The view taken of the tyrannis in Greek literature is almost uniformly unfavourable. In this respect there is no difference between Plato and Aristotle, or between Herodotus and the later historians.[1] His policy is represented as purely selfish, and his rule as oppressive. Herodotus is influenced partly by the traditions current among the oligarchs, who had been the chief sufferers, and partly by the odious associations which had gathered round tyranny in Asia Minor. The philosophers write under their impressions of the later tyrannis, and their account is largely an a priori one. It is seldom that we find any attempt, either in the philosophers or the historians, to do justice to the real services rendered by the tyrants.[2] Their first service was a constitutional one. They helped to break down the power of the old aristocratic houses, and thus to create the social and political conditions indispensable to democracy. The tyrannis involved the sacrifice of liberty in the cause of equality. When tyranny falls, it is never succeeded by the aristocracies which it had overthrown. It is frequently succeeded by an oligarchy, but it is an oligarchy in which the claim to exclusive power is based, not upon mere birth, but upon wealth, or the possession of land. It would be unfair to treat this service as one that was rendered unconsciously and unwillingly. Where the tyrant asserted the claims of an oppressed class, he consciously aimed at the destruction of privilege and the effacement of class distinctions. Hence it is unjust to treat his power as resting upon mere force. A government which can last eighty or a hundred years, as was the case with the tyrannies at Corinth and Sicyon, must have a moral force behind it. It must rest upon the consent of its subjects. The second service which the tyrants rendered to Greece was a political one. Their policy tended to break down the barriers which isolated each petty state from its neighbours. In their history we can trace a system of widespread alliances, which are often cemented by matrimonial connexions. The Cypselid tyrants of Corinth appear to have been allied with the royal families of Egypt, Lydia and Phrygia, as well as with the tyrants of Miletus and Epidaurus, and with some of the great Athenian families. In Sicily we find a league of the northern tyrants opposed to a league of the southern; and in each ease there is a corresponding matrimonial alliance. Anaxilaus of Rhegium is the son-in-law and ally of Terillus of Himera; Gelo of Syracuse stands in the same relation to Theron of Agrigentum. Royal marriages have played a great part in the politics of Europe. In the comparison of Greek and modern history it has been too often forgotten how great a difference it makes, and how great a disadvantage it involves, to a republic that it has neither sons nor daughters to give in marriage. In commerce and colonization the tyrants were only continuing the work of the oligarchies to which they succeeded. Greek trade owed its expansion to the intelligent efforts of the oligarchs who ruled at Miletus and Corinth, in Samos, Aegina and Euboea; but in particular cases, such as Miletus, Corinth, Sicyon and Athens, there was a further development, and a still more rapid growth, under the tyrants. In the same way, the foundation of the colonies was in most cases due to the policy of the oligarchical governments. They can claim credit for the colonies of Chalcis and Eretria, of Megara, Phocaea and Samos, as well as for the great Achaean settlements in southern Italy. The Cypselids at Corinth, and Thrasybulus at Miletus, are instances of tyrants who colonized on a great scale.
In their religious policy the tyrants went far to democratize
Greek religion. The functions of monarchy had been largely
religious; but, while the king was necessarily a
priest, he was not the only priest in the community.
There were special priesthoods, hereditary in particular
families, even in the monarchical period; and
Religion under
the “tyrants.”
upon the fall of the monarchy, while the priestly functions of
the kings passed to republican magistrates, the priesthoods
which were in the exclusive possession of the great families
tended to become the important ones. Thus, before the rise of
tyranny, Greek religion is aristocratic. The cults recognized
by the state are the sacra of noble clans. The religious prerogatives
of the nobles helped to confirm their political ones,
and, as long as religion retained its aristocratic character, it was
impossible for democracy to take root. The policy of the tyrants
aimed at fostering popular cults which had no associations with
the old families, and at establishing new festivals. The cult
of the wine-god, Dionysus, was thus fostered at Sicyon by
Cleisthenes, and at Corinth by the Cypselids; while at Athens
a new festival of this deity, which so completely overshadowed
the older festival that it became known as the Great Dionysia,
probably owed its institution to Peisistratus. Another festival,
the Panathenaea, which had been instituted only a few years
before his rise to power, became under his rule, and thanks to his
policy, the chief national festival of the Athenian state. Everywhere,
again, we find the tyrants the patrons of literature.
Pindar and Bacchylides, Aeschylus and Simonides found a
welcome at the court of Hiero. Polycrates was the patron of
Anacreon, Periander of Arion. To Peisistratus has been attributed,
possibly not without reason, the first critical edition of
the text of Homer, a work as important in the literary history
of Greece as was the issue of the Authorized Version of the Bible
in English history. If we would judge fairly of tyranny, and of
what it contributed to the development of Greece, we must
remember how many states there were in whose history the
period of greatest power coincides with the rule of a tyrant.
This is unquestionably true of Corinth and Sicyon, as well as of
Syracuse in the 5th, and again in the 4th century; it is probably
true of Samos and Miletus. In the case of Athens it is only the
splendour of the Great Age that blinds us to the greatness of
the results achieved by the policy of the Peisistratids.
With the overthrow of this dynasty tyranny disappears from Greece proper for more than a century. During the century and a half which had elapsed since its first appearance the whole aspect of Greek life, and of the Greek world, had changed. The development was as yet incomplete, but the lines on which it was to proceed had been clearly marked out. Political power was no longer the monopoly of a class. The struggle between the “few” and the “many” had begun; in one state at least (Athens) the victory of the “many” was assured. The first chapter in the history of democracy was already written. In the art of war the two innovations which were ultimately to establish the military supremacy of Greece, hoplite tactics and the trireme, had already been introduced. Greek literature was The arts. no longer synonymous with epic poetry. Some of its most distinctive forms had not yet been evolved; indeed, it is only quite at the end of the period that prose-writing begins; but both lyric and elegiac poetry had been brought to perfection. In art, statuary was still comparatively stiff and crude; but in other branches, in architecture, in vase-painting and in coin-types, the aesthetic genius of the race had asserted its pre-eminence. Philosophy, the supreme gift of Greece to the modern world, had become a living power. Some of her most original thinkers belong to the 6th century. Criticism had been applied to everything in turn: to the gods, to conduct, and to the conception of the universe. Before the Great Age begins, the claims of intellectual as well as of political freedom had been vindicated. It was not, however, in Greece proper that progress had been greatest. In the next century the centre of gravity of Greek civilization shifts to the western side of the Aegean; in the 6th century it must be looked for at Miletus, rather than at Athens. In order to estimate how far the development of Greece had advanced, or to appreciate the distinctive features of Greek life at this period, we must study Ionia, rather than Attica or the Peloponnese. Almost all that is greatest and most characteristic is to be found on the eastern side of the Aegean. The great names in the history of science and philosophy before the beginning of the 5th century—Thales, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaximander, Hecataeus; names which are representative of mathematics, astronomy, geography and metaphysics, are all, without exception, Ionian. In poetry, too, the most famous names, if not so exclusively Ionian, are connected either with the Asiatic coast or with
