6
LOPPING OFF THE HEADS?
Tyrants, politics and the polls
John Salmon
I’m sure that you will all recognise the reference in my title to the story in Herodotus (5.92.æ.2–ç.1): Periander tyrant of Corinth sent to ask Thrasybulus of Miletus how to arrange affairs in the city most safely, and was treated to a performance instead of a spoken answer. Thrasybulus took the messenger into a field of corn, silently cut off the tallest ears and threw them away. The messenger was baffled; but when report was made to Periander, he understood all too well: Thrasybulus had ‘urged him to murder those who were outstanding among the citizens’. So, Herodotus continues, ‘Periander finished those murders and banishments which Cypselus had left undone.’ Aristotle told the same story but reversed the roles of Periander and Thrasybulus;1 no doubt he assumed that Periander, the typical tyrant, had nothing to learn but much to teach about the techniques of repression.
It is unclear, however, whether the story originally had that repressive implication. Another tale in Herodotus, the escape of the infant Cypselus from his Bacchiad enemies, was plainly once part of a favourable account despite its hostile context;2 and the story of the heads of corn can also be given a favourable—or at least a not unfavourable—interpretation. To lop off the outstanding heads, even if it is a metaphor for executions, is not a negative act if the heads are unpopular: those of the Bacchiads certainly were. A further possibility is that the story contains a metaphor for the establishment of equality. Aristotle uses it to illustrate the repression of a typical tyrant;3 but his lengthiest reference occurs in a context in which the point is different: the effect of lopping off the heads is the same as that of ostracism in a democracy—it ensures equality among the remaining citizens (Pol. 3.1284al7–37).
However we interpret that story, tyranny played an important part in the political development of a number of poleis. But at least for Solon, it was already part of the problem, not the solution: he worked hard to avoid it. Tyranny was never identified in antiquity as a constructive phenomenon, but that is too simple a view. Despite the discouraging judgement of Solon, I shall consider the extent to which tyranny made a positive contribution to political development. I shall not be concerned with why tyrannies arose, but with what they achieved when in power.4 Snodgrass has suggested that ‘tyrants survived by manipulating an existing system, rather than by setting up a new one’.5 I accept what I take to be the intended implication, that tyrants arose in what were already recognisable as poleis; but I prefer to put at least the consequence differently: tyrants came to power by manipulating an existing system, but they (or at least some of them) survived by setting up new ones.
It is difficult to identify constructive achievements. For all our sources, tyrant was a term of abuse. It was inevitable that tyrants should get a bad press; what defined them in later periods was their ejection after they had outlived their usefulness. Aristotle already recognised the general principle: ‘most of those who gained power themselves retained their control, but those who took it over from others all, so to speak, lost it straight away’ (Pol. 5.1312b21–3; and cf. 1313a10). In the cities of Asia Minor, the Persians ruled through tyrants, who thus overstayed their welcome for additional reasons.6 It did not help that, by soon after the mid-fifth century at the latest, Sparta’s claim to predominance was partly supported by an assertion that, never having suffered tyranny herself, she had freed other cities from it (Thuc. 1.18.1); and a new phenomenon, late-fifth-and fourth-century tyranny, made it all too easy to suppose that Archaic tyranny was similar to contemporary examples.
The aspects of tyranny which were later emphasised give little ground for identifying constructive achievement. Various features are already found in Solon. He associated tyranny with violence: fr. 32 West has the pairing tyrannis and bie ameilichos. That is how Herodotus took the story of the lopping off of heads—and he emphasises (and probably exaggerates) the violence of both Cypselus and Periander (3.49.2–53; 5.92.á.1, ä.2–ç.5). An association between tyranny and wealth is found in Archilochus (fr. 19 West), and is further emphasised by Solon (fr. 33): he imagines a critic who sneers at him for not grasping his opportunity, ‘If I had the power, I should wish to take great wealth (ploutos aphthonos) and be tyrant of Athens for but one day, if I were then flayed alive and my family wiped out.’
