The words “tyrant” and “despot”1 have changed little in meaning since their origins in ancient Greek. They had, and still have, a common significance: that is, they denote someone who rules with absolute power. While not as good ethically as “monarch,” for the Greeks of Antiquity the tyrant could be a governor who rules somewhat favorably, or on occasion quite favorably toward his citizen-subjects. “Tyranny” would become an entirely negative type of perverted government, when some of the major medieval commentators took up the term. The few exceptions were the readers of Aristotle’s lengthy passage on how tyrants can learn to stay in power. But the ethical aspects of ruling or governing with absolute power frame the first common mark of tyranny (to use Bodin’s term).
This book is about what tyrants do. It is about important boundaries that more often than not are vague in society, that may be drastically altered or destroyed by the politics of the tyrant, which is nothing but ruling for his immediate personal advantage. Specific tyrannical actions do not simply break laws, undermine institutions, intimidate or murder judges, and in one way or another empty the common public treasury into the tyrant’s own pockets. Tyrants above all destroy public discourse and foster a climate of fear.
Our twenty-first-century mindsets balk at the very idea that the specific abuses of power and uses of violence would be so transhistorical as to be recognizable in Greece (Athens) under the sometime tyrant Pisistratus or his tyrannical sons, in Rome under Tiberius and Nero, in Sicily under Emperor Frederick II in the thirteenth century, in Milan under the Visconti and the Sforza, in Florence under Walter of Brienne, in England under Richard III, and in France under Louis XI and Henry III.
The simple act of murdering one’s political opponent may, of course, have extenuating circumstances2; but if someone ordered the murder and if it occurred without a legal investigation or judgment, it is a crime, not an execution. According to his subjects in the Holy League, Henry III of France watched as the Duke of Guise and his brother the Cardinal of Guise were murdered. Indeed, by adding legal actions post-mortem Henry asserted that he had had them “executed.”
For a public, one tyrannical act does not a tyrant make, unless it is very criminal. The degree of the tyrannical acts, their frequency, and their logical relations that constitute an attack on established laws and institutions gradually bring the charge of tyranny to the public mind. Here memory and history each play a part.
Over the centuries, descriptions of tyrannical acts have often prompted readers to think of them as commonplace. And it is true that the entire vocabulary about heinous human political conduct is limited, is amazingly stable. Indeed, this vocabulary is often found in loci .3 That is, in commonplaces that are the bane of intellectuals who seek more contemporary social vocabularies. Still, thanks to the power of their imaginations, poets, playwrights, and artists have created works that interpret corruption and violence. The tyrannical act becomes encrusted with horror and beauty. Only in the late nineteenth century did there appear new social-scientific, psychological, and aesthetic vocabularies that enriched political culture across the world. And would-be tyrants were not above creating their own “wooden languages.” To think the word “tyrant” is one thing; to say it in the presence of others, or to write it, are escalations or strengthening of signification. Writing “tyrant” in a letter and writing it in a treatise on politics have very different valences of meaning.
Orwell’s 1984 gave, and will always give, an immense shock to the routine discourses about abuse of power: discourse is suffocated and routine vocabulary is pared down to the essential words. Some of the most significant descriptive remarks about vocabulary and fear are, in fact, commonplaces.
The context provided for interpreting the actions of tyrants will consist of brief biographies of the writers, some of whom constitute the canon of political philosophy. Some attention will be given to their political activism and to the persons to whom they addressed “their” writings.
In addition to the lists of tyrannical acts that characterize one or another tyrant, there are numerous historical examples, drawn from the Bible, from ancient Greek and Roman history, and, in the cases of Bodin and Boucher, from more recent history. Some of these acts are included by commentators when it seems that there may be a contradiction between moral precepts and historical examples. In works from the later sixteenth century, most of these lists are found in texts of intense political engagement. Although Seyssel and Hotman have little to say about tyranny, their contribution to conceptions of power—as it has been preserved in their history-myth writing about the French past—accounts for their presence here.
