The Semantics of a Political Concept

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. The Semantics of a Political Concept from Archilochus to Aristotle Author(s): Victor Parker Source: Hermes, 126. Bd., H. 2 (1998), pp. 145-172Published by: Franz Steiner VerlagStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4477243Accessed: 20-08-2015 16:31 UTC

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Tvpavvo;. THE SEMANTICS OF A POLITICAL CONCEPT FROM ARCHI-

LOCHUS TO ARISTOTLE*

In this paper I will attempt to shew first how the meaning of the word ti5pavvo; developed in Greek from a synonym for the word IccatXxi5; to a negatively charged word for an autocrat. As is often the case, two synonyms are distinguished by a secondary connotation from one another: in this case aa?vs with passage of time was more nearly defined as a good or legitimate absolute monarch, whilst -oipavvos came to imply an in some way wicked or illegitimate absolute monarch. We shall follow this development and shall also see how Trvpavvo; came to the secondary meaning of someone who seized or usurped power contrary to established precepts. Second, I shall endeavour to demonstrate the comparatively late development of the concept of tyranny, that is to say of a consistent classification of a group of rulers whom we today conventionally call tyrants. I will go on to suggest that this concept arose in Athens and could only have arisen in Athens on the basis of that city-state's highly atypical political development. Thereafter we may begin to sketch some of the consequences for our understanding of the archaic period.

I.

First, however, a comment on what is known of the etymology of Tu'pavvo; is in order. The origin of this word - as that of PaacnXus6 and Fo'vat for that matter - remains tantalisingly shrouded in darkness notwithstanding ingenious efforts to link it with words from various old-Indo-European languages (i.e. the Hittite- Luwian family) of Asia Minor, whence it is often supposed to have come to Greece'. The only word, however, which bears a reasonably close resemblance, is

* This paper contains the substance of a lecture held at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. I wish to thank those who discussed my remarks with me - especially KATHERINE ADSHEAD and MATrIHEw NEUBURG - and furthermore to express my gratitude for the kind reception accorded me in Christchurch on that occasion. FRIrz GSCHNITZER, finally, commented most helpfully upon a written version. All mistakes are, of course, my own.

The only discussion at any length of the various terms for >>absolute ruler

146 VICTOR PARKER

a Hieroglyphic Luwian title of the neo-Hittite kings: IUDEX.tar-wa-ni-sa, >>judge>g, ?justice.>3judge>three>witnessesjudge>thirdfourth>the third party (to a dispute), i.e. judge

TiOpavvo; 147

/sorAnilml, with the Hebraic plural ending M-7m] and in much later masoretic pronounciation, although the true nature of the first vowel is quite unknown and as likely to have been a lu/-sound as any other5. As the Hebrew alphabet could not unambiguously write geminated consonants before the masoretic invention of the da3es, the final ln/ may have originally been geminated, later masoretic punctua- tion notwithstanding. The exact nature of the sibilant transcribed with samek is furthermore uncertain and clearly once had a dental character6. Therefore, the original form of the word in Hebrew may well have approximated to /*tsurann-/7. While this helps us little in determining the exact etymology of the word mtpavvo;, it does point toward an Aegean or rather Balkan origin, as the Philistines probably emigrated from the Balkan area and certainly spent some time in the Aegean region on Crete8, before coming to the Palestine littoral in the course of the

5 los. 13,3; lud. 3,3; 16,5,8,18, 23, and 27; 1 Sm. 5,8, 11 and passim. The title is only used of the five Philistine lords and has usually been considered to be a word which the Philistines had brought with them to Palestine. No plausible Semitic etymology has ever been proposed. In Aramaic the root p1i* is attested with the meaning >>axle.wine-must [?] of *sr's>may the hero do *srn therein< (GORDON, p. 173, no. 51, VII 48-49). It has been proposed with reference to Hebrew :'nc: to translate >wine-must (?) fit for princes>may the hero act like a prince therein>writerforgi- venessshibboleth

148 VICTOR PARKER

wanderings of the so-called sea peoples9. We have one more clue as to the source of the word: an Anatolian lunar deity called Miv bears the epithet Thpavvo;'o. This deity, though spread out all over Asia Minor in Roman times, is undoubtedly Phrygian in origin, based both on the frequency of his sanctuaries in Phrygia and the literary evidence connecting him with Phrygia on the one hand" as well as on

Pharsalia; i.e. the place name had fallen out of the text, and a commentator's brief note that it could be found in Lucan was misunderstood as actually supplying the missing name) militates in favour of a Balkan origin of the Philistines (Lat.: Palaestini; Gk. Ha?tataiivot). - Dt. 2,23, ler. 47,4, and Am. 9,7 (cf. Gn. 10,14) bear witness to the Philistines' residence on Crete before their arrival in their new homeland: Palestine (Lat. Palaestina; Gk. rlaXaarrtivi). The Philistines (: .z:7t>in later masoretic pronunciation /Poli-sfim/) are furthermore connected or identified with the Cretans, (c r:, in later masoretic pronounciation /Kore1im/) at So. 2,5 and Ez. 25,16; cf. 1 Sm. 30,14. See further G. BUNNENS, I Filistei e le invasioni dei Popoli del Mare, in ed. D. Musti, Le origini dei Greci, Roma 1986, 227-256.