A further feature of tyranny was never quite explicitly stated by Aristotle in the Politics, but is none the less for him a defining characteristic: it was outside the law. The assumption lies behind many passages;7 the absence of an explicit statement is not so much reason for doubt about the connection as evidence for such certainty that Aristotle took it for granted —and could assume his readers would too. Violence and the personal advantage (and the sexual appetites) of the tyrant are equally prominent; the extra two centuries of experience Aristotle could draw on enabled him to add numerous methods and examples of repression and self-indulgence.8
Violence, perks and lawlessness do not read well as part of a citation for a Nobel Prize, or even an Oscar, for political development, and at least some of these characteristics were associated with tyranny from a very early period; but we cannot automatically attribute any of them to the early tyrants. It is not entirely clear that they were known as tyrants to their contemporaries—even to their enemies among them. One of the oracles preserved by Herodotus in his story of Cypselus addresses him as basileus (5.92.ã.2). The same tide was presumably used by Pheidon, since he was a king of the traditional kind (Arist. Pol. 5.1310b16–28): only later experience enabled Herodotus to label him as a tyrant (6.127.3). For Archilochus, the type of the tyrant was the Lydian Gyges (fr. 19); and the Greek tyrant contemporaries of Solon were already of the second or even third generation: Periander of Corinth and Cleisthenes of Sicyon. I do not wish to deny that contemporaries called Cypselus, the early Orthagorids and others tyrants, though I know of nothing to demonstrate that they did; but even if they did, the case of Pittacus shows how misleading the term could be. He was a tyrant to his enemy Alcaeus (fr. 163 Lobel and Page =163 LGS). Aristotle, however, preferred the title of aisymnetes, precisely because he recognised that Pittacus was no tyrant according to the definition he knew.9 Pittacus was no more a tyrant in that sense than he was kakopatrides —which Alcaeus also called him in the same fragment.
We can conclude nothing from a name, especially one which acquired its definition later, and which in any case was not necessarily applied by contemporaries to the reality. The early tyrants must be assessed for what they did, not for what they were later called. There are persistent indications, even in the later sources, of a favourable view of early tyrants which the standard view could not eradicate. Herodotus preserved stories about Cypselus—not to mention other tyrants—which sit very ill with his own hostile attitude.10 Aristotle has a good deal of information, and even some theory, which run counter to his standard view. Early tyrants were often, in his view, demagogues (Pol. 5.1310b14–16, 29–31). That cannot imply anything like what it meant in fifth-century Athens; but it depends on a tradition that they relied to some extent on popular (that is, to put it at its broadest, non-elite) support. Aristotle was plainly embarrassed by the implications of that tradition. In his section on how to preserve tyranny, he begins with an account of how to do so by repressive measures; but suggests that another method is to pretend not to be a tyrant at all, but a popular ruler. That further emphasises that tyrants were often popular; Aristotle could only reconcile the fact with his theory by suggesting that they were so by pretence.11 I shall attempt to interpret tyrants without being distracted by the baggage of later interpretation. A major principle is that anything preserved in the later sources which runs contrary to the standard view of the tyrant is probably accurate, or at least based on accurate tradition, like Aristotle’s view that early tyrants were often demagogues. It is most unlikely that favourable stories about tyrants were invented.
Aristotle at least half recognised one of the most important constructive achievements of the tyrants: they acted as champions of the people against the rich (plousioi); and they were trusted by the people because they attacked the gnorimoi (Pol. 5.1305a22–3, 1310b12–16). Tyrants took a step without which development was impossible—they removed aristocracies from power. In this respect, however, they were only examples of a more general trend—they all put an end to the full power of the basilees of Hesiod’s Works and Days, but they were not alone in doing so. Different poleis found different means to curb aristocrats, from the rhetra in Sparta and the legislation of Dracon and Solon in Athens to Pheidon of Argos who reversed the normal trend of his day by exploiting his position as hereditary king to establish a tyranny, presumably at the expense of Argive aristocrats.
Tyrants provided the least constructive, though sometimes the most complete, even drastic, solution to the problem of aristocratic privilege: aristocrats were under threat not just of restriction, but of elimination. No doubt that is one reason why Solon associated tyranny with violence. Solutions attempted elsewhere, based like those of Solon himself on institutions, were potentially more constructive. None the less, the mere establishment of a tyranny was at least an enabling act: even a regime of the fourth-century text-book tyrant type (if there had been any in the seventh century) would have made an advance merely by removing aristocracies from power and maintaining control itself for a decade or two.
