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A tyrant (Greek τύραννος, tyrannos) was originally one who illegally seized and controlled a governmental power in a polis. Tyrants were a group of individuals who took over many Greek poleis during the uprising of the middle classes in the sixth and seventh centuries BC, ousting the aristocratic governments.
Plato and Aristotle define a tyrant as, "one who rules without law, looks to his own advantage rather than that of his subjects, and uses extreme and cruel tactics—against his own people as well as others".[1]
In common usage, the word "tyrant" carries connotations of a harsh and cruel ruler who places his or her own interests or the interests of an oligarchy over the best interests of the general population, which the tyrant governs or controls. The Greek term carried no pejorative connotation during the Archaic and early Classical periods but was clearly a bad word to Plato, and on account of the decisive influence of political philosophy its negative connotations only increased down into the Hellenistic period. Becoming synonymous with Authenteo-another term which carried authoritarian connotations around the turn of the first century A.D.
During the sixth and seventh centuries BC, tyranny was often looked upon as an intermediate stage between narrow oligarchy and more democratic forms of polity. However, in the late fifth and fourth centuries, a new kind of tyrant, the military dictator, arose, specifically in Sicily.
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The English noun tyrant appears in Middle English use, via Old French, from the 1290s. The word derives from Latin tyrannus, meaning "illegitimate ruler", and this in turn from the Greek τύραννος "monarch, ruler of a polis". The final -t arises in Old French by association with the present participles in -ant.[2]
Greek τύραννος is itself a loanword from a pre-Greek source, like βασιλεύς, and perhaps also ἄναξ, a loan from a superstrate semantic sphere. Speculations on Tyrrhenian origin connect the Etruscan theonym Turan for Venus (perhaps from an epitheton "*Lady", paired with Atunis "*Lord") and the ethnonym of the Tyrrhenians itself.[3]
In ancient Greece, tyrants were influential opportunists that came to power by securing the support of different factions of a deme. The word "tyrannos", possibly pre-Greek, Pelasgian or eastern in origin,[4] then carried no ethical censure; it simply referred to anyone, good or bad, who obtained executive power in a polis by unconventional means. Support for the tyrants came from the growing middle class and from the peasants who had no land or were in debt to the wealthy land owners. It is true that they had no legal right to rule, but the people preferred them over kings or the aristocracy. The Greek tyrants stayed in power by using mercenary soldiers from outside of their respective city-state. To mock tyranny, Thales wrote that the strangest thing to see is "an aged tyrant" meaning that tyrants do not have the public support to survive for long.
In Corinth, growing wealth from colonial enterprises, and the wider horizons brought about by the export of wine and oil, together with the new experiences of the Eastern Mediterranean brought back by returning mercenary hoplites employed overseas allowed Cypselus, the first tyrant of Corinth in the 7th century BC, to overthrow the aristocratic power of the dominant but unpopular Bacchiadae, who were killed, executed, driven out and exiled in 657 BC. Corinth prospered economically under his rule and Cypselus manages to rule without a bodyguard but when he managed to bequeath his position to his son, Periander, whose position was less secure, his son required a bodyguard of mercenary soldiers personally loyal to himself.
Nevertheless, under Cypselus and Periander, Corinth extended and tightened her control over her colonial enterprises, and exports of Corinthian pottery flourished. However, tyrants seldom succeeded in establishing an untroubled line of succession. Periander's successor was less fortunate and was expelled. Afterward, Corinth was ruled by a lackluster oligarchy, and was eventually eclipsed by the rising powers of Athens and Sparta.
In Athens, the inhabitants first gave the title of tyrant to Peisistratus, a relative of Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, who succeeded in 546 BC, after 2 failed attempts, to install himself as tyrant. Supported by prosperity of the peasantry and landowning interests of the plain (prospering from the rise of olive exports), and his clients from Marathon, he managed to achieve supreme power. Through an ambitious program of public works, by fostering the state cult of Athena, by encouraging the creation of festivals and supporting the Panathenaean games, in which prizes were jars of olive oil, and in his support of the Dionosia (leading to the development of Athenian drama) Peisistratus managed to maintain his personal popularity.