9 The prst in Ramses III's list of the >>peoples of the sea>Seevol- kerSeevolker(>See- volkerDark Ages>Seevolkerpolitisch-historischen

Thpavvo; 149

the utter unimportance of the lunar deity in the old-Indo-European cultures in Anatolia on the other12. If the epithet -pavvo; be genuinely Phrygian13, then this too would point towards the Balkans: for the Phrygians crossed over the Darda- nelles from the Balkans during the Dark Ages and settled first to the south of the Sea of Marmara before migrating farther inland14. The quest for cognate words in the old-Indo-European languages of Anatolia is thus in all likelihood a hopeless task. If the word mvpavvo; was of Balkan origin, it could easily have been borrowed thence into Greek speech or have even been brought directly to Greece in the speech of the many tribes who from the Dark Ages well on into early classical times emigrated from the regions about Epirus and the southwestern Balkans to Greece.

II.

However that may be, we may account ourselves fortunate in possessing the first appearance of the word in Greek literature. We know this because the ancient scholars themselves thought the word foreign, noted that Homer did not use it15, and scoured the elder poets - for whom they had painstakingly worked out a

(each with one sanctuary). Unsurprisingly, the literary sources (collected by LANE, 3, Pp. 115- 1 18) connect Men only with the Phrygians: Lucian, Juppiter Tragoedus, cap. 42; Proclus, Scholia in Platonis Timaeum, 4, 251C; Hesychius, s.v. Nai Mi'v vai 4p-6ye; (wrongly classed by LANE, 3, p. 117, as a testimonium dubium).

12 Only very rarely is the moon god mentioned in Anatolian cuneiform texts; the Logogram SIN occurs but infrequently in names as a theophoric component; the moon god plays almost no r6le in old Anatolian mythology, the myth >>the moon that fell from heaven>almighty ruler.

150 VICTOR PARKER

relative chronology - for the first occurrence of the term. According to Hippias of Elis16 the word entered the Greek language in the time of the Parian poet Archilo- chus (i.e. the middle of the seventh century'7), while Euphorion informs us that King Gyges of Lydia was the first ruler denominated a mvpavvo'18. The two references suffice to identify precisely which poem of Archilochus the ancients had settled on as the first instance of the use of the word rupavvo;:

ob ,uot T rvy nov tXUXpUV OO pi' ?t, A, , n

'

L, fi,0 0, .) * t,ga

i?F-Ov ,pYa, g -yX 6a oicK F? p Tpavvi6os- &xi6ncpoI5v yap Frartv opi ki4t6v ?jt65v'9.

I care nothing for the affairs of the fabulously wealthy Gyges20, Nor has envy ever seized me, nor am I jealous

16 Hippias of Elis, FGrHist 6, fr. 6 = Argumentum Oedipodis Regis. 17 See F. JACOBY, The Date of Archilochus, Cl.Qu. 35, 1941, 97-109. 18 Euphorio, FHG, 3, p. 72, fr. 1 = Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 1,21,117,9. 19 Archilochus, fr. 19 WEST = Plut. De tranquillitate animi, 10, p. 470. 20 In light of the arguments of some - e.g. R. DREWS, First Tyrants (n. 1) 137-144 - it will be

