Chapter IX: Sicyon, Megara, Miletus, Ephesus, Leontini, Agrigentum,

Cumae_

“Ne perdons rien du passé. Ce n’est qu’avec le passé qu’on fait
l’avenir.”

ANATOLE FRANCE.

[Sidenote: Sicyon.]

The tyranny at Sicyon lasted longer than in any other Greek state[1296]. It started about the same time as that of Cypselus at Corinth and continued in the same family for about a century. The tyrants rested their power on the support of the pre-Dorian population of their city, and the establishment of the tyranny was probably to a large extent a racial movement representing a rising of the pre-Dorian stratum of the population against their Dorian conquerors.

How the tyrant family secured its power is another question. Until the other day our only information on the subject was to the effect that the founder of the dynasty was a cook or butcher (μάγειρος)[1297], who was helped to power by the Delphic oracle[1298]. Thanks however to a papyrus recently unearthed by the Oxford scholars Grenfell and Hunt and published by them in 1915 we have now considerable fragments of a detailed account of the founder of the dynasty[1299].

The fragment confirms the statement that the tyrants of Sicyon were sprung from a butcher and settles the vexed question of the relationship of Andreas and Orthagoras (the two earliest known members of the family) by showing that Orthagoras was the first tyrant and Andreas was father of Orthagoras. It also shows that Orthagoras himself was bred as a butcher. But it is devoted mainly to the military exploits of the youthful Orthagoras, and though it does not take us down to the day when he made himself tyrant it plainly brings us very near it, and as it leaves him in the position of polemarch on active service it seems to illustrate and support the statement of Aristotle that the early tyrants often owed their power to some high magistracy or military position that they had previously secured in the state. But there are several reasons why this military aspect should not be overrated. The account of how Orthagoras actually seized the tyranny is after all wanting. The extant fragment says that he secured the position of polemarch “partly also by reason of the goodwill of the mass of the citizens towards him,” and gives this as a separate reason[1300] from that of his military successes. Moreover the author of the fragment was possibly Aristotle himself, who is known to have written a lost _Constitution of the Sicyonians_; and although Grenfell and Hunt regard Ephorus as more probably the author, Ephorus lived at the same time and wrote under the same historical influences as Aristotle and was probably misled in the same way concerning the character of the early tyranny[1301]. The outstanding fact in the early career of Orthagoras is still his tradesman origin.

Little is known of the later career of Orthagoras except that he governed mildly, and of his successor Myron (Olympian victor in 648 B.C.[1302]) nothing is recorded that throws any direct light on the origin of the tyranny: but the case is different when we come to Cleisthenes, the last and most famous of this family of tyrants, whose reign covered roughly the first third of the sixth century[1303]. With Cleisthenes the Sicyonian tyranny entered on a new phase.

Aristotle quotes Sicyon as an instance of a city where the government changed “from tyranny to tyranny ... from that of Myron to that of Cleisthenes[1304].” The story of how Cleisthenes got his two brothers out of the way is told by Nicolaus Damascenus[1305]. But what Nicolaus gives is purely a tale of domestic crime, a change from tyrant to tyrant not from tyranny to tyranny. Perhaps the change referred to by Aristotle is to be connected with the fact that Cleisthenes followed an aggressive foreign policy[1306]. He was violently hostile to Argos[1307], and took a leading part in the “sacred” war that was fought about Delphi at the beginning of the sixth century B.C.[1308]. He was a contemporary of Periander who appears to have changed the character of the tyranny at Corinth by making the government warlike. It is not unlikely that the change effected by Cleisthenes at Sicyon was in the same direction. In turning to war it does not follow that he forsook trade. He may have held the view that trade follows the flag. The “sacred” war had its secular side. It arose about the refusal of the people of Krisa, who possessed the port of Delphi, to remove their harbour dues.

