rulers (McGlew 1993; Anderson 2005). But Aristotle also offers some insight into how tyrannies may have emerged, when he notes (Pol. 1310b) that some arose “from those elected to the highest magistracies,” offering as examples the tyrants of the Ionian cities—including, presumably, Thrasybulus of Miletus—and Phalaris of Acragas. This is also, as we have seen, supposed to be the case with Pittacus, appointed to a 10-year-term as aisymnētēs (Arist. Pol. 1285a), and with Orthagoras of Sicyon and Cypselus of Corinth, both of whom apparently held the office of polemarchos (105 FGrH 2; Nicolaus of Damascus 90 FGrH 57.5). Indeed, it is clear that tyrants typically belonged to the ruling elite (de Libero 1996): Cypselus’ mother belonged to the aristocratic clan of the Bacchiadae (Hdt. 5.92); Pittacus married into the ruling family of the Penthilidae (Alcaeus fr. 70 Campbell); Theagenes married his daughter to the Athenian aristocrat Cylon (Thuc. 1.126.3); and Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, married his daughter to the Athenian Alcmaeonid Megacles (Hdt. 6.130). The case of the Athenian archon Damasias, who remained in office for two years and two months (582–580 BC) before being forcibly removed from power ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 13.2), suggests that tyrannies often arose when aristocrats decided not to “play by the rules,” violating the principle of rotation by refusing to cede to their peers the offices to which they had been appointed.
The degree to which tyrannical regimes depended upon popular support is still debated (see Wallace 2009: 417 against Stein-Hölkeskamp 2009: 113). Certainly, the old view that tyrants were swept to power by hoplite armies of middling citizens shortly before the middle of the seventh century (e.g., Andrewes 1956) finds support in no source. Even later, when hoplite tactics were fully established, Polycrates of Samos established his rule with a force of no more than 15 hoplites (Hdt. 3.120.3); Theron seized power at Selinus with 300 slaves (Polyaenus, Strat. 1.28.2); and Pisistratus’ first attempt at tyranny over Athens was achieved with a band of 50 club-bearers (Hdt. 1.59.5–6; [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 14.1; Plut. Vit. Sol. 30)—his third and successful attempt was brought about by foreign mercenaries (Hdt. 1.61.4). On the other hand, there are hints in our sources that tyrants, once established, may have appealed to the dēmos for support against potential elite rivals. According to Aristotle (Pol. 1315b), the Orthagorid dynasty of Sicyon “promoted the interests of the dēmos in most respects,” while Pisistratus is said to have administered Athens “more like a citizen than like a tyrant,” making loans to those in need ([Arist. Ath. Pol. 16.2). And it is Aristotle again who says that, in order to secure the trust of the dēmos and their pledge of hostility against the wealthy, Theagenes slaughtered the flocks of the rich as they grazed beside the river (Pol. 1305a);18 a similar motif is attributed to Telys of Sybaris, who is supposed to have persuaded his subjects to expel the 500 richest citizens and confiscate their property (Diod. Sic. 12.9.2). The historicity of such episodes is not secure but, when Cleisthenes of Athens, the grandson of the Sicyonian tyrant, “brought the dēmos into his faction” (Hdt. 5.66.2) in order to gain a political advantage over his elite rival, Isagoras, he can hardly have been the first person to have entertained the prospect of deploying popular support within intra-elite conflict.