as well to state here that we frankly do not know how Gyges came to be king of Lydia. Oriental sources are silent on the point, and the Greek sources are so poor as to be useless. Plato, Res publica, 359c-360b, presents us with a fairy tale: Gyges found a magic ring with the help of which he rose to become king. We do not know how or when this tale became attached to Gyges, but we certainly cannot treat it as evidence for Gyges' usurpation: The name Iuyctill Xipivil (Iliad, 20,390-391; 2,865) antedates the historical Gyges and demonstrates the existence of an older, already mythologised Gyges from whom the lake had received its name. The female deity Gyga(ea) (Lycophron, Alexandra, 1152 with Schol.; Hesychius, s.v. rvy&; CRAMER, Anecdota Graeca Oxon. 2, p. 19,108; Eustathius, ad Iliadem, 366,1-9) also belongs to the same mythological edifice as the elder Gyges. In the same way in which myths and legends about Midas - a figure dating from the time when the Phrygians still dwelt on the Balkans - were transferred to an homonymous historical king of the seventh century, the story of the magic ring need not have originally referred to the historical Gyges. As was pointed out many years ago, Herodotus' version (1,8-13) derives solely from the tale of the ring (see in general K.F. SM1TH, The Tale of Gyges and the King of Lydia. I, A.J.Ph. 23, 1902, 261-282). The account of Lydian history in Nicolaus of Damascus (the accession of Gyges is told in FGrHist 90, fr. 47) is the work of a Hellenistic hack who wantonly revised and augmented various sources according to his own tastes (see K. VON FRITZ, Die A&ctaK6 des Lyders Xanthos, in: Griechische Geschichtsschreibung 1: Anmerkungen, Berlin 1967, 348-377). Its value for the reconstruction of Lydian history previous to Mermnad times is nil. Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae, 45, Pp. 301-302 in the context of a Carian cult aition refers to a revolt of Gyges against Candaules in the course of which a double-axe (in Lydian allegedly ?6dppi) supposedly came to Caria. The double-axe was put into the hand of a statue of a Zeus thenceforward known as Zeus Aaopav6eik; (with many variant spellings). As W.R. HALLIDAY, The Greek Questions of Plutarch, Oxford 1928, 185-189 has shewn, the epithet Ac4pav6ei5; derives from the Carian toponym Labraunda and has nothing to do with the double-axe. Nor need a double-axe in a Carian cult be of Lydian origin. The entire story is of Hellenistic date and ultimately based on worthless etymological combination. - The


TUpavvo; 151

Of the deeds of the gods, neither yet do I lust after a great tyranny21: For these things are at a far remove from my eyes.

The poem - which Archilochus puts into the mouth of the carpenter Charon - shews Archilochus' quintessential disinterest in those things which concerned others. Archilochus was a poet who lived for the here and now, who cared deeply about the fortunes first of his native Paros and later of Thasos to which Parian colony in the North Aegean he had emigrated as a colonist22. In another poem he tells us how he weeps for the misfortunes of the Thasians and most decidedly not for those of the Magnesians, whose city the Thracian tribe of the Treres had just destroyed23. Corres- pondingly, in the poem about Gyges he makes it quite clear that he cares not a straw for Gyges' fabulous wealth - however much others may desire it. He envies Gyges by no means and wishes no part in his glorious deeds. Nor does he lust after >>great tyranny.

152 VICTOR PARKER

20. KeiVrl avaaso ga. i [upav]yinv E'x% z[o][ko]a[iW]nv 4]kffos [Vtp]X

1 )V"Oat24.

But this city (which) ... you turn about in ... Never indeed have men razed it, but you took it in battle and gained great fame. Rule over it and exercise the tyranny: Forsooth you will be for many men a subject of envy.

This fragmentary poem has occasioned much debate and yet defies satisfacto- ry interpretation in toto25. Yet the lines 17 to 21 are surely clear, whether we interpret them as allegory or take them at face value: The person to whom the lines refer has captured a city26, the poet exhorts him to hold the tyranny and assures him that most men will envy him. We, of course, understand that Archilochus does not fall into the category >>most men.>to be an &vat.bei Pindar erstmals die Verwendung des Tyrannenbegriffes frei ist von jeder negativen Konnotation.

Tu'pavvo; 153

decades of the seventh century28. The eighth type of woman whom Semonides brutalises is the kind which the gods fashioned from a mare. This type according to Semonides will do no useful work, preferring instead to put perfume on herself and comb her hair all day. Only a r-opavvo; or aiKivlto5Xo;, who could afford to keep her up, could possibly have a use for such a woman29. XKirtoiVo;, sceptre- bearer, means, of course, a legitimate king: we recall the famous passage from the Iliad, in which Homer lists all the predecessors of Agamemnon who before him had held his sceptre30. Semonides may here be distinguishing a -npavvo; from a legitimate king31. Nevertheless, we might interpret the phrase i' tiupavvo; TI cKwnlroux0Xo as an hendiadys. At any rate, both the crivpavvo; as well as the aKIvtovXo; appear in the poem as well-to-do, fortunate potentates, so that we need hardly assume a negative connotation of the word.

If we now accept that the word had at the date of its introduction into the Greek language a positive sense, that it served as another synonym for PaawXvx; or avaci, we can understand more easily its usage in later tragic as well as lyric poetry: the tragedians surely did not on a whim use a negatively-charged word in a positive way; that they should continue to use an older sense of a word which had in the meantime come to have a negative one by way of its eventual differen- tiation from a synonym scarcely strains the imagination32.

