Chapter XI: Conclusion (1)

ἀγαθὸν δὲ ὄντα διαφερόντως καὶ πλούσιον εἶναι διαφερόντως ἀδύνατον.

PLATO, _Laws_, V. 743_a_.

“We adopted a law that if you bought an office you didn’t get it. I
admit that that is contrary to all commercial principles, but I
think it is pretty good political doctrine.”—WOODROW WILSON.

This final chapter will contain (_a_) a _résumé_ of the evidence already adduced; (_b_) a short general discussion of the credibility of the whole mass of extant evidence; and (_c_) an attempt to view in their proper perspective the conclusions that the evidence seems to warrant.

(a) _Résumé of previous chapters_

[Sidenote: Introductory chapter.]

The age of the first known metal coins is also the age of the first rulers to be called tyrants. Ancient evidence and modern analogy both suggest that the new form of government was based on the new form of capital. The modern analogy is to be found in the financial revolution which has largely replaced metal coins by paper (thereby rendering capital very much more mobile, just as was done by the financial revolution of the age of the tyrants) and has led many people to fear a new tyranny of wealth. The ancient evidence is to be found in the scanty extant writings of the sixth century B.C. (Solon and Theognis), in scattered notices about early tyrants or tyranny in fifth century writers (Thucydides, Herodotus, Pindar), in certain statements of Aristotle, in references to industrial conditions both during and after the age of the tyrants, in the history of the states where there was never a tyranny, and in the steps taken to prevent a recurrence of tyranny.

If the commercial origin of the early tyranny is not explicitly formulated by any ancient writer it should be remembered how meagre are contemporary documents and how little Greek writers say about economic causes. It is true also that my view is at variance with statements of Plato, Aristotle, and subsequent writers: but their picture of the rise of tyranny clashes with known facts about the seventh and sixth centuries and is due to false generalizations from the conditions of their own days and particularly from the career of Dionysius of Syracuse.

[Sidenote: Athens.]

Peisistratus made himself tyrant by organizing the Attic “hill men” (Diakrioi, Epakrioi) against the two previously existing rival factions of the “plain” and the “coast.” The accepted explanations of these “hill men” are improbable. They cannot have been farmers or shepherds, who were always very conservative, are not recorded as having subsequently supported Peisistratus, and must have lived principally in the plain and very little in the forest-clad mountains where modern theories generally locate them. Nor were the “hill men” confined to the mountainous district of North Attica, the mistaken identification of which with the “hill country” is due to mistaken views as to the triple division of Attica into “hill,” “coast,” and “plain,” which wrongly assigns all South Attica to the “coast” and limits the “coast” to South Attica. These views on the triple division of Attica in the days of Peisistratus are based on the weakest of evidence and are made improbable by the subsequent topographical arrangements of Cleisthenes (502 B.C.), and by the later uses of the terms Diakria and Epakria. The Epakria contained a village named Semachidai which, as shown by a recently found inscription, lay in the hilly mining district of South Attica. Furthermore the Attic “akron” _par excellence_ was Cape Sunium, the Southern apex of the Attic mining district and of the whole Attic peninsula. In view of these facts it becomes probable that the Sunium and Laurium mining district was the “hill country” _par excellence_. The mines were almost certainly in full work at this period, and the miners, unlike those of later ages, free men, good material for a political faction.

That Peisistratus based his power on silver mines is made very likely by what is known of his subsequent career. He finally “rooted his power” on money derived partly from home, partly from the Thracian mining district; he went to the Thracian mining district to prepare for his second restoration; his first restoration is attributed to the dressing up as Athena of a Thracian woman named Phye, who is very possibly to be explained away as the Athena who begins about this time to appear on Attic coins: for this interpretation of the Phye story compare the names “girl,” “virgin,” “Pallas” colloquially given to the Attic coins, and the jest about Agesilaus being driven out of Asia by the Great King’s archers, a colloquial name for Persian gold coins.

The tyranny fell at Athens when the tyrants lost control of the Thracian mining district. Shortly afterwards the ambitious Histiaeus, the Greek friend of the Persian king into whose power the mines had passed, incurred the suspicions of the Persian sovereign through attempting to build up a political power on these very mines and miners.

The history of the Alcmaeonid opposition to the house of Peisistratus likewise suggests that the government of Athens at this period depended first and foremost on the power of the purse.

[Sidenote: Samos.]

Polycrates is perhaps best known for his piracies, but it seems not unlikely that these piracies were in fact an elaborate commercial blockade of Persia that proved almost as unpopular among Greek neutrals as among the subjects of the Great King against whom it was mainly directed. As tyrant Polycrates is found controlling the commercial and industrial activities of his state, building ships, harbour works, and waterworks, and very possibly a great bazaar, and probably employing much free labour on these works. Before he became tyrant he already had an interest in the chief Samian industries, the working of metal and the manufacture of woollen goods. Aiakes the father of Polycrates is probably the Aiakes whom a recently discovered Samian inscription appears to connect with the sea-borne trade of the island. The tyrant is said to have owed his fall to an attempt to get money enough to rule all Greece, a statement of particular value considering the tendency to administer poetic justice that is so frequently displayed by Herodotus, who is our authority for this statement.

[Sidenote: Egypt.]