The precise significance of the change, however, depended on circumstances in each city. At Corinth the change was abrupt: Cypselus rested his claims in part on his Bacchiad origins, but many, perhaps most, Bacchiads suffered exile or worse. That may have been necessary precisely because of the unusually narrow nature of the Bacchiad regime.12 In Argos, by contrast, the change was more limited: Pheidon became tyrant by exploiting his position as hereditary king (Arist. Pol. 5. 1310b18–20, 25–8), and that may have involved only informal changes in the distribution of power. There is no sign of long-lasting effects on Argive institutions—though since classical Argos retained a basileus (Meiggs and Lewis 42.43) that may merely be because we have insufficient information about internal arrangements at Argos. At Sicyon, it may be significant that the changes upon which the sources concentrate were established by Cleisthenes: his predecessors perhaps found extensive change unnecessary.13
All tyrants deprived aristocrats of power; they had far more positive achievements to their credit too. Despite the standard later view that tyrants were outside the law, they may often, on the contrary, have been at least partly responsible for the establishment of the rule of law. It was precisely the arbitrary rule of aristocrats (dorophagoi basilees, in Hesiod’s words) which tyrants ended; that at least enabled, even if it did not oblige, them to give greater definition to the administration of justice. Stories are preserved about some of the tyrants which suggest that they did exactly that. In Athens, Peisistratus ‘did not disturb the thesmia’ (Her. 1.59.6); under his sons ‘the city used the laws which had existed before’ (Thuc. 6.54.6). The tyrant established the dikastai kata demous (Ath. Pol. 16.5), and even appeared himself before the Areopagus on a charge of homicide (though his accuser lacked the bottle to proceed with the charge).14
Peisistratus was, however, in this respect as in many others, a special case precisely because his tyranny followed the legislation of Solon. When Peisistratus came to power, there was an already existing pattern of written law, which he followed —but also developed. In other cities, tyrants may well have originated laws themselves. General considerations make that probable enough: tyrants represent a similar stage in the history of their cities to that which Athens reached at the time of Dracon and Solon; they legislated for Athens, so it was appropriate for tyrants to legislate elsewhere. That is never asserted by our sources, but we should not expect it to be: tyranny was later taken to be the antithesis of law. None the less, a good case can be made despite the unsatisfactory state of the evidence. Even Pheidon in Argos, who was perhaps the least typical of the tyrants and the least likely to establish lasting institutions since he already enjoyed the traditional kingship, introduced the measures named after him which were used centuries later (Her. 6.127.3). We cannot tell the purpose of his arrangements, but to establish weights and measures is an act of definition close to the establishment of norms of conduct in laws: law, indeed, is needed to define the measures and require their use. It is significant that the definitions were presumably intended to protect consumers: that was the purpose of metrologoi and the like later, and it is difficult to see how such a definition could have benefited the elite.
Pittacus at Lesbos was called a tyrant by his contemporary enemy Alcaeus, and Aristotle gives him as one example of an aisymnetes, an office which he defines as that of an elective tyrant; but he was certainly responsible for establishing laws, including the notion that any given punishment for a crime was to be greater if the offender was drunk when committing the act (Pol. 2.1274b18–23).
More generally, the Delphic oracle in favour of Cypselus suggested that he would dikaiosei de Korinthon (Her. 5.92.â.2). That does not necessarily imply that he established laws, but in the broadest terms almost any means by which the tyrant might have brought dike to the city would have involved some regularisation of its system of justice. There are many details which give reason to think that the tyrants introduced legislation which lasted.15 There has been some disagreement recently over the details of the eight Corinthian local tribes,16 but at least there has been general agreement that the system was introduced by the tyrants,17 who were thus responsible for one of the longest-lasting institutions of the Corinthian polis. The future pattern was so heavily based on the tribes that a proverb arose about Corinthian institutions: panta okto, eight of everything. It is impossible to be sure exactly what the purpose of the new tribes was, but almost any view would have interesting implications for the self-perception of Corinthians: the new arrangements were locally based, and may have been designed as a conscious change from the hereditary principle. They defined the Corinthian citizen body, and that may indeed have been their main purpose. They may also have defined privileged groups within it. In an important sense, the details do not matter: such a conscious act of definition must have greatly increased the awareness of Corinthians of their identity as citizens, though it naturally still allows for a whole range of hierarchically distinct identities.