I should like to dwell a little longer on the positive connotations of tv5pavvo; before going on to sketch the development of the negative ones. In two odes which brim with fulsome praise for the Sicilian tyrant Hiero of Syracuse Pindar refers to the man whom he is flattering as a rupavvo; 33. There can be no question of any

28 See H. LLOYD-JONES, Females of the Species. Semonides on Women, London 1975, 15-16. 29 Semonides, fr. 7,69 WEST = Stobaeus, 4,22,193. 30 Iliad, 2,100-108. 31 H. LLOYD-JONES, Females (n. 28) 81, prefers this interpretation. Tyrants could, however,

bear sceptres in the imaginations of e.g. Herodotus (who has Maeandrius say that csncipov icai 3bvvaw;, >>sceptre and power,>pure sceptre

154 VICTOR PARKER

negative connotation here: Pindar is surely not insulting Hiero! In these two odes he also apostrophises Hiero as OuatXs; and ipi' av.; 3 We can only imagine that Pindar uses the term tipavvo; twice as a synonym for >>aolX? , >King.>1 censure the lot of tyrannies>tyrantsAnd I perceived the Helikonian Muses, who set me up as one better than the >tyrants< Candaules and Gyges.>king(< of uncertain etymology.)

35 Pindar fr. 169a, 35 MAEHLER. 36 Pyth. 1 1,50-53. 37 R.W.B. BURTON, Pindar's Pythian Odes, Oxford 1962, 71. Otherwise, however, C.M.

BOWRA, Pindar, Oxford 1964, 155. Cf. also McGLEw, Tyranny (n. 13) 44. 38 Alexander Aetolus, fr. 9 POWELL. 39 Vergil, Aeneis, 7,266.


Tv'pavvos 155

III.

We may now ask the question, when did the negative sense of -rupavvo; develop? The earliest uses of m'pavvo; come from the mid-seventh century; the earliest negative uses date from the first half of the sixth, perhaps as late as that century's second quarter, depending on whose chronology we choose to follow. We begin with the Athenian lawgiver Solon40, who puts the following lines into the mouth of an imaginary opponent:

OVK) S(pl) EO60V Iakxtvxppcov o0V6? PO3Ioit 'v'p- CatlXa yazp to?0Vi &6VT0to av-r0; OVKc ?&at0o -s?palajkXv 6 dypnv dyaat?i; oi5ic OV?CaCStacV Fya iiKTuov, kev0oi i3 ' aapT- iCai (ppeV6)v a'nooapaXei;-

5 fi?eXov yap icev iepaTiaa;, n?Xoivrov adqovov lapchv cat -rpavvei5aa5 'Aiv?cov goi)vov igtpnv piav,

&oi6; IV(TepOV 6?61pt la' n tTpiql YFvo;41. Solon is neither wise, nor a sage: For when the god was giving good things away, he took them not. He cast a great net about the quarry, admired it, and drew it not in. All at once he took leave of both his courage and his wits. Now if I had come to power, I would have taken bounteous wealth And would have been tyrant over Athens for one single day, that (the hide) might later be flayed (from off me) for a wine-skin

and my family extirpated.

That Solon views tyranny in a negative light readily emerges. But if we look a little more closely we see that his use of the term is not so very far removed from that of Archilochus'. For Solon finds himself compelled to defend himself against assertions that he has behaved stupidly in not seizing power when he had the chance. His imaginary opponent certainly speaks for many when he claims that a wise man would take ?atka such as wealth and tyranny when he has the opportunity. Yet Solon immediately provides a brutal deflating of his opponent's arguments and refers unambiguously to one Antileon of Chalkis, whose brief

40 The conventional date of Solon's archonship (594) has been challenged most notably by M. MILLER, The accepted Date for Solon: Precise, But Wrong? Arethusa 2, 1969, 62-86. R.W. WALLACE, The Date of Solon's Reforms, A.J.A.H. 8, 1983, 81-95, supports the conventional date. For further references see WALLACE 90, n. 1. Add: G. MADDOLI, Cronologia e storia. Studi comparati sull' >>Athenaion Politeia

156 VICTrOR PARKER

tyranny in that city ended rather abruptly when his subjects skinned him alive42. Solon characterises tyranny as something which at first glance may seem desira- ble, but in actuality rapidly leads to ruin. What is important for our purposes is how Solon implicitly describes the tyrant: someone who, when the opportunity presents itself, takes power which does not belong to him. We see this perhaps more clearly in another poem of Solon's:

tippavvi6o; &? iea D3ins &jitli'oU / ov Ka?5hiv,unv43 I grasped not tyranny nor implacable violence.

The tyrant, then, is a usurper, someone who grasps power, someone who wrongfully vaults himself to the pinnacle of the state. This way of viewing the Tvupavvos provides perhaps a means of differentiating him from the PaoX?Usi, for the latter inherits his position as monarch while the tyrant must wrongfully seize it. We shall see that this conception plays a role in later attempts to define tyranny.