Krisa was a place of importance in early times[1309], so much so that what was later known as the Gulf of Corinth was called the Gulf of Krisa. The territory of the Krisaians lay just opposite Sicyon, and it seems not improbable that the Sicyonians, with their allies the Corinthians[1310], aimed at wresting from their rivals across the water their position in the gulf which was the starting-point of trade with the far West[1311]. According to a Pindar scholiast the Krisaians had control of the sea at the beginning of the war and owed their ultimate defeat to the fact that Cleisthenes built a fleet and destroyed their naval supremacy[1312]. It looks very much as though Cleisthenes was trying to win for Sicyon the sea-borne trade that had been flowing into Krisa. With the aid of a fleet that must for the time have made Sicyon a really important naval power[1313] he crushes the trade rival across the water and wins its place for his own city and himself[1314].

Bury assigns to Cleisthenes the leading part in the reorganizing of the Pythian games at Delphi after the Sacred War[1315], and pictures the Sicyonian tyrant as doing for the Delphic Pythia much what Periander and Peisistratus are depicted as doing for the Corinthian Isthmia and the Athenian Panathenaia and Pheidon very possibly did for the great games at Olympia. Bury’s general picture of the early tyrants as founders or reorganizers of these great Greek games is quite in harmony with the chronological evidence and with all that is known about the various tyrants’ activities and characters[1316]. Developing these games might well be part of a broad commercial policy, the more so as the games were under divine patronage and ensured periodic opportunities for peaceful intercourse in an age of chronic warfare[1317]. Under such circumstances gatherings of this kind naturally tend to become the “commercial affair (ἐμπορικὸν πρᾶγμα)” that the Delian festival admittedly grew to be[1318]. Everything known about the early Greek tyrants shows how capable they were of turning such a tendency to good account. That Delphi in particular had from early times a commercial character has already been conjectured by Cornford[1319]. In the early years of the Sicyonian tyranny the greatness of the Euboean cities Chalcis and Eretria had begun to be steadily on the decline. The time had come to change the course of the Eastern part of this great trade route and instead of Krisa, Delphi, Thebes, Euboea to substitute another line, in which Sicyon and probably Athens should be dominating points. This is probably what Cleisthenes had in view when he so strongly supported Solon in the Sacred War.

It follows that to make him the founder of the Delphic Pythia is a view that cannot be accepted without reservations. The available evidence represents Cleisthenes as rather the rival than the champion of Delphi. A Pindar scholiast already quoted states that he instituted Pythian games in his own Sicyon. There is no other evidence for Pythian games at Sicyon, but Herodotus gives a long account of the way in which Cleisthenes radically reformed the chief existing festival in the city. This festival, like the Delphic Pythia of the days before the Sacred War, was devoted largely to musical and poetical competitions. Its patron was the ancient hero Adrastus, whose connexions were all with Argos, the Dorian city whose influence in Sicyon Cleisthenes was bent on overthrowing. Cleisthenes ejected Adrastus from Sicyon by the curious process of burying beside him the body of his bitterest enemy, the Theban Melanippus (which he borrowed for the purpose from Thebes), and then removing the body of Adrastus which was assumed to depart voluntarily from so unpleasant a neighbourhood.

The reformed festival was held in honour of this Theban hero and the Theban wine god Dionysus. The ejected Adrastus had been one of the leaders in the famous expedition of the Seven against Thebes[1320]. There can be little doubt that when the festival was instituted Cleisthenes was aiming at an entente with the great inland city that formed the first main stage on the route from Delphi to Euboea and the North. But the attempt was a failure. Thebes was conspicuously unrepresented at the wooing of Cleisthenes’ daughter Agariste[1321], and the tyrant is furious when one of the suitors performs what has plausibly been suggested to have been a Theban dance[1322]. Relations with Delphi may have run a similar course. In the first celebration of the reformed Delphian Pythia Cleisthenes competed; and the way that he approached the Delphic oracle before reorganizing his own Sicyonian festival shows that he wanted an understanding with the authorities there, to whom his family was perhaps largely indebted for its throne[1323]. But the oracle would have nothing to do with Cleisthenes’ proposals and used abusive language to the tyrant for making them. Relations between the god and the tyrant can hardly have remained cordial after this incident and the Thebans presumably sided with the god.