The great developments of trade and industry that just preceded the age of tyranny in Greece had their parallel if not their origin in Egypt. At the height of this development in Egypt a new and powerful dynasty arises which bases its power on commerce and on the commercial and industrial classes. Already towards the end of the eighth century we find King Bocchoris (somewhat after the manner of the Argive Pheidon) devoting special attention to commercial legislation. His successor Sethon is said by Herodotus to have based his power on “hucksters and artizans and tradespeople.” During these reigns the country was always being occupied or threatened by foreign invaders from Ethiopia or Assyria. The first Egyptian king of this period to rule all Egypt in normal conditions of peace and quietness was Psammetichus I, who rose to power about the same time as Cypselus in Corinth and Orthagoras in Sicyon. Psammetichus according to Diodorus converted his position from that of a petty Delta chieftain (one of twelve who shared the rule of the part of the country not in foreign occupation) into that of supreme ruler of the whole country as a result of the wealth and influence that he won by trading with Phoenicians and Greeks.

This last statement if true establishes Psammetichus as a commercial tyrant. It occurs only in Diodorus, and receives no direct confirmation in earlier writers, but it is in entire harmony with all that is known about events and conditions in Egypt at this period, and more particularly with the notices just quoted as to Bocchoris and Sethon, with the history of Amasis and the other later Saites as recorded in Herodotus, and with the conclusions to be drawn from the excavation of Naukratis and the other Greek settlements that played so important a part in Saite Egypt.

[Sidenote: Lydia.]

From the middle of the eighth century B.C. till the early part of the fifth Lydia appears to have been a power in which the ruler based his position on wealth and struggles for the throne were fought with the weapons of trade and finance. This according to the accounts is the case with Spermos and Ardys in the eighth century and with Croesus in the sixth: the story of Gyges and his magic ring may also be explained in the same sense. A similar state of things is indicated in the advice which Croesus is made by Herodotus to give to Cyrus, in the story of the revolt of Pactyes, and in that of Xerxes and the rich Pythes.

At about the time to which we can trace back this state of things in Lydia, two events were taking place that are both attributed to Lydia, namely the striking of the first metal coins and the appearance of the first tyrant. In neither case are the dates very precise. The first coins are more probably to be placed late in the eighth century than early in the seventh, and though Gyges is stated to have been the first tyrant, there are reasons for suspecting that he may have been merely the first ruler of his kind to attract the attention of the Greeks. The magic ring too by which he secured his tyranny is sometimes attributed not to Gyges but to some (not very remote) ancestor of his or to the eighth century plutocrat Midas king of the neighbouring Phrygia. But on any showing the ring falls within the limits of time and place to which may be ascribed the earliest coins and the earliest tyrant. Rings are one common form of early currency and it is not impossible that it was to the ring in this sense that the first tyrant owed his tyranny. This view, which implies that the earliest coins were private issues and that the coinage was only nationalized when the principal coiner became chief of the state, is supported alike by evidence and analogies.

[Sidenote: Argos.]

Pheidon, who was probably the first ruler to be called tyrant in European Greece, is described by Herodotus as “the man who created for the Peloponnesians their measures,” a description that at once suggests that it was this commercial step that differentiated Pheidon the tyrant from the kings who preceded him. Later writers, of whom the earliest is Ephorus, go further and state that silver was first coined by Pheidon in Aegina. The statement has been called in question, but it is confirmed by the chapters of Herodotus (V. 82 f.) which describe the early relations between Argos, Aegina, and Athens. In the light of recent archaeological enquiries it becomes highly probable that Argos became predominant in Aegina as described in these chapters of Herodotus (which are unfortunately most vague in their chronology) just about the time when Pheidon most probably reigned; and this probability is increased by the tradition that Pheidon recovered the lot of Temenos, the domain of the kings of Argos in early Dorian times, which included the island of Aegina. The occupation of Aegina by Argos which we have seen reason to associate with Pheidon gave rise according to Herodotus to a change in the “measures” (which probably included the weights system) in use on the island, the new measures being half as great again as those previously in use. The Aeginetan standard on which the Aeginetan coins were struck is roughly half as great again as the other and probably earlier standard used in ancient Greece. The statement of Ephorus that silver was first coined by Pheidon in Aegina is thus strikingly confirmed, which means that the first ruler to strike coins in European Greece was also the first to be called tyrant.

[Sidenote: Corinth.]

The tyranny at Corinth coincides with the great industrial and commercial developments of the city described by Thucydides (I. 13) in words that are a paraphrase of his description of the state of things that led to the rise of tyrannies in Greece generally. Scholars agree that the tyrants had a direct interest in some of these developments, notably shipping, colonizing and coinage. The main industry of Corinth at this period seems to have been pottery, with which she supplied much of the Greek world. Of the early career of the first tyrant, Cypselus, very little is known beyond the story in Herodotus which professes to explain how the infant Cypselus got his curious name. We have examined in some detail the meaning of the words cypselus and cypsele, and found that they probably mean potter and pot, so that the man who established the tyranny at Corinth seems to have borne a name that associates him with the main industry of his city.

[Sidenote: Rome.]