It will not surprise readers of the history of political thought to learn that Aristotle’s Politics looms over this entire project, down to its terminal reading by Jean Boucher, titled De Justa abdicatione,4 which contains the longest list of the attributes of tyrannical misconduct yet found. All the readings predate 1590, with a concentration on works written in France during that great period of “troubles” known as the Wars of Religion. This is a book for non-specialist readers. Consequently, there will be the inevitable disappointment resulting from my misreadings, inaccuracies, and infelicities in this account of the reception of one or another edition of the Politics.5 With the exception of John of Salisbury and Erasmus, very little commentary has been found that, taking a human-nature perspective, argues that some people are born to be tyrannical.
Brief Historical Contexts
The biographical and general historical contexts6 developed here are brief but illuminating for interpreting the texts. Plato had the famous tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse and his son, called Dionysius II, very much on his mind when he wrote about tyranny. Several times Aristotle mentions Pisistratus, the Athenian tyrant who was not always tyrannical. Xenophon’s Hiero was a known historical figure. Seneca the Younger refers to Sulla the dictator, and later to Seneca’s pupil Nero.
The medieval writers on tyranny—John of Salisbury (1115/1120–1180), Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), and Giles of Rome (1243–1316)—vary. There are specificities drawn from actual dedications to princes, and there are silences that prompt speculation.
The humanist writers of the Renaissance—Machiavelli, Claude de Seyssel, Guillaume Budé, Erasmus, and Thomas More—are writing in what A.F. Pollard referred to as the Age of New Monarchy.7 Henry VIII of England, Francis I of France, and Charles I of Spain (also known as Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor), shared a monarchical political culture of beliefs in their absolute powers, manifest displays of magnanimity, luxury, and arbitrariness. Pollard’s thesis on new monarchy did not survive the scrutiny of his fellow historians, who delighted in proposing examples of what he characterized as “new” but that had already appeared in the lives of other kings. Such is often the fate of generalizations in history. But there are strong similarities when the question is approached from the angle of their princely education and the role played by learned advisors who were imbued with humanist learning and who cultivated political engagement (Erasmus being an exception).8
A particularly interesting remark by Pollard deserves mention, however: “The Renaissance, the revived study of Roman civil law, and the Reformation itself all contributed to the growth of royal absolutism.”9 The very nature of power, its sources, its ethical significance, and material fiscal and military reality would frame all reflection about tyrannical acts. Governance by any other form of government—democratic, republican, oligarchic—lacked defenders and legitimators (except for Venice and Switzerland) while Alexander, the ancient Greek-Macedonian, and Caesar and Caesar Augustus, the Romans, all three of them models of kingship, became increasingly influential. J.H. Huizinga’s remark about “the historical ideals of life” reinforced and justified royal absolutism, particularly in regard to conquest and war.10 The new monarchs took greater risks than Henry VII or Louis XI.
Erasmus and More rejected these absolutist political ideals and the policies they inspired. Charles V fought to repress heresy and to maintain or recover the immense inheritance he had received. Henry VIII found himself lacking funds to curb his sincere desire for a more aggressive military presence on the Continent. The reign of Francis I is riddled with military disasters and very few victories. He was not the first, nor the last, French king to be humiliated by the Hapsburgs.
It is possible to be very brief about the political and religious context in France during the decades 1570–1590, because longer introductions to the period accompany my sketches of later authors. In other words, readers will find short biographies of François Hotman (1524–1590), Étienne de la Boétie (1530–1563), Théodore de Bèze (1519–1605), Jean Bodin (1529/1530–1596), “Anonymous” whose Vindiciae contra Tyrannos (Defense of Liberty against Tyrants) published in 1579, and Jean Boucher (1551–1646).