But now we turn to Alcaeus of Lesbos, a conservative aristocrat and partisan opponent of Pittacus, the man whom the citizens of Lesbos made aisymnetes and to whom they entrusted the task of putting an end to the civil strife on the island44. Although Pittacus gained a reputation for wisdom and ranked amongst the seven sages45, his fellow-countryman Alcaeus railed against him in a long series of poems, calling him inter alia >>pot-belly,>base-born,>tyrant

Tlpavvo; 157

,u?]vau *,rt - yap iadt 1. aiKicp[o]S ciiia0avov ]v oi&a -rj. [ 1.

10. ]I?'FV15i4x. [ 1 viv 6 6, iie",rpoi[e ]v KaKo7i&rpuS[at -rt1pavve i_47

I remember: for, still a small child, ... I sat ... I know ... Penthile ... but now he has overthrown (everything) ... base-born ... being a tyrant ... In a third fragment of which even less has survived, we can still discern the

word >>tyrant

158 VICTOR PARKER

Iv.

In tragedy, however, the word ti5pavvo; means, as is well-known, simply >>Kingtyrant.>untyrannical fashionkingly, royal>unbefitting of a king>tyranny>standards of rule.>it is a commonplace of scholarship>neutral>king>an effective double entendre between the conventional meaning of king and the derogatory meaning of despot.

Th)pavvo; 159

I agree with the comment of EDUARD FRAENKEL that the word does seem to have a negative undertone in these two passages57. But even here the word need not be translated as >>tyranny.>tyranny>the tyranny>kingship>royal rule,< but at the same time to remember the negative connotation which since the time of Solon had inhered in the word at Athens: illegally seized absolute power58.

A similiar wordplay appears in the Prometheus vinctus, in which play Prome- theus and others time and again name Zeus a >>tyrantKing

160 VICTOR PARKER

In Euripides we perhaps find an in part comparable situation in the Supplices, when Theseus reproves the herald whom Creon has sent to Athens for requesting to address the >>tyrant of the land

TIpavvo; 161

course, to the renowned statement vi'"pts; teW5e? -vpavvov, >>hybris begets a tyrant,>hybris turns a man into a tyrant, a despot, a self-serving autocrat>tyranny begets hybris,>too much power causes hybris,

162 VICTOR PARKER

kingship, of Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus81. Far more revealing is the passage in which Periander encourages his son, Lycophron, to accept the zupavvi;, tyranny, and so to become ,BaatXsix;, king82. I would suggest that most of the time Tvrpavvos is for Herodotus a neutral term, which he demonstrably uses as a synonym for PkatnlX? and g.ivapxo;.

I cite one additional passage: ...iat 6 XoXiov acnxl' Aporoaicurpo; 64(Xoici nrpot, 1X0o- -Ku1npo1) 6e oir,rox r6v X6Xcov 6' 'Aifhlvai-o; alIatKo'gevo; F'; KVXOVO?TOTOVi O llX O1 A11VaO 83KO?G? K6irpov CV Ficeat aivaS npavvo)v gLaXRtcxa83. >>... also the King of Soli, Aristocyprus, son of Philocyprus, that very Philocyprus whom of (all) tyrants Solon the Athenian, who was come to Cyprus, praised in (his) poetry most

Tpcpavvo; 163

But from Peloponnese (there came) Leocydes, the son of Phei- don, the tyrant of the Argives, that very Pheidon who established measures for the Peloponnesians and who committed a greater outrage than all Greeks in that he deposed the Agonothetes of the Eleians and himself presided over the Olympic Games.

Here Herodotus censures Pheidon of Argos severely and labels him a tyrant. Now we know that Pheidon considered himself and was considered by his contemporaries a direct descendant of Temenos, one of the three Heraclid breth- ren who in myth had conquered the Peloponnese in the course of the Dorian Invasion. Pheidon, as a scion of the first Dorian king of Argos, was as legitimate a king as any in Archaic Greece87. We will see that Herodotus' depiction of Pheidon as a tyrant probably played a role in later attempts to define tyrants analytically. It will farthermore be as well at this point to admit that Herodotus' reference to Pheidon in obloquy seems to attest a usage of ti5pavvo; in a negative sense.

Stasanor, the legitimate king of Curium on Cyprus provides another such case. Herodotus calls him a tyrant and says that he betrayed the other Cypriots during the Ionian revolt88. Yet in another passage Herodotus refers to the rulers of all the Greek and Phoenician cities on Cyprus as m5pavvot89. Now we have the inscriptions of these rulers, both in the Cyprian syllabary and in Phoenician; and they call themselves aatkiF?; and D /malkirn/;

-pc, /malk(u)/ corresponds, of course, to PaOlxs5; in the bilingual inscriptions90. Now Herodotus is surely not implying that all these rulers who fought against the Persians are in some way evil; he is simply using the term -oipavvot as a general word for >>rulers.

164 VICTOR PARKER

one man rule, do, however, term it on occasion 'rpavvi;. Darius on the other hand always says tovapXi&a2.