Both in date and in character the corresponding period at Rome to the age of the tyrants in Greece is that which is occupied by the reigns of the Tarquins. The first king of this dynasty, Tarquinius Priscus, is said to have been the son of a rich Corinthian named Demaratus. Early in life the first of the Tarquins had settled in Rome. It was by means of his wealth that he secured the throne. Both he and his father are said to have been great employers of labour, and the accounts imply that their employees were free men. Servius Tullius, who succeeded Tarquinius Priscus, is said to have been the first at Rome to strike coins, and to have secured the support of the poor by gifts and benevolences. When the last of the Tarquins, Tarquinius Superbus, overthrew Servius Tullius and secured the throne, he did so by buying up the poorest of the common people. After his succession he is described as employing Etruscans and Roman citizens on a large scale as artizans and quarrymen. He loses the throne when he can no longer pay these employees.

During the first century of the republic the established government several times thought itself threatened with attempts to restore the kingship. In each case it is the wealth or the exceptional financial position of the suspected person that causes the alarm. Early republican statesmen are repeatedly reported as charging the Tarquins with having degraded Roman citizens (from their natural position as soldiers and gentlemen) into tradesmen and artizans, a charge which implies the reverse change as having accompanied the change from kingly government to republican. The final blow to the monarchist movement at Rome seems to have been dealt when army pay was instituted, and the government as paymaster of the army became the greatest employer of paid free labour in the state.

One later attempt to establish a tyranny at Rome has been suspected by Mommsen. The man he suspects of it is Appius Claudius Caecus, the censor of 312 B.C. Appius was noted for the number of his clients and the great public works that he conducted, and he probably had a close connexion with the first real coinage struck by Rome. Attention has also been drawn to the accounts of the secessions, with their curious resemblances to modern strikes and their implication of organization on the part of labour. At Ardea in North Latium about the year 440 B.C. the working-classes are described as playing a decisive part in the struggle for supreme power. At Veii in the year 400 B.C. we are told of a rich employer who became king of his city.

The statements just quoted have all been often regarded with extreme scepticism. The reasons for this scepticism have been examined in the chapter on Rome. It is impossible to resume them here. If my conclusions are not entirely wrong, the scepticism of the last century represented an excessive reaction against the undue credulity of earlier ages. Recent archaeological discoveries enormously increase the probability of the narrative in its main outlines. But if after all the sceptics are right on this particular question, and the Tarquin narrative is a fiction, it is none the less of historical value, and confirms the view that the early tyrannis was commercial, since, if fiction, it must be an early Greek fiction, preserving an early Greek conception of the typical early tyrant as a great capitalist.

[Sidenote: Other early tyrannies.]

In Chapter IX we surveyed the evidence for the origin of the early tyrannies at Sicyon, Megara, Miletus, Ephesus, Leontini, Agrigentum, and Cumae. The material is scanty and it is enough here to recall that as far as it goes it supports the theory of a commercial origin. At Sicyon the tyranny is founded by a tradesman the son of a tradesman. At Megara Theagenes rises to power as the result of what looks very like the creation of a corner in the staple product of his city. At Miletus and Leontini we find tyrants arising as the result of something like class war between rich and poor, while a later tyrant of Miletus tries to establish a great political position by getting control of the mines and miners of Thrace. At Ephesus and Cumae the tyrants’ power is said to be based on the money that they distributed among the poorer classes, while at Agrigentum the tyrant is definitely stated to have secured the tyranny through his position as a great employer.

[Sidenote: Capitalist despots of later ages.]

In the times of Aristotle there are several cases in the Pergamene district of rich bankers and the like making attempts, of which one at least was successful, to secure supreme political power in their cities by means of their wealth. The close personal relationship in which Aristotle stood to some of them partly explains why they are not classed by him as tyrants.

Not long afterwards the far more important power of the rulers of Pergamum owed its origin entirely to the enormous wealth of the founder of the dynasty.

Later still at Olbia chance has preserved an inscription which records how a very rich Olbiopolitan named Protogenes became “financial director” of his city. Though there is no evidence that Protogenes ever became a tyrant the inscription shows that the sort of position which we have imagined to have been normally built up by the would-be tyrant of the seventh or sixth century was actually secured some three or four centuries later by a wealthy individual in this remote and backward Greek city on the Black Sea.

(b) _The credibility of the evidence as a whole_

The value of the various items of evidence collected and reviewed in the preceding chapters varies very greatly. In some cases we have precise statements bearing closely on the point in question and made by almost contemporary writers. At the other end of the list we have anecdotes of doubtful relevance and doubtful authenticity found in writers who lived centuries after the period to which they refer. It is difficult to sum up the value of so miscellaneous a collection. The estimate is bound to vary greatly according to the temperament and training of the person who makes it. There are however two points which seem in the present state of scholarship to need especial emphasis.

The first of these refers to the generally prevalent attitude towards the question of historical truth as it affects generally the period under consideration. No one who has read at all widely in modern writings on ancient history can have failed to observe that the scepticism or credulity of any given scholar has always depended largely on that of his generation. Up to a point this is inevitable: but we are reaching a stage when it is no longer necessary to follow quite so blindly as has hitherto been done the natural reaction from excessive credulity to excessive scepticism and _vice versa_. The pendulum has now been swinging long enough for its motion to be observed and allowed for. There is no doubt that scholars of a few generations ago were often and perhaps in general unduly credulous. But it is no less certain that the main tendency of the past century has been to react from excessive credulity to no less excessive scepticism. The beginnings of the sceptical reaction were observed by Byron:

I’ve stood upon Achilles’ tomb
And heard Troy doubted: Time will doubt of Rome.