In terminating the principle of rotation of office, the tyrants were, in a certain sense, turning the clock back and there are, in fact, various aspects in which the tyrants resemble the big men or chieftains of an earlier age. Charismatic authority for what was essentially an “achieved” office was secured by means of martial and athletic prowess: Orthagoras, Cypselus, and Pisistratus are all said to have distinguished themselves in the military sphere (105 FGrH 2; Nicolaus of Damascus 90 FGrH 57.5; Hdt. 1.59.4), while Cleisthenes of Sicyon was commemorated for victories in the four-horse chariot race at Olympia and Delphi (Hdt. 6.126.2; Paus. 10.7.6). Loyalty was bought through public munificence: Cypselus made costly dedications at Delphi and Olympia (Plut. Mor. 400d; Paus. 5.17.5); the Pisistratids began construction of the Temple of Olympian Zeus (Arist. Pol. 1313b); and Polycrates probably initiated the second dipteral temple to Hera on Samos (Kienast 2002). Like Homeric basileis, tyrants contracted marriage alliances and guest friendships with peers beyond their own states: in addition to the intermarriages mentioned already mentioned, Cypselus’ successor, Periander, married the daughter of Procles, the tyrant of Epidaurus (Hdt. 3.50), while Thrasybulus of Miletos and the Lydian king Alyattes were guest-friends (Hdt. 1.22.4), as were Polycrates and the Egyptian Pharaoh Amasis (3.39.2). But, also like Homeric basileis, the position of the tyrant was intergenerationally unstable: while the tyranny of the Orthagorids may have lasted around a century at Sicyon, the Cypselid tyranny at Corinth was suppressed in the third generation, when Periander’s nephew, Psammetichus, was removed after just three years (Arist. Pol. 1315b); at Athens, the younger of Pisistratus’ sons, Hipparchus, was assassinated after fourteen years while his brother, Hippias, survived only a further four years before being expelled by the Spartans (Hdt. 5.55–65; [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 19). By the end of the sixth century, tyranny had become virtually extinct in mainland Greece and the Aegean islands, but it continued in Sicily, witnessing a new, more imperialist manifestation with the establishment of Deinomenid power over first Gela, and then Syracuse and much of eastern Sicily (Thuc. 1.18.1; see Luraghi 1994).
The Advent of Democracy?
The Athenians of the classical period liked to think that the Pisistratid tyranny had been replaced by democracy: Herodotus (6.131.1) has little to say about the younger Cleisthenes, other than that he had “instituted the tribes and the democracy.” But this was largely self-delusion (Hall 2010: 15–18). The immediate aftermath of Hippias’ expulsion was a return to elite infighting. Indeed, the word dēmokratia is heavily freighted with meaning because it implies that supreme authority or power (kratos) resides with the dēmos—a word that, in Archaic poetry, regularly denotes the population of a city exclusive of the elites. In other words, a political revolution occurred in which the masses wrested power away from the formerly governing elites and this can only really have happened with Ephialtes’ attacks on the aristocratic council of the Areopagus in 462/1 BC ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 25.2; see Raaflaub 2007; Giangiulio 2015: 21–24). It can hardly be coincidental that the word is first paraphrased (δήμου κρατοῦσα χείρ) in Aeschylus’ Suppliant Maidens (604), thought to have been performed in the later 460s, or that this is also the approximate date attributed to a gravestone for a certain individual named Democrates (Hansen 1991: 70). But, if Athens crafted what is often termed a “radical” brand of democracy, it may not have been the first experiment in what we might call popular rule. Argos probably adopted a form of democracy very similar to Athens at about the same time, but there are some indications that elite rule had already yielded to more popular governance three decades earlier (Gehrke 1985: 361–363; Piérart 1997: 333). Herodotus (5.30.1) recounts how the wealthy—literally “fat” (pacheis)—of the island of Naxos had been expelled by the dēmos and had found refuge in Miletus in the years immediately prior to the Ionian Revolt of 499 BC. And Plutarch (Mor. 304e) refers to the establishment of an “undisciplined democracy” (ἀκολάστου δημοκρατίας) at Megara as early as the first decades of the sixth century, though the testimony has been doubted (e.g., Forsdyke 2005: 53–55).19
Kurke (1991) has argued that athletic victors, who were almost invariably from elite backgrounds in the Archaic period, stood at the intersection of three concentric circles, constituted by the oikos (household), polis, and the wider transregional community of aristocrats, and that one of the functions of Pindar’s epinician odes was to reintegrate the victor into his home community and to mitigate the potential tensions that might arise between him, his family, and his fellow citizens. Peter Rose (1992: 159, 177–178) has gone further and argued that Pindar’s celebration of aristocratic values was a response to the Cleisthenic democracy of Athens. Yet, as Rosalind Thomas (2007) has pointed out, there are few odes that are commissioned for Athenian victors while the epinician tradition can be traced back to at least Simonides ca. 520 BC and perhaps even Ibycus before him (and may have developed alongside an even earlier tradition of setting up honorific statues)—i.e., well before Cleisthenes’ reforms which in any case, as we have seen, do not seem to have ushered in true democracy at