Almost despite the religious divisions, civil wars, and weakened monarchical power, the decades 1570–1590 were marked by the publication of Montaigne’s Essays (parts 1 and 2 in 1580 and parts 1 and 3 in 1588), Duplessis-Mornay’s Vérité de la religion chrestienne (1581), Fauchet’s Antiquités (1579), and d’Aubigné’s Tragiques (1577). In the 1540s Palissy began transforming clay into “rustic work,” complete with life-like salamanders and other small animals. This art form received its intellectual foundations in his Discours admirables of 1580. Henry III ordered the construction of the Pont Neuf of Paris in 1573.
Visual depictions or portraits of the tyrant in action, and schematic presentation of Aristotle’s forms of government were undoubtedly more frequent in the sixteenth century but have not survived. These works often included images of a city, commissioned for display in the city hall, and more often than not depicting only the republican or the oligarchical political culture that had been specified by the city fathers. The Lorenzetti paintings in the Chamber of the Nine in Siena and Oresme’s translation of Aristotle’s Politics are exceptional because they contain illustrations of all the forms of government and their perversions.
While there are several other ancient writers (mainly Polybius) who add, subtract, or nuance the Platonic and the Aristotelian forms of government (they are not the same), it is largely their formations that rest at the heart of the most pervasive and simple conceptual-analytical tool still used in politics today.11
Both the stability of meaning in the vocabulary and the inclusion of numbers have constituted a scientific foundation for understanding the political.
What do historians mean when they refer to some period of time as a new “Age”? The heroic general and statesman Pericles is honored because he brought Athens more peaceful relations with her neighbors, and reformed the election rules in various ways so as to reduce risky political instability and promote economic prosperity. He not only undertook major public-works projects, but he also constructed Doric and Ionic buildings (among them the Parthenon, c450 BC) and streets, walls, and quays. This strengthened the pride and unity of the citizens.
But before mentioning other remarkable accomplishments of the Athenians who lived under Pericles’s rule, the presence of slavery, intermittent restrictions of citizen rights, and xenophobic responses to non-Athenians, including other Greeks, separated the social life of antique Athenians from our more modern attitudes about inclusiveness. We therefore should not put Athenian democracy on a pedestal, or view it as exemplary for the twenty-first century. Indeed, by contrast, the ancient Romans welcomed peoples from the corners of their Empire, and often granted them citizenship.
But simply enjoying relative peace and success within its Empire was not enough. Nor would political reform and public works suffice to prompt awarding the accolade “Age of Pericles.” The remarkable brilliance of the artistic, literary, historical, and philosophical accomplishments of the Athenians who lived just before, or during, or just after Pericles justified the idea of an Age of Gold under Pericles. Indeed, this was a time when three great dramatists—Aeschylus (525–456 BC), Sophocles (485–405 BC), and Euripides (c480–c406 BC)—created theatrical tragedy as a genre to be performed in the semi-circular marble theaters in the round, many of which survive to this day. A bit later, Aristophanes (c448–385 BC) transformed venerable comic theatrical techniques into an art form.
Though not born in Athens, Herodotus (484–c428 BC) wrote his historical albeit somewhat fantastic accounts of various peoples of the eastern Mediterranean, and became known as the “father of history.” Thucydides (471–c400 BC) worked out an exemplary history of politics, international relations, and military events in such strong, effective prose that reading him today still inspires awe.
The philosophers Socrates (469–399 BC) and Plato (420–347 BC) followed somewhat later by Aristotle (384–321 BC) developed a paradigm of vocabularies about epistemology, ethics, nature, anatomy, politics, and the arts that became the foundations for Western thought.12 As Kitto puts it, “Athens from 480 to 380 was clearly the most civilized society that has yet existed.”13
Was Pericles a tyrant? Some historians argue that, given his aristocratic background, his military abilities, and his awareness of the need to govern at least partially for the benefit of all Athenians, he was indeed a tyrant of the sixth-century type.14 Although he had opponents, he was an effective leader who was able to inspire his fellow citizens to pursue lofty goals (largely military).
An Age of Pericles? The idea is only really a heuristic device to imply the existence of some mysterious or miraculous reasons, or causes, why things happen when they do.