The doubts about Troy have been triumphantly dispelled by the spade. So likewise, as we have seen already, have many doubts as to the reality of the Tarquins’ Rome. But the wonderful discoveries of the last forty years at Troy, Mycenae, Knossos, Phaistos, and other sites of early Cretan civilization have diverted the attention of scholars from later periods. It need therefore cause no surprise if in the preceding pages there has repeatedly been occasion to criticize prevailing views as excessively and uncritically sceptical.

The second point on the question of historical truth that I wish here to emphasize is concerned more directly with the evidence collected in this book. As already admitted, the collection contains many items of doubtful value: it could not be otherwise if it was to be at all complete. The cumulative effect of so much dubious evidence upon some mental temperaments is to discredit the mass of evidence as a whole. It is important therefore to bear in mind the character of our material. It is a heap, not a chain. Its strength is to be measured by its strongest items rather than by its weakest. Weak or irrelevant items do not invalidate any that are relevant and cogent. On the contrary, points of evidence that are individually unconvincing may have a powerful cumulative effect if they are found all pointing, however dimly, in one definite direction, and all suggesting a single explanation arrived at on independent grounds. When dealing with the dawn of history it is uncritical to reject a whole body of evidence merely because it is made up of details scarcely any of which are capable of proof. The evidence of history, or at any rate of Greek history, in its childhood is like that of many an individual child. The child’s idea of truth is often more fluid than that of the adult. It may be harder in any given case to be sure of the exact facts. But it may all the same be certain that facts more or less accurately recorded form a large element of the information.

That, it may be fairly claimed, is how the evidence that has been presented in this volume ought to be regarded. Its cumulative value is really considerable. It should be remembered how independent our witnesses are. Livy on the Tarquins of Rome is corroborated by Diodorus on Psammetichus of Egypt: Herodotus on early tyrants generally is borne out by his critic Thucydides: the later writers who have been quoted so frequently and in such numbers drew upon a great variety of sources: literary evidence is confirmed by archaeological, as for instance when a conjecture as to the “hill men” of Peisistratus that I put forward in 1906 is corroborated by an inscription that was first published just after the publication of my conjecture. When witnesses are so many and they speak on such a variety of topics and under such a variety of circumstances and to all appearances without the possibility of any common cue, the chances of collusion become remote in the extreme.

(c) _Conclusions_

But granted that the various items of evidence that we have so far collected have all a real historical value, and granted too that they lend one another a considerable amount of mutual support, there is a further line of criticism that deserves a careful consideration. The evidence may all be true and yet the inferences that have been drawn from it be false, or at least ill-balanced and misleading. Kings and tyrants have in all ages tended to be extremely rich. In most ages great riches have been indispensable for anyone aiming at great political power, and the greater the power aimed at naturally enough the greater the riches required to secure it. Admittedly the tyrants lived in a commercial age, and the influence of wealth was particularly strong. Does the evidence that has just been presented prove in reality very much more than that? Some of the statements about the men who became tyrants are indeed sufficiently explicit, as for example that about the trading of the young Psammetichus, or the wealth and workmen of the young Lucius Tarquinius, but apart from the question of their trustworthiness they are all so brief and meagre that it is impossible to be sure that we see them in the right perspective. They are not very adequate for forming any picture of the men they refer to or even of their financial position.

In short the early tyrants may have all been rich and all men of business and yet their riches and business activities may have been neither the basis nor the distinguishing feature of their rule. They arose in a many-sided age, and there were many other developments that might have conceivably brought them to the top. The doctrine of the divine right of kings had lost its hold. The struggles between the kings and the nobles had doubtless led both parties to appeal to the people, and from that it might well be no far step to the people’s appointing its own rulers. Then again there had been a revolution in the art of war. The Homeric days were over when the heavy-armed chieftain was everything and his followers a more or less useless rabble. In the new kind of warfare large bodies of trained men-at-arms counted for everything[1456]. Such a change might easily encourage a whole series of military officers to seize the supreme power. Furthermore in the case at any rate of the outlying Greek cities, and particularly those of Asia Minor[1457], the constant danger from barbarian neighbours might readily suggest the appointment of a military dictator. And we do in fact find the early tyrants described as having been previously demagogues or soldiers.

But we find also that these descriptions go back only to Aristotle and have their source in fifth and fourth century conditions. Even if they went further back, the objection just raised against the commercial explanation applies still more strongly here. Kings and rulers who govern in fact as well as in name are generally something of public speakers or soldiers. It is almost an impossibility to find a self-raised ruler who cannot be described as either a demagogue or a polemarch[1458].

Similarly with the notices about important offices of state alleged to have been held by various tyrants before they attained to supreme power. They are indeed among the most reliable items of information that we possess about the early tyrants. But their significance can be easily overrated. If ever a merchant who was aiming at the tyranny sought to strengthen his political influence by obtaining office, the record of his magistracy would be much more likely to be preserved than that of his commercial successes. When we come to the detailed evidence as presented in the previous pages the balance in favour of the commercial theory may be claimed as decisive.