Herodotus, as we have seen, has no knowledge of any modem distinction between tyrants and kings; for him ttupavvo; and Paatsixu serve as synonyms although TvI'pavvos can if need be take on a negative connotation. If I have sifted the ancient authors aright, then Thucydides distinguished first with absolute consistency between tyrants and kings93. Those rulers, whom we call tyrants, he also calls tyrants and never kings: the tyrants of Athens, the tyrants of Samos, the tyrants of Syracuse, of Gela, of Rhegium, of Megara, of Lampsacus, of Astacus in Acarnania94. All rulers, whom we customarily consider kings, Thucydides too calls kings: mythological Greek rulers, the rulers of Sparta, the rulers of Thessaly (for whom the local term, however, was 'rayo6), all rulers of barbarian peoples such as the Persians and the Libyans. The rulers of even the most obscure tribes of northern Greece Thucydides unflinchingly and without exception terms kings: Odrysians, Atintanes, Parauaeans, Agraeans, Lynkestes, Edones, Odomantes95. Thucydides is thus the first author who evinces a clear and consistent concept of >>tyranny>tyrants.

Tu'pavvo; 165

does he at any point apostrophise one of those whom we would call a tyrant as a ,BcasxvU98. Remarkably, even in a work such as the Hiero, in which he presents that Sicilian ruler in the best possible of lights, Xenophon repeatedly refers to Hiero and his ilk as tyrants and never as kings99. Neither Theopompus nor Philochorus, the latter an Athenian, deviates from Thucydides' usagel'?. An unbridgeable gap yawns between later authors' rigorous consistency and Herodo- tus' usage.

VI.

As far as the Attic orators are concerned, there is nothing remarkable outside of Isocrates. Demosthenes does break away from Thucydides' distinction between tyrants and kings in that he assails Philip II of Macedon as a tyrant; but this in itself hardly surprises. What is surprising is that Isocrates in the orations ad Nicoclem, Nicocles, and Euagoras repeatedly uses the word tvpavvo; and its derivatives in a positive or at the very least neutral sense as a synonym to PaaXti5; with reference to the kings of Salamis101. Curiously enough, Isocrates

an Phasians, Anabasis, 5,6,37; of Scythians, Thracians, and Illyrians, Cyropaedia, 1,1,4; of Arabs, Cyropaedia, 1,5,2; of Lydians, Cyropaedia, 1,5,3; of Cappadocians, Cyropaedia, 2,1,5; of Indians, Cyropaedia, 2,4,7; of Armenians, Cyropaedia, 3,1,4; of barbarian peoples generally, Cyropaedia, 3,3,26; of Assyrians, Cyropaedia, 3,3,43; of Bactrians, Cyropaedia, 5,1,3; of Susans, Cyropaedia, 6,3,35; of Phrygians, Cyropaedia, 7,4,10; of Egyptians, Agesilaus, 2,28; Kings of Persia (throughout); Kings of Media (throughout the Cyropaedia). Mythological rulers of Greece are also referred to as kings (Cynegeticus, 1,17) as are the rulers of the Cypriots (Cyropaedia, 7,4,2) and the Spartans (throughout the Agesilaus).

98 Tyrants of Syracuse: Hellenica, 2,2,24; 2,3,5; Tyrants of Athens: Hellenica, 6,5,33. Of the younger Greek tyrants we may mention Euphron of Sicyon, Hellenica, 7,1,46. Otherwise tvpavvo; or a derivative is used to characterise pejoratively the rule of the Thessalian tagoi Jason and Polydorus (Hellenica, 6,4,32-34) as well as that of the Spartan Harmosts (Hellenica, 3,5,3).

99 Xenophon, Hiero, 1,1, 2 (bis), 7 (bis), 8, 9 (bis), 11, 12, 13 (bis), 14, 15, 18, 21, 22, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 37, 38; 2,3, 4 (bis), 6, 7 (bis), 8, 9, 10, 11 (ter), 12 (bis), 15, 17, 18; 3,1, 6, 8 (ter), 4,2, 5 (bis), 6 (ter), 7 (bis), 8, 9 (bis), 11; 5,1, 2, 3 (bis), 4; 6,1, 8 (bis), 11 (bis), 13, 14 (bis); 7,2 (bis), 4, 5, 10, 11 (bis), 12 (bis), 13; 8,1, 2, 6, 10 (bis); 11,1, 6.

100 Usage of r1'pavvo;: Theopompus, FGrHist 115, especially frr. 184,185, 186, 188 (tyrants of Syracuse); Philochorus: FGrHist 328, fr. 30 (tyrants of Athens) and 159 (tyrant of Oreus). Usage of ,Baacn)vs: Theopompus, frr. 28 (Illyrians), 310 (Odrysians), 31 (Thracians), 38 (Paeo- nians) 43, 225, 279 (Macedonians, e.g.), 46, 103.1, 108 (Egyptians), 63 (mythological kings), 66, 87, 113, 124 (Persians e.g.), 103.17 (Lycians), 114 (Sidonians), 128 (Illyrians), 179 (Paphlagoni- ans), 240, 312 (Spartans), 382 (Chaonians, Molossians); Philochorus: frr. Sb, 8, 13, 92a, 93, 96, 104a (mythological kings); 18b (Molossians), 44, 126 (Macedonians), 46, 144-145 (Persians e.g.).