He was followed by his sons, and with the subsequent growth of Athenian democracy, the title "tyrant" took on its familiar negative connotations. The murder of his son, the tyrant Hipparchus by Aristogeiton and Harmodios in Athens in 514 BC marked the beginning of the so-called "cult of the tyrannicides" (i.e., of killers of tyrants). Contempt for tyranny characterised this cult movement. Despite financial help from Persia, in 510 the Peisistratids were expelled by a combination of intrigue, exile and Spartan arms. The anti-tyrannical attitude became especially prevalent in Athens after 508 BC, when Cleisthenes reformed the political system so that it resembled demokratia (ancient participant democracy as opposed to the modern representative democracy).
The Thirty Tyrants whom the Spartans imposed on a defeated Attica in 404 BC would not be classified as tyrants in the usual sense and were in effect an oligarchy.
An aesymnetes (pl. aesymnetai) had similar scope of power to the tyrant, such as Pittacus of Mytilene (c. 640-568 BC), and was elected for life or for a specified period by a city-state in a time of crisis—the only difference being that the aesymnetes was a constitutional office and was comparable to the Roman dictator. Magistrates in some city-states were also called aesymnetai.
The heyday of the Archaic period tyrants came in the early 6th century BC, when Cleisthenes ruled Sicyon in the Peloponnesus and Polycrates ruled Samos. During this time, revolts overthrew many governments in the Aegean world. Chilon, the ambitious and capable ephor of Sparta, built a strong alliance amongst neighbouring states by making common cause with these groups seeking to oppose unpopular tyrannical rule. By intervening against the tyrants of Sicyon, Corinth and Athens, Sparta thus came to assume Hellenic leadership prior to the Persian invasions. Simultaneously Persia first started making inroads into Greece, and many tyrants sought Persian help against forces seeking to remove them.
Greek tyranny in the main grew out of the struggle of the popular classes against the aristocracy or against priest-kings where archaic traditions and mythology sanctioned hereditary and/or traditional rights to rule. Popular coups generally installed tyrants, who often became or remained popular rulers, at least in the early part of their reigns. For instance, the popular imagination remembered Peisistratus for an episode - related by (pseudonymous) Aristotle, but possibly fictional - in which he exempted a farmer from taxation because of the particular barrenness of his plot.
Peisistratus' sons Hippias and Hipparchus, on the other hand, were not such able rulers, and when the disaffected aristocrats Harmodios and Aristogeiton slew Hipparchus, Hippias' rule quickly became oppressive, resulting in the expulsion of the Peisistratids in 510 BC, who resided henceforth in Persepolis as clients of the Persian Shahanshah (King of kings).
The tyrannies of Sicily came about due to similar causes, but here the threat of Carthaginian attack prolonged tyranny, facilitating the rise of military leaders with the people united behind them. Such Sicilian tyrants as Gelo, Hiero I, Hiero II, Dionysius the Elder, Dionysius the Younger, and Agathocles maintained lavish courts and became patrons of culture.
Roman historians like Suetonius, Tacitus, Plutarch, and Josephus often spoke of "tyranny" in opposition to "liberty". Tyranny was associated with imperial rule and those rulers who usurped too much authority from the Roman Senate. Those who were advocates of "liberty" tended to be pro-Republic and pro-Senate. For instance, regarding Julius Caesar and his assassins, Suetonius wrote:
Niccolò Machiavelli, building on this opposition, conflates all rule by a single person (whom he generally refers to as a "prince") with "tyranny," regardless of the legitimacy of that rule, in his Discourses on Livy. He also identifies liberty with republican regimes; whether he would include so-called "crowned republics" (such as modern constitutional monarchies) is somewhat unclear from the text.
The term "Seren", frequently appearing in the Bible as the title of the rulers of the five Philistine city-states, is considered by some historians to be derived from or related to the Greek "tyrannos" . In contemporary Israel, this is used as a military rank, equivalent to captain.
Ancient Greeks, as well as the Roman Republicans, became generally quite wary of anyone seeking to implement a popular coup. Shakespeare portrays the struggle of one such anti-tyrannical Roman, Marcus Junius Brutus, in his play Julius Caesar.
In the Enlightenment, thinkers applied the word tyranny to the system of governance that had developed around aristocracy and monarchy. Specifically John Locke as part of his argument against the "Divine Right of Kings" in his book Two Treatises of Government defines it this way: “tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to; and this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private, separate advantage.”[6] John Locke's concept of tyranny influenced the writers of subsequent generations who developed the concept of tyranny as counterpoint to ideas of human rights and democracy. Jefferson referred to the tyranny of Britain in his Declaration of Independence, and the concept was refined in turn to refer to the Kings of France, the tyrants of the Terror, and to Napoleon in turn during the French Revolution and subsequent regimes.
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