If once the commercial origin of the tyrants’ power is admitted, the various facts recorded about individual tyrants certainly gain in meaning and coherence. The mercenaries, the monetary reforms and innovations, the public works, the labour legislation, the colonial policy and the commercial alliances with foreign states, which have been repeatedly found associated with the early tyrants and which give the preserved accounts of them such a distinct stamp, become far more significant if it is granted that the tyrant’s power was based on his control of the labour and trade of his city. As has been already observed, the fact that a theory explains the connexions between an obviously connected group of phenomena is no proof of its truth: but on the other hand a theory which fails to explain satisfactorily such a connexion is at an obvious disadvantage as compared with one which does. That is one further reason why the typical tyrant is not to be explained as a successful soldier or demagogue whose riches came to him suddenly at the same moment as his throne. The adventurer of either of these types might indeed further the commercial developments of the city that he had seized. It would be of course to his interest to do so. But as a general rule the man who has secured a fortune at a single stroke does not care to improve it by years of patient and organized effort. If all or any considerable number of the tyrants reviewed above had owed their positions to their sword or their tongue, there would inevitably have been some cases of commercial retrogression under the tyrannis, whereas in fact there are none.

This is a fundamental fact. The tyrants were one and all first-class business men. If they did not deliberately use their wealth to secure their position, there is only one other possible explanation of their history: their financial abilities must have led their fellow-countrymen to put them in the way of seizing the throne, and that is roughly the account of them that is to be found in some modern histories, where they are vaguely pictured as the more or less passive products of blind economic forces. This view seems to me untenable. It cannot be reconciled with the impression made by the early tyrants on writers like Aristotle. More fatal still, we have a series of “lawgivers” like Solon, who was a business man who gained his position precisely in the way just indicated. Some of Solon’s friends reproached him with his folly in not making himself tyrant. But the fact remains that no “lawgiver” of the period did so[1459], and that the titles of νομοθέτης and αἰσυμνήτης that were given these legally appointed dictators were never applied either by friends or enemies to any of the tyrants at any period of their careers[1460].

One fact has still to be explained. Different as are the views about tyrants and tyranny expressed by different ancient writers at different times they have this feature in common. All alike express their hatred of tyrannical government. For Plato the man who becomes a tyrant “is changed from a man into a wolf[1461].” When Herodotus digresses into a debate on the merits of the chief forms of government, he makes the critic of tyranny declare that there is nothing more unjust than it or more bloodthirsty in the whole world[1462]. There is no judgment from heaven on the man who lays low a tyrant. This doctrine of Theognis[1463] is perpetually preached all through Greek history. Harmodius and Aristogeiton the Athenian tyrannicides were celebrated in sculpture[1464] and in song[1465] and their names were constantly on the lips of orators[1466].

There are apparent exceptions to this attitude. The Aristotelian _Constitution of Athens_, chapter XVI., records that “the tyranny of Peisistratus was often praised as the life of the days of Kronos,” _i.e._ as the Golden Age, and the pseudo-Platonic _Hipparchus_, 229_b_, speaks of it in similar terms: (under the tyrants) “the Athenians lived much as in the days when Kronos was king.” But the Aristotelian version states also what it was that evoked this praise. “Peisistratus always secured peace and maintained quiet. Therefore his tyranny was often praised.” The phraseology of the two quotations shows that the praise was given not to the form of government, but to the peaceful life that it procured, a life that might be, and sometimes has been, associated with the most oppressive of governments.

The word tyrant appears to be Lydian, and to have been first applied among the Greeks to the rulers who followed in the steps of the Lydian Gyges, whom some ancient writers describe as the first tyrant[1467]. Originally it was used in a colourless sense as a synonym for king or monarch[1468]. It is still so used in the tragedians and frequently in Herodotus[1469]. But wherever the tyrant is spoken of in contradistinction to the king it is always in terms of detestation.

It must have been something in the character of the early tyrants that first gave the word the evil connotation, which it has preserved until this day[1470]. What that something was is not easy to determine with certainty. Much of it may be mere misrepresentation. Aristotle[1471] makes a statement about the tyrants with whom he was acquainted that is generally true of all monarchies. The tyrant, he says, “supports the people and the masses against the nobles (γνωρίμους).” We must not forget that the extant narratives represent almost exclusively the point of view of the aristocracy. It has often been suggested that this fact may account for the almost unanimous condemnation of the tyranny. But is this explanation altogether adequate? The Greek tyrant and the Roman rex are not the only monarchs who have had a bad press. The Emperors of Rome and the kings of Israel and Judah suffered likewise. Yet Jewish priests and Roman senators were not able to turn the titles of King and Emperor and Caesar into a byword and reproach. There must have been some very special circumstances to account for the universal execration of the name of tyrant. Is it not perhaps to be found in the commercial character of its origin? From the days of the Zeus-born king of Homer and long before, back to the very beginnings of leadership among men, legitimate kingship has always been held to rest upon the personal capacity of the ruler. This is the basis of belief in hereditary monarchy, or any other system that attaches great importance to birth and upbringing. It is no less the basis of much republicanism which from one point of view is merely a denial of the value of heredity and specialized political education. Men have often been ready, and with reason, to endure much from a ruler whose power is based on his personality. But there is one basis of political power that mankind has never tolerated, and that basis is mere riches. They have felt with Plato that the plutocrat as such has no right at all to rule. “He seemed to be one of the city rulers,” says Plato[1472], of the oligarch whose power is based on his wealth, “but in reality he was neither its ruler nor its servant, but merely a consumer of its stores.” Plato was here at one with his countrymen[1473]. In the fifth century, as we know from the history of the wealthy Nikias, riches did not exclude an Athenian from the highest position in the state. But neither did they constitute a claim to political power. In his famous funeral oration Pericles twice claims that at Athens poverty is no bar to a political career. Pericles is speaking of course for his own age. If the evidence collected in this book has any value, the state of things during the first four generations or so after the invention of a metal coinage was very different. Money for a while became the measure of a man, and wealth by itself brought political power.