Other details suggest that Periander was responsible for sumptuary legislation; that is probably the origin of the story in Herodotus (5.92.ç.1–4) that he burned all the fine clothes of Corinthian women, and the notion that he cut the Corinthian elite down to size may lie behind the story of the lopping off of heads. He restricted the ownership of slaves, presumably among the elite and not among ordinary Corinthians. An obscure council is said to have ensured that expenditure by individuals did not exceed their income, and a law with precisely that effect is recorded for fourth-century Corinth.18
For the Orthagorids at Sicyon, Aristotle is remarkably explicit: ‘in many respects they were slaves to the laws’ (Pol. 5. 1315b15–16: 
). Similarly, the tribal pattern established by Cleisthenes, whatever its purpose, was retained after the fall of the regime, just like that at Corinth, though it did not last as long (cf. p. 66, below). We have no other evidence; but it is remarkable that we have even that, and it is entirely plausible to suggest that the tyrants, or at least some of them, may have performed similar functions to other Archaic lawgivers. It was the fact that they were tyrants which was remembered, and therefore reached our sources; that edged out their longer-lasting achievements. Tyrants do not bulk large in Hölkeskamp’s recent account of Archaic written laws;19 but he emphasises the particular origin of many codes, and that makes it easy to fit tyrants into the pattern: where the individual circumstances of a polis created problems, tyrants acted.20
Tyrants were responsible for other institutions which lasted. It has been suggested, especially in the case of Athens, that tyrants encouraged centralisation: since political life centred on the tyrant, who lived in the central place, the tyranny encouraged all citizens to look towards that central place, and they continued to do so after the fall of the regime. As a general principle, that seems to me doubtful: if the centralising tendency depended on the tyrant, then it lost momentum after his expulsion (or death). If, however, the tyrant encouraged the use of central institutions,21 then his encouragement would bear fruit later; that happened in Athens under Peisistratus with the council of four hundred and the assembly, as Cleisthenes (in the end) recognised to his advantage. A comparable pattern can be suggested for Corinth: the probouloi, who along with the council were closely associated with the tribal system, were a central institution in Corinthian affairs for centuries after the tyranny. If we may judge from Aristotle’s general remarks about probouloi, they were probably responsible for the enviable stability Classical Corinth enjoyed: it is extremely likely that they were introduced by the tyrants.22 Sicyon provides striking confirmation that institutions established by tyrants did not necessarily collapse with the fall of the regime. Herodotus affirms that Cleisthenes’ change of tribe names lasted for sixty years after his death: the most likely chronology means that they outlasted the regime by well over a generation.23 In all these respects, the tyrants created institutions which gave citizens a much clearer view of their identity.
Tyrants were often also responsible for a quite different kind of centralising tendency—an enormous improvement in the provision of public amenities, usually but not always in the central place. This was an aspect of tyrant regimes which Aristotle noted: he recorded the anathemata of the Cypselids, the pyramids in Egypt, the Olympieion built by the sons of Peisistratus and the works of Polycrates, as examples of schemes designed to keep subjects at work—and, strangely, poor. Perhaps he thought, most improbably, that work on the schemes was not paid (Pol. 5.1313b18–25).
There is some controversy over the chronology of the earliest monumental Corinthian temples, at Corinth itself and at Isthmia, but in my view they are best attributed to Cypselus. Equally, although the archaeology is not clear about the date of what seems to have been the largest temple ever built in the Peloponnese, it is best given to Periander. Later Corinthian regimes were mean by comparison: they replaced buildings as they burnt down (which happened with alarming frequency: the temples of both Apollo at Corinth and Poseidon at Isthmia were constructed for this reason); in neither case was the new building spectacular for its day.24
Chronological uncertainty leaves doubts about the responsibility of the tyrants for Corinthian temples, but they certainly provided extremely impressive utilitarian structures. Cypselus fortified the city—an enormous undertaking, given the exceptionally difficult defensive problems and the hopelessly exposed position; and Periander both excavated an artificial harbour at Lechaeum and constructed the diolkos for the transport of vessels across the Isthmus.25 All these projects concerned in some way the relationship between Corinthians and the external world: the wall defended Corinth against it, and the harbour and diolkos connected the city with it. The purpose of the fortification, at least, was precisely to define Corinth’s relationship with others; that was not the purpose of the harbour or the diolkos, but it may well have been part of their effect.