Whatever the precise outcome of Cleisthenes’ policy with Delphi and Thebes the likelihood remains that one main object of that policy had been to give a new direction to the city’s trade. We have been assuming that the Sicyon of the tyrants was an important centre of commerce and industry. This has been denied by Eduard Meyer[1324]. The evidence is meagre: but as far as it goes it is entirely against Meyer’s hypothesis, which makes it hard to explain how the city became so great and prosperous at this time. We have seen already that Cleisthenes possessed a powerful fleet and that his proceedings suggest far-reaching commercial designs. The evidence as to industry points in the same direction. Some distinguished archaeologists have actually assigned to the Sicyon of Andreas and Orthagoras one of the leading industries of the period, the making of the remarkably fine pottery now usually known as Proto-Corinthian. Their arguments are by no means decisive[1325], and in any case there is nothing to associate the Sicyonian tyrants personally with Sicyonian potteries; but there are literary notices which point to the Orthagorids as having been, like the other early tyrants, builders and, presumably, employers of local labour. The Olympian “treasury” which Pausanias thought to have been put up by the tyrant Myron[1326] has been shown by excavation to have been fifth century work[1327]. But in this treasury Pausanias saw two “bronze chambers” (models of buildings?) one of which bore an inscription saying that it was a dedication of Myron and the people of Sicyon. This inscription may have misled Pausanias into ascribing to Myron the building that contained it[1328]. The bronze chamber on which the dedication was inscribed was on a large scale. It weighed 500 Aeginetan talents or about 19 tons. From towards the end of the period of the tyranny Sicyon was famous for its school of sculptors, who worked largely in bronze, and though no statement has been preserved as to the workmanship of Myron’s dedication, it may not unreasonably be used as evidence that the Sicyonians of his reign were already experts in the working of bronze[1329]. As regards buildings, Cleisthenes with the spoils that he gained in the Sacred War is known to have erected at Sicyon a magnificent portico[1330].

Pollux, the lexicographer of the second century A.D., says that the Sicyonians in the time of the tyrants (as also the Athenians under the Peisistratids) wore a particular kind of rough woollen dress “that they might be ashamed to go down into the city[1331].” The statement may be true and the explanation false. If both are accepted, it by no means follows that the policy of the Sicyonian tyrants was dominantly agricultural[1332]. We may possibly have here a record of a measure intended to prevent the commercialized city from attracting to itself the agricultural population that was of such vital importance to the normal self-sufficing Greek city-state. There is little doubt that the government of the Sicyonian tyrants was popular with the lower classes. Aristotle declares that it lasted so long because they treated their subjects so well[1333]. If Herodotus and Ephorus give a less favourable account of them, the reason is probably that their sources were aristocratic and anti-tyrannical[1334].

[Sidenote: Megara.]

The tyranny at Megara is associated with the single name of Theagenes[1335], whose reign is dated by the support that he gave to his son-in-law Cylon, winner of an Olympian victory in 640 B.C.[1336] and would-be tyrant of Athens.

According to Aristotle in the _Rhetoric_ Theagenes, like Peisistratus and Dionysius, scheming to make himself tyrant asked for the (usual) bodyguard, and having secured it became tyrant. But as pointed out in the first chapter this only shows that winning the tyranny meant possessing an armed force. It says nothing as to how the armed force was acquired. Armed forces are not to be had for the asking. For the way in which Theagenes got his our only evidence is another passage of Aristotle, this time from the _Politics_, which says that Theagenes secured his power “after slaughtering the flocks and herds of the wealthy[1337].”

In the latter part of the fifth century “most of the Megareans got their living by making exomides” (the normal dress of the poorer classes)[1338]. Meyer assumes this to have been a fourth (_sic_) century development, but altogether against the evidence[1339]. Not only is the woollen industry known to have been one of the main occupations of Megara in the fifth century, but the prosperity of the city in the seventh century is only comprehensible if we assume that it was already engaged in the woollen trade. As observed by Busolt[1340], Megaris has on the whole a barren stony soil that was mostly suited only for the pasture of its numerous flocks of sheep. The Megareans must have manufactured goods to take to their distant colonies, from which they imported corn and other raw material.

The colonial activities of Megara went back well into the seventh century. Some of her colonies such as Chalcedon and Byzantium and Heraclea Pontica[1341] lay on the route of the Argonauts that led to the land of the golden fleece. Other seventh century colonies of Megara lay in the far West in Sicily, where she founded Megara Hyblaea in the latter part of the eighth century and Selinus in the second half of the seventh.