101 Isocrates, ad Nicoclem, 4 (bis), 21, 34, 35, 53; Nicocles, 11, 16, 22; Euagoras, 27, 32, 34, 39, 40, 63, 64, 66, 71, 78. Cf. P. BARCEL6, Basileia (n. 27) 252-258, who, however, fails to notice this fact.


166 VICTOR PARKER

never speaks of Philip of Macedon as a tyrant; instead we read e.g. etnczvF-?s cot X6piv ?Vouatv, oi gi?v 'EXXiv?5 Vn?p (V av (CV irdayXcw, MaK560V?; ' Nlv PotaXt?XKOX a'xXXa gi,r TupavvtKcO avm56v F-ntsaram, >>all will be grateful to you: the Greeks, should you treat them well; the Macedonians, if you rule over them as a king and not as a tyrant

Tiopavvo; 167

in accordance with established law and custom in barbarian countries (which Aristotle, however, generally refers to as kingship108), second the so-called elective tyranny as on occasion practised in Greece, and finally the self-serving, irresponsible kind under which no Greek would of his own accord choose to live'09. The first kind does not, of course, apply to Greece. As for the third kind, one could become such a tyrant in three ways: a king could overstep ancestral powers and make himself a tyrant; an ambitious man could get himself elected to a high office and misuse it to create a tyranny; a military leader could take advantage of his powers and obtain the mpavvi;. Together with the elective tyranny then there were four ways of becoming a tyrant in Greece. With one important exception Aristotle analytically defined that group of tyrants whom tradition and especially Thucydides had classified as tyrants: the elective tyrants (especially Pittacus of Mytilene, whom Alcaeus had so effectively branded as a tyrant that there was by Aristotle's day no denying the fact; it is, of course, Alcaeus whom Aristotle cites as evidence for the tyranny of Pittacus'1 0); the kings who became tyrants (Herodotus had, after all, referred to Pheidon of Argos as a tyrant, and no one disputed the fact: Aristotle actually cites Pheidon as the only example of this kind of tyrant"11); those who seized power whether by way of military or civil offices (this distinction is Aristotle's; to the first category belong Peisistratus of Athens, Cypselus of Corinth, Panaetius of Leontini, and Dionysius of Syracuse, to the second the Ionian tyrants as well as Phalaris of Acragas)l 2. Aristotle does not mention in his analytical discussion, however, the way in which for example Periander of Corinth, Pindarus of Ephesus, Hippias of Athens, Polycrates of Samos as well as sundry other tyrants gained that rank: they inherited it from their fathers. Aristotle, who oddly enough prides himself on using historical models, has forgotten this essential method of becoming a tyrant; quite probably under the influence of the usage of the term rpavvoS in the sense of an absolute ruler who seizes power in violation of established precepts, a definition which we have seen in Solon's poetry and traced also in the Attic tragedians. Now Aristotle indeed considers all those tyrants who inherited their positions to be tyrants also; he simply neglects the hereditary character of tyranny.

108 E.g. Aristotle, Politica, 1310b39-40 (Macedonians and Molossians). 109 Aristotle, Politica, 1285a18-1285bl. 1 10 Aristotle, Politica, 1285a39-1285b 1. I l l Aristotle, Politica, 13 1Ob18-20, 26-28. 112 Aristotle, Politica, 1310b28-31.


168 VICTOR PARKER

VII.

This word >>hereditary>never hopefully strengthen any tyrant, giving way to gain; \ but don't ever kill (one) if you've sworn oaths by the gods

Tiopavvo; 169

of someone who seizes power illegally first appears in the poetry of the Athenian Solon in the sixth century; and that the Attic tragedians of the fifth century do at times play on this secondary meaning of the word. We may note that Attic comedy notwithstanding poetic uses of mvpavvo; in a positive sense" 19 does often enough attest a sense of ruvpavvo; as something which one conspiratorially connives at becoming through illegal seizure of power'20. Attic speech, then, may have made a sharp semantic distinction between the terms r-rpavvo; and PaainXsiu, a distinction which did not quite exist elsewhere and in other dialects.