We must beware of expecting simplicity anywhere in history[1474]. Even from the purely commercial point of view there were doubtless powerful side-currents that have left no trace in our extant records. The power of the Medici in Florence was based on their commercial supremacy. But it did not rest entirely on their actual trading. In part it was based on their position in the Papal treasury among the mercatores Romanam curiam sequentes, and in part again on the struggle between Emperor and Pope[1475]. Similar factors must have influenced the careers of Pheidon and other early tyrants of Greece. In part again these early tyrants seem to have stood for a racial movement. This was certainly the case at Sicyon, where the tyranny marked the ascendancy of the pre-Dorian population; probably also at Corinth, where the first tyrant’s father belonged to the Aeolic pre-Dorian element of the population[1476]. This racial factor is easily reconciled with the commercial, quite apart from the possibility that the pre-Dorian element that comes to the top at this period may have been closely related to the Levantine race that plays so prominent a part in Aegean commerce of the present day.

Nor must the personal element be left out of account, though so lamentably little is known about it. Cypselus and Pheidon, Peisistratus and Polycrates were certainly great personalities in their way. The leaders in any movement are generally that. On the whole they seem to have ruled well. Their government, except towards opponents and rivals, was by no means oppressive. All the more surprising therefore is their general condemnation. It is indeed scarcely possible to explain it except on the view that they ruled by right not of their personalities but of their riches. The prosperity that they brought to their cities was altogether material. The famous works of Polycrates were altogether the works of men’s hands. It is characteristic of the rule of a typical early tyrant like Periander that he encouraged the worship of Dionysus and Aphrodite at the expense of the cults of Poseidon and Apollo[1477]. No doubt his object was partly to break down the monopoly of priestly office and religious privilege that had hitherto been enjoyed by the aristocracy[1478]: but it is significant that while the tyrants’ policy meant a material advance in all directions, it meant also a materialization even of religion. That is why with a clearness of judgment that can be matched outside Greece only in Dante, the united verdict of all the Greeks utterly condemned them.

Two centuries after the expulsion of the tyrants from Athens, the city again fell under a ruler who is said to have made its material welfare his chief care, and “to have prided himself that there was much profitable trade in the city and that all enjoyed in abundance the necessaries of life.” Such according to Demochares, a nephew of Demosthenes, was the boast of Demetrius of Phaleron, and for it he is utterly condemned by Demochares as “taking pride in things that might be a source of pride to a tax-collector or an artizan.” The condemnation is quoted by Polybius as “no common charge[1479].” Polybius plainly regards it as particularly damning, for he quotes it _à propos_ of certain monstrous charges that were current about Demochares to prove that Demetrius must have refrained from supporting them for lack of evidence and not from lack of ill-will. Demochares and Polybius are a long step from the early tyrants: but both in a sense belong to the period that followed the tyrants’ fall. Their views about Demetrius and his materialistic policy may well be an inheritance from an earlier age.

The age of the tyrants lasted for little more than five generations, and never so long as that in any one city[1480]. This fact may have some consolation for those who fear a modern tyranny of wealth, and offers perhaps an analogy for the observations of H. G. Wells on the transitory character of the modern financial boss[1481]. The determination not to be permanently governed by mere wealth is as strong to-day as it was twenty-five centuries ago. “The loathing of capital with which our labouring classes to-day are growing more and more infected” is explained by William James[1482] as “largely composed of this sound sentiment of antipathy for lives based on mere having.” He contrasts[1483] the “military and aristocratic” ideal of the “well-born man without possessions.”

It is of course particularly hard to test the scorn of possessions of a class that can always help itself to them at a crisis, and, as William James himself admits, the ideal has always been “hideously corrupted[1484].” Certainly at the present day the antipathies between aristocracy and militarism and capitalism are, to say the least of it, not particularly marked. It is the democracy that loathes capitalism. But this may be merely a phase. The anti-capitalist movement may end by labour becoming fatally materialised or fatally impoverished, and in any country where that happens the way will be open for a new Peisistratus.

Appendix A (to p. 37). _The supposed Agricultural and Northern Diakria._

[Sidenote: (A) The farming population took little part in politics,]

The agricultural or pastoral explanation of the party that supported Peisistratus has no inherent probability[1485]. Of course if it was specifically stated on good authority that in his days people of either of these two classes played the decisive part in politics, objections would be silenced. But the ancient evidence points all the other way. Aristotle repeatedly states that of all people farmers and herdsmen are least prone to support revolutions[1486], and definitely pictures these two classes as having played an entirely passive part both under the regime of the early tyrants and during its establishment[1487]. When on the throne Peisistratus gave financial help to impoverished farmers[1488], a fact that is brought by Grundy[1489] into connexion with his supposed agricultural Diakrioi. But in doing so Grundy disregards some of the words that he himself quotes, which show that the tyrant is dealing not with his supporters but with a body of men who were not interested in politics but threatened to become so if driven off the land. Geographically there is nothing to connect with the Diakria the men whom Peisistratus thus relieved. In his earlier days the most distressed and discontented part of the agricultural population were the pelatai and hektemoroi[1490] who worked the lands of the rich[1491] and therefore presumably lived in the Plain.