In Athens, Thucydides remarked on the activity of the tyrants in embellishing the city.26 The chronology of the buildings on the acropolis on which the magnificent sculpture in the Acropolis Museum was displayed is too imprecise to enable us to fix them securely; but most of them were probably built by Peisistratus or his sons. There is no doubt about the responsibility for the Temple of Olympian Zeus which was begun by Peisistratus’ sons (and remarked upon by Aristotle), though it was not completed until the time of Hadrian. Utilitarian projects were also provided, as at Corinth: Thucydides remarked on the fountain of Enneakrounos (2.15.5). It is now fashionable to identify the building beneath the tholos, in which there is evidence of cooking on a grand scale, as the tyrants’ palace; but it makes much better sense of the general building history of this area to identify it as the predecessor of the tholos not only in position, but also in function. It served the needs of the members of the council of four hundred, and then that of five hundred, in much the same way as the tholos did when it was built after 462. It therefore provides a striking example of both institutional and physical continuity between the period of the tyrants and later Athenian practice.27
Polycrates’ erga were already famous to Herodotus: they included a harbour mole as well as the famous tunnel for the water supply designed by Eupalinus, and demonstrate concern for merchant vessels, defence and the water supply which we have already seen elsewhere. At Samos, however, unusually, there were impressive buildings, especially at the Heraeum, which cannot be attributed to Polycrates. The significance of that is difficult to determine, since the extent to which he had predecessors in the tyranny remains uncertain.28 Nothing of this kind is clear for Sicyon, but that probably tells us more about the nature of our evidence than about reality. Cleisthenes built at Delphi after his victory in the Sacred War:29 his architects and craftsmen had presumably learned their skills at home and still practised them there, but we have no evidence because the Archaic site of the city is still unknown.
The consciousness of an identity is partly determined by looking at oneself; in the matter of physical amenities, tyrants did more than any others in the Archaic period to create that consciousness and enable citizens to look with pride at their cities.30 Consciousness of self-identity is also determined by looking at others; here too, tyrants established lasting identities for their cities. Lengthy continuity can be observed in Corinthian foreign policy: relations established by the tyrants were still significant in the later fifth century and even beyond. The colonies in north-west Greece were founded by Cypselus and ruled by his bastard sons as tyrants themselves. Whatever the purpose of the foundations, the family ties between the rulers of Corinth and the colonies meant a closer relationship than was normal. Continuity between this period and the fifth century cannot be traced in detail, but it is extremely unlikely that the Corinthian links here which bore fruit in both the Persian and the Peloponnesian Wars were entirely independent of what was established by the tyrants. A similar connection could probably be seen, if only we had sufficient detail in our evidence, between Periander’s interests in Epidaurus, where the tyrant was his father-in-law Procles, and the special Corinthian concerns observable here during the period after the Peace of Nicias. Equally the special naval interests of Corinth, still powerful, if embarrassingly ineffective, in the Peloponnesian War, were established by the tyrants, especially of course in exactly these north-western waters.31 Similar patterns can be seen elsewhere. Pheidon’s achievement for Argos remains uncertain, but there is little doubt that he extended the power of the city at least temporarily, and perhaps for a lengthy period. Cleisthenes enjoyed success in the Sacred War; Polycrates cut a considerable figure in the Aegean world which even his aristocratic enemies took a secret pride in;32 and Miletus, despite the Lydian threat, was able to retain some independence under Thrasybulus (Her. 1.22.4), about whom it would be good to know a great deal more than we do. It is, however, doubtful whether there is anything significant in the fact that Athenian interest in the Hellespont can be traced both under Peisistratus and in the fifth century: not only were fifth-century Athenian concerns here on a totally different scale from what went before; Athenian interest in the region predated Peisistratus, since arbitration by Periander of Corinth himself was part of its history (Her. 5.95.2).
If the early tyrants were so effective in creating an identity for their cities, it might not be unreasonable to ask why Solon, who had observed half a century of their achievements, was hostile. He certainly could have become a tyrant himself, as he admitted when defending himself (fr.33) against the charge that he had wasted the opportunity. Part of the problem may have been the specifically Athenian experience of the attempt of Cylon on the tyranny and its contentious aftermath; but fragments from Solon suggest other reasons too. The association between tyranny and violence (p. 61, above) justifies Solon’s refusal to become a tyrant. Elsewhere he makes the potential character of the violence clear (fr. 37, ap. Ath. Pol. 12.5): If some other man…had obtained his position,
He would not have restrained the people, nor have stopped Until he had churned up the milk and taken away its butterfat.
