![]() The ‘tyrant’s progress’, I suggest, provides a way of understanding these contradictions. II 141d5–e3), and tyrants who successfully bequeathed their rule to their sons and grandsons, such as the Orthagorids of Sicyon or the Cypselids of Corinth (Arist. There were even kings from established royal houses who were usurpers, such as Archelaus of Macedon (Pl. Some legitimate kings were barbaric and cruel, such as Pheidon of Argos (Hdt. The tyrant’s progress explains, I argue, a major problem: why do some rulers who are called tyrants not fit the stereotype of the illegitimate and tyrannical despot? Some illegitimate usurpers were nevertheless good and successful rulers, such as Pisistratus of Athens or Gelon of Syracuse. 248e3): he lives a life that is as wretched for himself as it is calamitous for his victims. For Plato, the soul of the tyrant is similarly the most unjust and decadent of all ( Resp. 1289a26–b3) likewise saw tyranny as the worst of the three perverse constitutions (the others being oligarchy and democracy). Thus Herodotus has the Corinthian Socles say that besides tyranny ‘there is nothing more unjust among mortals nor more stained with blood’ (5.92 α1). ![]() As a result, even if some tyrants are gifted rulers, tyranny is nonetheless to be understood categorically as an evil. A tyrant thus does not need to be a bad person or a bad ruler, at least at first – in actual fact, the successful pursuit of power requires singular ability and daring – but there is always the strong possibility that he will become one. #TYRANNY DEF FULL#Slowly, but inevitably, he or his successors will degenerate into full and complete tyrants. This pattern is explained by the corrupting effects of excessive good fortune and by the tyrant’s own jealous fear for his position. A strong trend in Greek political theory and historiography is to trace the decline of tyrannies from initially good and popular governments to ones that are despotic and unpopular. Third, the Greeks believed that this process was inevitably accompanied by a progressive moral decay, sometimes over several generations within one dynasty. This gradual process is termed here ‘the tyrant’s progress’. A king or other magistrate may, therefore, become a tyrant if he exceeds his prerogatives and so ceases to be constrained by law. But one becomes a tyrant through a gradual monopolization of power, wealth and honour within the polis. A magistrate is a magistrate from the moment of his appointment or election, a king from the moment of his accession or coronation. A tyrant will thus not generally begin as a tyrant and one cannot simply become a tyrant in the same way that one becomes a king or magistrate. Second, because tyranny is not a constitutional office, the Greeks considered tyranny not as a fixed state of being, or not being, but instead a gradual process of development. (For this reason, extreme oligarchies or radical democracies may be said to possess tyrannical power, even though they are not strictly tyrannies). Tyrants are, in sum, simply those who possess the means to monopolise constitutional offices and the good life of the polis for their own enjoyment. 4.6.12) – especially, but not exclusively, usurpers. ![]() ![]() Tyrannos can thus be applied as a label to rulers unconstrained by law (e.g. 1 A tyrant may be distinguished from a king ( βασιλεύς): an alternative and supposedly early form of autocrat whose privileges were hereditary and whose powers were restricted by custom (e.g. First, tyranny was not a constitutional or legal office, but a position of de facto, rather than de jure, power and authority. Three factors determine the Greek understanding of this term. This is because ancient authors conceived of tyranny and the career of the tyrant as a gradual decline into despotism and infamy. Some are more obviously ‘tyrants’ than others. ![]() However, not all ‘tyrants’ necessarily exhibit all the characteristics associated with tyrannical rule at any one time. I argue here that, for the Greeks, the word tyrannos always potentially entailed negative connotations of ‘tyrannical’ or ‘despotic’ rule, not dissimilar to those associated with the English cognate ‘tyrant’. While this question is hardly original, I can at least plead that, since it remains a topic of live dispute among scholars, an alternative approach – ‘the tyrant’s progress’ – may not be unwelcome. The problem discussed here will be familiar to most students of Greek history: the meaning of the Greek word τύραννος in the classical period. ![]()
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