According to the _Constitution of Athens_ the hill men were made up largely of people not of pure race, whose claim to citizenship was more than doubtful[1492]. Such a description is singularly inapplicable to the people on the land in Attica, where in the fifth century they still prided themselves on having an undisturbed autochthonous population. Plutarch speaks of the hill men as a “mob of hirelings[1493].” In the days just after Solon shepherds and small farmers of the hektemor class may have been hirelings, but they can hardly have ever been a mob.

There is therefore little to be said for the attempt to identify the hill men with the shepherds and hypothetical farmers of Mount Parnes. We cannot even be certain that the latter ever existed.

The soil of Attica was notoriously poor, abounding in stony districts (φελλεῖς) useful only for pasture[1494]. Attica claimed to be the land not of corn but of the olive. Demeter had her seat not in the great plain of Attica, but in the small and much more fertile plain of Eleusis.

[Sidenote: and lived but little on the mountains,]

None of the champions of an agricultural hill party dwelling on Mount Parnes seems to have seriously enquired into the upper limit of cultivation with wheat on the mountains of Attica. The only ancient writers who talk of agriculture being carried on there are the writer of the Aristotelian _Constitution of Athens_ and Statius.

The former[1495] tells the story of the man with the farm on Hymettus (τὸν ἐν τῷ Ὑμηττῷ γεωργοῦντα). The story says nothing about the frequency of farms on Hymettus or of the height up the hillside of this particular farm. But it does say something about the soil and the crops. The soil consisted of stones, the crops, so the farmer told Peisistratus, were “troubles and sorrows.” This hardly suggests that in the days of the tyranny Hymettus was of any great importance agriculturally. The same conclusion is suggested by the story of the clever Pelasgians who succeeded in cultivating the land at the foot of Hymettus, much to the surprise of the Athenians[1496].

Statius[1497] speaks of the ploughmen of fragrant Hymettus (olentis arator Hymetti), and the vineyards of Parnes (Parnesque benignus uitibus). The former is almost a contradiction in terms. Fragrant is an allusion to the famous honey of Hymettus, or to the thyme that produced it[1498]. Thyme and honey do not go with cornfields. A “Parnes kindly to vines” is not easily reconciled with Pausanias, who makes the mountain a good hunting-place for bears and wild boars[1499]. Plato declares that in his days some of the Attic mountains were barren except for their yield of honey[1500], whereas once they had been covered with forests[1501], some of which had only recently been cut down. The fame of the honey of Hymettus went so far back, that the mountain was claimed as the place where bees were first created[1502]. Aristotle divides bees according to whether their haunts are cultivated (ἥμερα) or mountainous (ὀρεινά). The latter are described in the next sentence as haunting the forests (ὑλονόμοι)[1503].

[Sidenote: which were occupied by forests and wild beasts.]

At the present day the Attic mountains are scarcely cultivated at all[1504], and though in ancient Attica cultivation may have been more intense, yet apart from the difficulties of carrying it up the mountain side, the whole scheme of life presupposes vast supplies of timber for shipbuilding, fuel, and countless other purposes. Bursian is probably right when he says that in antiquity Parnes was “thickly covered with forest in which numerous beasts found shelter, including wild boars and bears[1505].” During the period of Athens’ greatness, between 550 and 350 B.C., the supply of timber must have been constantly diminishing. Yet towards the end of the fifth century the charcoal-burners had their centre at Acharnae, below the southern slopes of Parnes, only about seven or eight miles from Athens. Thucydides excludes Acharnae from the plain[1506], and we must infer that it was not then the land of corn and vines that it is now. If not forest it was waste. If the land round Acharnae had not been claimed for farming, it is hardly likely that farmers abounded higher up[1507].

The same inference is suggested by a passage of Xenophon which implies that corn could not be grown in the mining district, which is distinctly hilly but does not reach anything like the height of Pentelicon, Hymettus, or Parnes, “and there is also land which when sown does not bear fruit, but being mined supports a population many times larger than it would if it was producing corn: and its argentiferous character is plainly due to Providence,” etc.[1508].

Then again frequent mention is made in ancient Attic documents of “boundary estates” and these are explained by the scholiast to Aeschines as “lands on the border of the country, extending either to the mountains or the sea[1509].” Such a definition implies that the mountains were almost as unused to cultivation as the sea itself. In Italy too the limit of cultivation of wheat seems to have been low. Latin writers repeatedly contrast the forest-clad mountains with the arable lowlands, and in some cases the mountains that these writers have in mind are considerably lower than the heights of Parnes[1510].

[Sidenote: (B) The case for a North-east “Hill Country” rests on
misreadings or misinterpretations of ancient authorities.]