The butterfat of the Athenian milk was the aristocrats: it was they who were under threat of violence. It is almost as if Solon already knew the story of the lopping off of heads and took it in the same way as Herodotus.
What Solon certainly knew is the history of tyranny outside Athens; and his legislation suggests that he recognised both the achievements and the problems it demonstrated. He followed tyrants in defining weights and measures, in sumptuary legislation, and in establishing institutions of government—and probably in many other items for which our evidence does not allow the recovery of precedents in the activities of tyrants; but despite his bitter criticisms of the Athenian elite (fr. 4), he would not follow tyrants in their violence against opponents. Perhaps most importantly, he would not follow them in what was, by his time, an excessive concentration on the person of the tyrant himself. Cypselus had needed no bodyguard (Arist. Pol. 5.1315b27–8); but Periander, who when Solon legislated had ruled Corinth for thirty years, employed one,34 and by now the opposition to the regime which led to its fall immediately after Periander’s death must have been all too obvious. If there is any truth in the stories in Herodotus of the difficulties he had with his sons (3.50–3), that will merely have emphasised the essential problem with tyranny—its concentration on the person and family of the tyrant. In the first generation, as Aristotle saw, tyrants retained power. He continued to suggest that almost all second-generation tyrants lost it straight away (Pol. 5. 1312b21–3); that was not true of Periander, but the measures he had to take in order to prevent it no doubt both contributed to his reputation in Aristotle as the typical repressive tyrant, and (much earlier) gave Solon good reason to adopt a different method from what had been tried at Corinth. The same was probably true at Sicyon. We know more about Cleisthenes than about any other member of the dynasty; there is not the same evidence of repression with him as there is with Periander, but we probably hear more of him than of his predecessors precisely because he made a new start in order to justify his hold on power,35 just as we hear more of Periander in power than we do of Cypselus.
That was the problem: it was not the achievements of the tyrants which created the difficulty, but their personal position, which became more difficult to justify as time went by, and which gave rise to the standard tyrant of later theory. Hence Solon legislated, in many respects, in order to achieve what tyrants had achieved elsewhere, and then left Athens to allow his laws to stand for themselves. Had he stayed, his personal position would have created similar problems even if he had positively resisted any attempt made by his fellow citizens to elevate him to a position analogous to that of a tyrant. In those circumstances, his enemies would have called him a tyrant, just as Alcaeus called Pittacus a tyrant. Plutarch reports that Solon said to his friends that tyranny was a good place, but it was a dead end— ïýê Ý÷åéí ä ..p.ßas.. (Sol. 14.8); it is unfortunate that we have no fragment to this effect, but it is a judgement which Solon’s whole legislative programme implies. He established the rules by which political life was to be conducted, and left the council of four hundred, and the assembly through which the council necessarily worked, to oversee that activity in the way in which tyrants oversaw it elsewhere: at that level, his institutions were a conscious attempt to establish an alternative to tyranny.
It was precisely because of Solon’s achievement that tyranny later contributed more in Athens than anywhere else: nothing less than the preparation of Athenians for a democratic future. In a narrow sense, the rise of Peisistratus to the tyranny demonstrated Solon’s failure: Solon rejected the opportunity to become tyrant, and his legislation was in part designed to resolve the problems which might have enabled others to do so. The failure, however, was highly constructive—if failure it was. Tyrants arose elsewhere as a result of aristocratic faction disputes which contestants exploited; at least sometimes they took the opportunity to establish institutions of lasting significance, though naturally always with their own interests in mind. In Athens, however, Solon had already established institutions when Peisistratus rose to power; and the method which he adopted depended crucially on them. The rise of the three staseis occurred because after Solon’s legislation popular support could be increasingly important for disputing aristocrats. Peisistratus recognised the fact, and exploited it both to establish and to maintain his tyranny. After the fall of his sons, Cleisthenes acted as he did because the tyrants had encouraged broadly democratic trends; they did so precisely because Solon’s legislation, and especially the council of four hundred and the assembly whose involvement it encouraged, increased the importance of ordinary Athenians voting in the assembly.