Thus Megara’s colonial activities in the seventh century correspond closely with those of Miletus, the city that colonized most of the ports of the Black Sea and owed so much of her wealth to her trade in wool with the Italian Sybaris[1342].

That Megara herself was engaged in the woollen industry at this early date is made not unlikely by several fragments of evidence. Demeter at Megara bore the title Malophoros. “Various statements,” says Pausanias, “are made about this title, and in particular that Demeter was named Malophoros by those who first reared sheep in the land[1343].” The word Malophoros may mean either “Sheep-bearing” or “Apple-bearing,” but the account of the title in Pausanias shows that the Megareans understood it as meaning “Sheep-bearing,” and regarded it as of high antiquity and certainly as older than the days when the flocks of the well-to-do were slaughtered by Theagenes.

According to Pliny[1344] fulling was invented by a Megarean named Nikias. Buechsenschuetz[1345] infers from this passage that fulling or milling was of great importance in the ancient wool industry. Bluemner[1346] quotes it to prove the importance of the industry at Megara. The most important inference to be drawn from it both of them seem to have overlooked, namely that the industry at Megara must have been of high antiquity.

The care bestowed by the Megareans on sheep-breeding is alluded to by the sixth century Theognis

κριοὺς μὲν καὶ ὄνους διζήμεθα, Κύρνε, καὶ ἵππους
εὐγενέας[1347].

Megarean woollen goods at the end of the fifth century were much worn by Athenian slaves who, as Cauer observes[1348], came largely from the region of the early Megarean colonies.

It seems therefore not unlikely that when Theagenes slaughtered the flocks of the wealthy at Megara his blow was aimed at a class of capitalists whose wealth was already based on the woollen trade, as was that of the direct ancestors in Tudor times of our own modern capitalists[1349].

This possibility has been recognized by Poehlmann[1350] who quotes Xenophon on the Megarean wool industry in reference to Theagenes. Poehlmann imagines the blow as dealt by the discontented masses and inspired by simple hatred. But our one authority attributes it not to the rebellious masses but to Theagenes himself. On a point of definite fact like this Aristotle deserves to be taken precisely as he expresses himself. Can it be that Theagenes’ coup was a simple but effective means of securing for himself the monopoly of the Megarean woollen industry?

If this was in fact the aim of Theagenes he was merely anticipating the methods of certain modern monopolists. In December 1888 the Whiskey Combination in the United States is said to have blown up a troublesome independent still in Chicago[1351]. There are records of a similar attempt to blow up rival works at Buffalo[1352]. For these cases I quote again from a work on the danger of a new tyranny of wealth that the writer, whose book appeared in 1894, thought at the time to be threatening the United States.

The most lasting memorial that Theagenes left behind him was the water conduit that he constructed for the city[1353]. The extant remains seem to belong to a later date, but this is no reason for either post-dating the tyrant or not accepting him as its constructor. The remains now to be seen may well be due to a reconstruction, perhaps by the famous Megarean Eupalinus, who constructed the Samian waterworks for Polycrates. Underground conduits like the Megarean were being made half a century before the reign of Theagenes, as is shown by the underground canal constructed by Hezekiah to bring to Jerusalem the waters of Miriam (Gihon)[1354]. Tyranny at Megara was short lived. The only tyrant ended his life in exile.

When they had banished Theagenes the Megareans for a short while
behaved with moderation ... but after that they began behaving
outrageously to the rich: in particular the poor entered their
houses and demanded to be entertained and feasted sumptuously, and
treated them all with violence and insult if they did not get what
they desired. Finally they passed a decree and recovered from the
money-lenders the interest that they happened to have paid.

This passage of Plutarch[1355] throws no direct light on either the character or the basis of Theagenes’ power. The outbreak that it describes may have been due to the comparative weakness of the new government. It is equally possible that it occurred because the fall of the tyranny had made things much worse for the working classes, on whose support and favour Theagenes had probably based his power[1356].

This period of Megarean history is better known than the corresponding phase of any other Greek city, thanks to the verses of Theognis. Their evidence for the character of the early tyrannies has been discussed in