I think this results of the sharp political distinction felt in Athens between the kingship and the tyranny. In Athens the kingship had at a very early date melted away with little of the strife which accompanied its downfall elsewhere'21. As a consequence the tyrants were perceived as something completely different from the kings who had centuries before ceased to exist. In most other poleis, however, the kings had not given up their positions quietly; and certainly not so early. There were, for example, kings in Argos until well into the fifth century'22; though this is admittedly an extreme case. In most city-states, therefore, the tyrants appeared on the scene at a time when the kings had not yet been forgotten and were still quite vivid in the collective memory. STEWART IRVING OOST has accordingly suggested that many of the tyrants presented and considered themselves as nothing other than kings, as nothing other than the legitimate holders of an ancestral office'23. In another context124 I have endeavoured to develop OOST'S thesis and have tried to shew that Cypselos in an oracle which he himself had circulated had himself called a Piccot?uXe25. I have suggested that the Cypselid tyrants bore the title 3puravi;, and that before them the kings of Corinth had borne this title also'26. The Orthagorids also seem to have laid claim to the kingship, for their office required them to perform certain sacrifices on behalf of the state, the performance

WEST, of a 6rqgo(pqyo; ,ripavvo; (>>a people-devouring tyrantTheognis

170 VICTOR PARKER

of such sacrifices being one of the few known official duties of the king in the Greek city-states'27. The tyrant dynasty of the Aeacids on Samos, of whom Polycrates is merely the best-known member, seems to have claimed for itself the title ?ta'T6ns which could well have served as the local word for >>king

Tiupavvos 171

cannot be shewn to exist in Greek thought before Thucydides, though I presume that it had existed in Attica before that author wrote. In Attica, as we have seen, there yawned a gap of many centuries between the rise of the tyranny and the downfall of the kingship, so that the tyrants never pretended to be kings and were in fact perceived as being something radically different from the kings'31. The perceived political distinction manifested itself in a semantic distinction which, however, did not exist outside of the regional dialect of Attica. Herodotus, as mentioned earlier, wrote in Ionic and accordingly made no semantic distinction between tyrants and kings. The lyricists wrote notwithstanding Epic and Aeolic elements in literary Doric and did not make the distinction. The tragedians never wrote exclusively in Attic'32 and ostensibly eschewed (perhaps also for this reason as well as in deference to older, traditional poetic terminology) this Attic semantic distinction; though it may often enough peer out from between the lines.

But if the semantic distinction did not exist outside of Attic and the political distinction was not felt outside of Athens, then are we justified in calling the tyrants >>tyrants

172 VICrOR PARKER

the conventional one) resettled it135. Under consideration of the early date of the Crisan settlement (perhaps in the mid-seventh century) as well as a gloss from Hesychius which suggests that there were still kings in Crisa at the time of the first Sacred War'36, we should perhaps accept Daulius as a king instead of as a tyrant. Ephorus has simply not adjusted his terminology to the Attic standard. Timaeus of Tauromenium provides an example of the opposite case. He makes mention of Theron, the tyrant of Acragas, as a king137. Again, an historian of non-Attic origin is not conforming to Attic terminology which sharply differentiated tyrants from kings. Now these are both authors of post-Thucydidean date. We should not, then, register any surprise when we read in an author such as Hippys of Rhegium, who wrote in the fifth century, before Thucydides, that a king called Pollis once ruled in Syracuse'38. Pollis may well have been an early tyrant; in fact the Etymologicon Magnum labels him as such'39. Knowing what we do about the synonymous use of OaactBxnv and ru'pavvo; in Pindar, it does not surprise when we read in the first Pythian about a King Deinomenes of Aetna140. He too will have been what we conventionally term a tyrant.

But how justified is that convention? Is not that convention which sees certain rulers as kings and others as tyrants foreign to all regions of Greece other than Attica where it arose by virtue of a highly atypical political development? Should we not treat the tyrants as they presented themselves, as writers of non-Attic background saw them even down into the fourth century, and as their subjects in all probability thought of them? That is to say as kings who in at least some cases managed to found successful dynasties? And is it not time to break away from the undue influence which the atypical Athenian polis has exerted on our evaluation of Greek constitutional development? As I have attempted to argue in this paper on the basis of a discussion of the usage of the words tu'pavvo; and to a lesser extent PaaXE1v;, the tyrants belong to an earlier stage of constitutional development than has usually been assumed. They belong to the stage when monarchy was, of course, under siege, but still quite feasible as a type of government and still capable of revival, at least for a time.

Heidelberg VICTOR PARKER

135 Paus. 4,23,1 (flight of Pylians and Me/othoneans into the West; cf. Thuc. 4,3,2; Theopom- pus, FGrHist 1 15, fr. 383 = Strabo, 8,6,1 1, p. 373; Paus. 4,24,4 - desertion of Pylos; resettlement of deserted Me/othone). Antiochus of Syracuse, FGrHist 555, fr. 12 = Strabo, 6,1,15, p. 264-265 (resettlement of deserted Metapontium by >>Achaeans

The Semantics of a Political Concept

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