In other cities, tyrants often over-stayed their welcome: by doing so, they encouraged (though hardly deliberately) a feeling of solidarity among their opponents which could outlast the immediate task of removing the last tyrant. A common pattern was probably for that group (or those groups) which had given the tyrants their strength to control affairs afterwards, though the state of our evidence makes that difficult to demonstrate; at the least, McGlew has recently emphasised the fall of tyranny as a defining moment.36 The importance of this issue is emphasised by the Athenian case, where the situation was different. There is no obvious sign of general hostility towards the tyrants. The Alcmaeonid attempt to fortify Leipsydrion, and presumably attract widespread support, was a failure; and the events which led to the fall of the regime do not demonstrate any widespread internal opposition. Cleomenes captured hostages by chance; had he not done so, his invasion might have been no more successful than that of Anchimolius shortly before (Her. 5.62–5).
None the less, the tyranny fell, largely because of the application of Spartan force and much good fortune. Events thereafter moved rapidly towards the reforms of Cleisthenes, and it was not long before Athenians claimed to have ejected the tyrants. Herodotus and Thucydides demonstrate that the essential responsibility was not Athenian, but Spartan; but the popular view, as Thucydides (6.53.3) admitted, concentrated heavily (and misleadingly) on internal opposition and the activity of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, whose statues had already been dedicated on the acropolis in time to be taken away by Xerxes in 480.37 For a feeling of self-respect, it was important for Athenians to believe that they had removed their tyrants themselves —even though they showed small inclination in that direction at the time.
I am all too conscious that I have taken most of my evidence from Corinth and Athens. Tyranny was a constructive development in those two cities; but I have hardly even attempted to demonstrate the point elsewhere: our knowledge is inadequate to establish enough either about other tyrannies or about the contexts of the history of other cities in which they must be interpreted. Two points, however, suggest that it is not over-optimistic to extend the general conclusion from Corinth and Athens. First, there is sometimes evidence from other cities which points in similar directions: Sicyon and Lesbos on tyrants and the law, and Samos on the significance of public works. Perhaps more importantly, many of the achievements to which I have drawn attention, while they were undertaken in Corinth and in Athens by tyrants, were also part of the general character of the Archaic age. In many cases, indeed, the Corinthian tyrants were responsible for the earliest examples of which we know. Tyrants did not merely follow the trends: they began them.
I end by returning to the heads of corn. What Herodotus emphasised was the removal of the outstanding heads; one might instead concentrate on what was left afterwards: a field full of the ripe corn of equal citizens. I love Corinth dearly, but I cannot claim that as appropriate to Corinth after the fall of the tyranny, even less that the story was so intended; but a good case could be made that it is appropriate for Athens. Athenians were more than ready for the reforms of Cleisthenes: they defended them, in Cleisthenes’ absence, against Spartan threats,38 and were confident enough to reject what was almost certainly, despite Herodotus’ silence, Cleisthenes’ own advice to submit to Persia shortly afterwards. Tyrants were in two ways responsible for bringing Athenians to that ripe state, ready for an exciting political harvest: Peisistratus and his sons had tended the field recently; the seed-corn had been Solon’s legislation, designed to secure the achievements tyrants had won elsewhere without incurring the penalties.
NOTES
1 Pol 3.1284a26–33; 5.1311a20–2.
2 5.92.â.l-æ.l; see Salmon, Wealthy Corinth (hereafter=Corinth), 186–7, with references.
3 Pol 3.1284a26–33; 5.1311a23 Pol 5.131 la20–2; 1313a40.
4 I exclude the tyrants of Sicily from consideration; their circumstances were significantly different.
5 In Hansen (ed.) The Ancient Greek City-
6 Burn, Persia and the Greeks, 194–5.
7 3.1285al8–19; 4.1292a7–30; 1292b5–10; 1295al–24.
8 Significantly, most of the examples are either not Archaic or not from poleis (or, indeed, not Greek): Pol 5.1311a36–1313al7.
9 Pittacus’ title was probably attested by the tradition, though it may have been a construction of Aristotle: he defines the office as an elective tyranny (Pol 3.1285b25–6) shortly after quoting exactly this poem of Alcaeus to demonstrate that Pittacus was elected tyrant (3.1285a29–b1). If there had been no tradition about the title, the evidence would not demonstrate the conclusion which Aristotle drew.
10 Cypselus: see p. 60, above; and cf. the generally favourable account of Nic. Dam. FGrH 90 F 57. For others, see e.g. 1.23–4 (Periander and Arion); 59.6 (Peisistratus).