Enough has been said to show how little reason there is for picturing the mountains of North and East Attica in the days of Peisistratus as the home of a large and active agricultural population. It remains for us to examine the evidence for thinking that this district was known as the “Hill Country.” We shall find that if possible it is flimsier still. The supporters of the prevailing view base their case mainly on the definition of the Diakria found in the printed editions of Hesychius. This definition is the main source of all existing misconceptions. It is necessary therefore to examine it. The words of Hesychius as generally quoted are these. “Diakrieis: not only certain of the Euboeans but also of the Athenians: also a place (τόπος) in Attica: the Diakria is the land from Parnes to Brauron.” The modern name for the hills at Brauron is Περάτι (End), which seems at first sight to harmonize well with the definition of the Diakria just quoted. But if we examine any good map of Attica, we see that Περάτι does not end the Southern extension of Parnes; it forms the North-east extremity of the hills of South Attica. That is a first difficulty. It is at least unusual to define the limits of a district by places beyond those limits. We do not say that Germany extends from Tilsit to Verviers.

The second objection is far more serious. It is that the MSS. say nothing of Brauron. The word they give is Balylon (εἰς Βαλυλωνος, _sic_). This was emended by Aldus to Babylon. Brauron is a conjecture of Palmerius, and by no means a certain one. In Byzantine times the familiar Babylon (pronounced Vavylon) would indeed be a very natural corruption for the then obscure Brauron (pronounced Vrafron). The MS. Balylon is not nearly so likely to be a phonetic corruption of Brauron. It might conceivably be an orthographic corruption of Aulon, a place or region in the mining district in the extreme South of Attica[1511]. The εἰς with the genitive of the MS. suggests however some more complete corruption[1512].

But even if the reading “to Brauron (εἰς Βραυρῶνα)” were certain, Hesychius would still be a doubtful authority on this point. His definition of the “Coast” runs thus: “the Coast: Attica, whence also the ship Paralos (ἡ παραλία· ἡ Ἀττική, ἔνθεν καὶ ἡ ναῦς πάραλος).” This presumably means that the Coast was a synonym for Attica, the coastland _par excellence_. Such a definition might be supported by philological connexions between Ἀττική and ἀκτή[1513]. Conceivably with ἡ Ἀττική we should understand not γῆ but παραλία: the Coast means _par excellence_ the Attic coast (compare the modern “Riviera”). This interpretation is supported by our author’s definition of the men of the coast (οἱ παράλιοι), which runs “those who occupy the coast of Attica.” Neither interpretation vindicates Hesychius as an authority on the triple division of Attica. He makes no mention of the Plain.

Modern writers, it is true, give the word “coast” (παραλία) a conventional meaning and confine it to the Southern apex of the Attic triangle, the district of Attica that has the largest proportion of coast to interior[1514]. Their view has one fact in its favour. After the expulsion of the tyrants, when Cleisthenes set himself to break up the old local political parties, the whole of this Southern apex was included among the “coast” trittyes or (th)ridings of his new triple division of the whole country. But there are indications that the inclusion of this whole district in the coast was never anything but an artificial arrangement[1515] to prevent either of the other two divisions from overbalancing the coast[1516]. The Cleisthenic coast was of course not confined to this Southern apex. The moderns who imagine this restricted use base their assumption on a misunderstanding of their authorities. They quote Thucydides II. 55, where in reference to a Peloponnesian raid on Southern Attica he speaks of “the so-called coast land.” But the precise words of Thucydides show that the ravages were confined to the coast[1517], while inscriptions and passages in other writers prove that the name “coast” was not confined to the Southern apex of Attica but was normally applied to the whole Attic seaboard[1518]. When Thucydides uses the expression “what is called the coast land” he need not be taken as meaning that the name “coast” in Attica was used as a synonym for what Herodotus calls the Sunium Heights[1519]. Very possibly he is commenting rather on the fact that the Attic coast was called by the poetical name πάραλος γῆ, παραλία (the land of the brine) instead of the good fifth century prose word παραθαλάσσιος, ἐπιθαλάσσιος (the land by the sea). He himself uses ἐπιθαλάσσιος in the very next chapter for the coast land of the Peloponnese[1520].

Another text which has been thought[1521] to establish a Northern or North-Eastern Diakria and a Southern Paralia is a fragment of Sophocles[1522] in which the mythical king Pandion divides Attica between his three sons. Two scholia of Aristophanes[1523] and a notice in Suidas[1524] equate the North-Eastern of these divisions with the Diakria. But against this equation must be set that of Stephanus Byzantinus[1525], who says that the Diakria fell to the son who received according to Sophocles the Southern division.

Appendix B (to p. 168). _The Date of the Argive-Aeginetan Embargo on
Attic Pottery_

The outstanding facts in the history of Attic pottery are these. During the dark ages Attic pottery takes perhaps the foremost place in the whole of Greece Proper. The dominant ware of this period is of a well defined style generally known as Geometric, of which the Attic “Dipylon” ware (fig. 43) is a superior and well represented variety[1526], that appears to have been in considerable request beyond the borders of Attica[1527]. The period of eclipse for Attic pottery is the seventh century and the beginning of the sixth. During this period oriental influences made themselves felt in all Greek arts and crafts. In Greece Proper the dominant pottery of the period is the Corinthian (figs. 22, 34), and another ware that began somewhat earlier but largely overlapped it, generally known as Proto-Corinthian (fig. 44). These two fabrics flooded most of Greece as well as Sicily and Italy, and are found in abundance in many Greek cities of the East. But in Attica Dipylon ware seems to have held the market well into the seventh century[1528], and to have been followed by the vases known as Proto-Attic and Phaleron[1529], which occupy only a humble place in the ceramic history of the period[1530]. Then in the first half of the sixth century Attica developed its famous Black Figure style (fig. 41), that quickly drove all competitors out of the market.