has been based on the so-called ‘hoplite reform’ and its use by the tyrants for political purposes, should be eliminated.
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sp; However, those scholars who do believe in a military cause of tyranny use Aristotle as further support for their view. He states that there was a direct political link between the class that was most effective in defending the state and the state’s type of constitution:
Although it is possible for one man or a few men to be superior in virtue, it is difficult for the many to be made perfect in every virtue, but they can be in the virtue of military courage, for this is found among large numbers. Therefore the class that does the fighting for the state wields supreme power in this constitution, and those who bear arms have a share in its government.
(Aristotle, Politics 1279a–b)
He re-affirms this belief later when he stresses that, after kingship had come to an end, government passed into the hands of the aristocracy who possessed the necessary wealth to supply the cavalry that was the backbone of the state’s defence, but:
when the population of states had increased and those who possessed hoplite weapons had grown stronger, more persons came to have a share in government.
(Aristotle, Politics 1297b)
Aristotle does not include tyranny as one of the stages in the political development of the polis, but it made its appearance soon after the invention of hoplite warfare (if this is accepted), and was in some cities the transitional stage of government between aristocratic and hoplite-dominated constitutions. The belief that the hoplites probably played the leading role in helping a tyrant to seize power by supplying the armed might that was superior to that of the aristocratic warriors is strongly implied in another quotation of Aristotle:
In the old days, whenever the same man became leader of the people and general, they turned the constitution into a tyranny. For nearly all of the old tyrants came to power from being leaders of the people; and the reason why that happened then, but not now, is that those earlier leaders of the people were drawn from those who held the generalship.
(Aristotle, Politics 1305a)
The special rapport that can exist between a general and his troops against a common enemy, seen so vividly in the last century of the Roman Republic, was seemingly utilized by the ambitious tyrant in his quest for power. The best example of this military cause of tyranny lies with the career of King Pheidon of Argos, although the evidence is often inadequate and circumstantial.
The starting-point for discussion of Pheidon’s career is the shocked comment of Herodotus on him as:
the man who carried out the most arrogant action ever of all the Greeks when he expelled the Elean presidents from the Olympic Games and presided over them himself.
(Herodotus 6.127.3)
The mention of the Olympic Games is crucial in the attempt to pin down a date for Pheidon’s activities. The late sources (Strabo, Eusebius and Pausanias) state that the Dorian Eleans presided over the games from their alleged inception in 776, but that in the seventh century (the sources do not agree on the date) the pre-Dorian Pisatans, who had been subjugated in the Dark Ages by the Eleans and were consequently an under-privileged group, seized control of the Olympic Games. The Olympic victor lists, which were published by Hippias around 400 and are considered to be reliable, record a time of Pisatan control beginning around 668, and Pausanias (6.22.2) dates the trouble at the Games to the 8th Olympiad (748), but this has been plausibly emended to the 28th Olympiad in 668. If the Pisatans gained control of Olympia in 668, it can be argued that they would have needed the help of an external military power to achieve this coup, and Herodotus’ mention of Pheidon’s intervention at Olympia makes him the most likely candidate. However, it is worth noting that Ephorus places Pheidon 50 years earlier, but this may be a guess, and Herodotus more than 50 years later.
If 668 is accepted as the date of Pheidon’s military intervention at Olympia, then he can be linked, although not named as the commander, with the major victory of the Argive army over the Spartans at the battle of Hysiae in 669 (Pausanias 2.24.7). Hysiae is on the plain of Thyrea on the border between the territories of Argos and Sparta, and the likely cause of the conflict was the expansion of these two powers, disputing control of the plain. These are the years before Sparta’s army came to be the best in Greece, but it was still a formidable force, which emphasizes the superior excellence of the Argive army in the first half of the seventh century. This sudden re-emergence of Argive status and military prowess in Peloponnesian politics is explained by Ephorus (FGrH IIA 70F115) who stated that Pheidon regained the Lot of Temenus. Legend had it that the descendants of Heracles returned to the Peloponnese in three companies during the Dark Ages and divided up their conquests by lot: one brother received Messenia, the second Lacedaimon and Temenus the Argolid. However, after Temenus’ death, according to Ephorus, the Argive kingdom became weak and divided until it was reunited by Pheidon. If the legendary overlay is removed, it seems that Pheidon restored strong central government to Argos and masterminded the expansion of Argive power throughout the Argolid which led to the battle of Hysiai with Sparta.
If the above evidence (for all its limitations) is accepted, then the likely cause of Argos’ brief revival of military dominance and of Pheidon’s unusual constitutional position of a king turned tyrant (Aristotle, Politics 1310b – see above,) is the introduction of hoplite warfare. Argos either was the first state to use these new tactics or used them far more effectively than their opponents. The shield – the most distinctive piece of hoplite equipment – was called generically ‘Argive’ (Pausanias 8.50.1), either because it was invented in Argos or because the Argives were remembered for their outstanding skill with it. Yet more revealing is the Delphic oracle about Chalcis and Argos:
The best of all land is the Pelasgian plain, best are the Thracian horses, Spartan women and the men who drink the water of fair Arethusa [i.e. the men of Chalcis in Euboea].
But better still than these are those that live between Tiryns and Arcadia of the many sheep, the linen-corsleted Argives, the goads of war.
(Palatine Anthology 14.73)
This oracle must be dated to the first half of the seventh century, since Sparta’s pre-eminence in hoplite warfare was recognized from the late seventh century onwards. There is an illogical progression in the oracle in that it mentions the best at the beginning and then supersedes this by naming someone better. Presumably the second part is a later addition to the original oracle which was occasioned by the Argives’ later military superiority to the Chalcidians. Thucydides (1.15) states that the first war of any importance that split a number of Greek states into two camps was the Lelantine War between Chalcis and Eretria in Euboea, probably fought in the last 30 years of the eighth century. The victory of Chalcis earned for its soldiers the reputation contained in the first part of the oracle. Therefore it would seem that the Chalcidians were the best in pre-hoplite fighting, but that their reputation was overtaken by the Argive hoplites, who enjoyed such military success in the Peloponnese.
It is at this point that Aristotle’s description of King Pheidon’s seizure of power as tyrant can be explained. Pausanias 2.19.2 stated that the authority of the Argive kings had been drastically reduced as early as Medon, Temenus’ grandson. The fact that political power was in the hands of the aristocracy in the early seventh century is to be expected, since it was the common situation throughout the Greek world at that time. If Pheidon was the inventor and leader of the hoplites, then it is possible that he saw his opportunity, in tyrant fashion, to make use of this new military force to overthrow the aristocratic government, and to advance his own career and the interests of his hoplite supporters. His political success with the help of the hoplites would have set a precedent for others to follow.
Cypselus of Corinth: the economic cause
The growth of trade and manufacture in the eighth and seventh centuries, encouraged by the need for raw materials, such as iron, and by the aristocrats’ desire for luxury goods, and given a further boost by colonization, affected the status of the aristocracy within their communities. New ways of acquiring wealth, ot
her than from agriculture, were now open to ambitious entrepreneurs, and they did not hesitate to grasp their opportunities. The main result was that, whereas previously birth had been the decisive factor in emphasizing the aristocracy’s superiority to the rest of the community, this was being challenged by the rising importance of wealth. Many aristocrats resented this undermining of their long-held positions of power and influence by those who had acquired their wealth by trade and technology. The poetry of Theognis of Megara is a clear testimony to the bitterness that was felt by many aristocrats when wealth competed with and even surpassed birth as the distinguishing mark of social status:
Aspects of Greek History (750–323BC) Page 8