11 See further the fragment of the Corinthian Constitution, Arist. fr. 611.20 Rose (Teubner)=Heraclides, 20 Dilts.
12 Salmon, Corinth, 56.
13 It is difficult to tell whether Cleisthenes’ tribal changes represented a new departure or merely a different emphasis; either way, something new is in question.
14 Ath. Pol. 16.8; cf. Arist. Pol 5.1315b21–2.
aisymnetes,15 Two sources, indeed, identify Periander as aisymnetes, just like Pittacus: references in Salmon, Corinth, 206 n.80.
16 N.F.Jones, TAPA 110 (1980), 161–93, and Public Organisation in Ancient Greece, 97–102; Salmon, Corinth, 206–9, 413–19; G.R.Stanton, CA 5 (1986), 139–53 (his division of the Corinthia, like the Attica of Cleisthenes, into coastal, inland and city regions is singularly inappropriate to the geography of the territory).
17 References in Salmon, Corinth, 206 n. 81; Stanton, op. cit. (n. 16), expresses no opinion. P.J.Rhodes, Phoenix 45 (1991), 73, is willing to believe the implication of Nic. Dam. FGrH 90 F 60.2, that the new arrangements were made on the fall of the tyranny. There can be no certainty in such matters, but the weight of probability is strongly in favour of the tyrants: later Corinthians were reluctant to admit their responsibility.
18 For all the details, see Salmon, Corinth, 197–205.
19 K.-J.Hölkeskamp, PCPS 38 (1992), 88–117.
20 See now Osborne, pp. 74–82 below.
21 Emphasised by Andrewes, The Greek Tyrants, 107–15; and in C.A.H., 2nd edition, iii.3. 405–16.
22 Salmon, Corinth, 207, 231–9.
23 5.68.2; on the chronology, Griffin, Sikyon, 43–7.
24 Salmon, Corinth, 59–62 (early temples, Corinth and Isthmia; for recent evidence for the chronology from excavation at Isthmia, see E.R.Gebhard and F.P.Hemans, Hesperia 61 [1992], 39); 228 (Periander); 180 (later temples, Corinth and Isthmia).
25 Salmon, Corinth, 220–1 (fortification); 133–5 (Lechaeum); 136–9 (diolkos; see now also G.Raepsaet and M.Tolley, BCH 117 [1993], 233–61).
26 6.54.5; see in general Andrewes, in C.A.H., 2nd edition, iii.3. 410–14.
27 Palace: T.L.Shear, Jr., in Athens Comes of Age, 6–7. Building F in its final period was certainly used by the council of five hundred. The main argument against its use by the council of four hundred is that there is no sign of prytaneis in that council; but there is no reason why all the members should not have used Building F. All the members of the council of five hundred may well have used it in its final phase.
28 Shipley, A History of Samos, 70–80.
29 Griffin, op. cit. (n. 23), 106–11.
30 Nic. Dam. FGrH 90 F 58 might suggest a hostile view of the Cypselid building programme: ‘he was always finding work for (the citizens) to do’; that tells us more of fourth-century theory than of the facts.
31 For the details, Salmon, Corinth, 270–80 (north-west); 329–30 (Epidaurus); 223–5 (navy).
32 B.M.Mitchell, JHS 95 (1975), 75–91; Shipley op. cit. (n. 28), especially 81–99.
33 I translate piar as butterfat on the advice of Lin Foxhall, to whom many thanks; for a different view, see T.C.W.Stinton, JHS 96 (1976), 160; see also Foxhall and Mitchell, pp. 120 and 143 below. Either way, this difficult line refers to the possibility of violence against Athenian aristocrats.
34 References in Salmon, Corinth, 197 n.39.
35 If (as is very likely) the story in Nicolaus of Damascus (FGrH 90 F 61) is invented, it remains probable that some form of intrigue, at least, lay behind the rapid transfer of power from Myron through Isodemus to Cleisthenes, even if the brief account of Aristotle (Pol.
5.1316a29–31) cannot demonstrate that Isodemus was never tyrant.
36 Tyranny and Political Culture in Ancient Greece.
37 Stanton, Athenian Politics, c. 800–500 B.C., 129 n. 2.
38 See the eloquent account of Burn, Persia and the Greeks, 180–2; now Ober, in Dougherty and Kurke (eds) Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece, 215–32.
39 Her. 5.73; cf. Forrest, The Emergence of Greek Democracy, 204.