Tragic Tyranny

90 Chapter 5 Tragic Tyranny Th ere has been some interest in comparing or combining the tyrant of Greek tragedy with the picture of the absolute autocrat to be found in historical and literary texts, notably the monarch described in Herodotus’ famous Persian debate on forms of government and the tyrant described by Plato in the Republic . But there is much still to be said. Th is is partly because the division of intellectual labour has meant that the interpreters of tragedy have not been suffi ciently historical, and the historians have not shown much understanding of tragedy. A recent book that can call itself Die politische Kunst der griechischen Tragödie , by Christian Meier, has nothing of interest to say about tyranny and contains not a single refer- ence to tyranny outside the tragic texts. Th e still more recent collection of twenty- nine essays entitled Tragedy and the Tragic , including one by me, does not contain ‘tyrant’ or ‘tyranny’ in the index, though it does of course contain ‘hero’. 1 One exception is George Th omson’s ( 1932 ) pioneering work on the Prometheus Bound , and another is Bernard Knox ( 1957 ) on the Oedipus Tyrannus . But Knox’s work seems to me to be misconceived, as I will go on to explain. Th e discussion that best transcends the division between history and literature is by Diego Lanza ( 1977 ), but even that fails to do justice to the theme. 2 A small portion of the blame for this interpretative blind spot can be ascribed to Nietzsche , who in Th e Birth of Tragedy explicitly excluded the sociopolitical from tragedy, and another small portion to Aristotle , who in his Poetics implicitly excluded it. 3 Th is exclusion makes it easier for Aristotle to concentrate on the similarity between tragedy and Homer , 1 Silk 1996 . 2 He does cover the greed and impiety of the tyrant but not the themes on which I focus: money, abuse of ritual and kin- killing, with concomitant isolation. See also e.g. Funke 1966 ; Cerri 1982 : 137– 55; Vernant 1982a : 19– 38; Saïd 1985 ; and most recently Barceló 1993 ; Giorgini 1993 ; and the interesting remarks in McGlew 1993 : 190– 206. 3 See Hall 1996 . 90 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Warwick, on 10 Nov 2020 at 13:11:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316761588.006 91 5 Tragic Tyranny 91 in which he is at one with some ancient anecdote and much modern criticism.4 But the Homeric monarch could hardly be more diff erent from the tragic tyrant. Suffi ce it to say here that the tyrannical practices that I will show to be interconnected [96 ] and central to tragedy – killing family, abuse of ritual , power through money – are almost entirely absent from Homer. Another way literary critics have of failing to understand the tragic tyrant is to imagine that he somehow embodies the community/ polis and that his destruction or exile is somehow a disaster for the community/ polis. Th is preconception I will illustrate in my discussion of Antigone and Bacchae . For the Athenians the tyrant did not embody the polis. Tragedy refl ects, among other things, the Athenian experience of, and continuing pre- occupation with, tyranny. Th eir attitude to it was generally hostile and at best ambivalent. Further, projected onto the extreme fi gure of the tragic tyrant may be anxiety at the general tendency towards the autonomisation, notably through money, of the individual. I must emphasis at the outset that my concern is largely with representations of tyranny in various texts rather than with what the tyrants actually did. Th ree Tyrannical Characteristics Among the typical characteristics of the tyrant are impiety , distrust of his close associates (philoi ) and greed. I begin by defi ning each of these characteristics more narrowly, relating each of them directly to the obtaining and maintaining of tyrannical power. Th is point can be illustrated from the rise and fall of Polykrates, tyrant of Samos in the sixth century. In an account preserved by Polyaenus , Polykrates seized power during a sacrifi ce for the whole people (πάνδημος ) at the temple of Hera, which was preceded by an armed procession. He collected as many arms as the festival provided a pretext for and instructed his brothers Syloson and Pantagnostos to take part in the procession. After the procession, with the Samians about to sacrifi ce, most men laid aside their arms by the altars as they attended to libations and prayers. But those who formed a coherent group around Syloson and Pantagnostos retained their arms and killed everybody. 5 Herodotus (3.39 ) adds that Polykrates then divided up the polis with Syloson and Pantagnostos but subsequently exiled the former, killed the latter and controlled the whole island himself. He was eventually 4 Seaford 1994b : 275. 5 Polyaenus, Strat . 1.23. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Warwick, on 10 Nov 2020 at 13:11:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316761588.006 92 92 Tragedy, Ritual and Money in Ancient Greece lured to his death by the governor of Sardis, who, according to Herodotus, promised him ‘enough money to get control of the whole of Greece’. Polykrates accepted, says Herodotus, because he used to desire money greatly. 6 His tyranny coincided in fact with the early and rapid develop- ment in the Aegean of an especially convenient form of money, coinage , and Polykrates himself certainly produced coins. One use of the [ 97 ] coins might have been to pay the numerous mercenary soldiers mentioned by Herodotus. 7 Th e typical characteristics of the tyrant are generally represented, in Herodotus, 8 Plato and elsewhere, as if they were defects of character. But what we can see in the case of Polykrates is that his impiety, distrust of philoi , and greed all belong to the logic of obtaining and maintaining tyrannical power . We can defi ne each of them more narrowly. His impiety is specifi cally the use (or rather abuse) of ritual to obtain power. His distrust of philoi takes the extreme form of exiling or killing family, his brothers, whose close relationship had qualifi ed them to be trusty associates in the coup, with the result that they become associates in power and so obstacles to Polykrates’ absolute power. 9 Th e claims of family, as of the sacred, are annulled by the individual desire for power that depends on violence – and on money, for his greed for precious metal money is not simply the vice of greed but, more specifi cally, the desire for the means of tyrannical power. All three of our tyrannical characteristics are not therefore just defects of character but instruments of power. It is moreover important to see the interconnections between the distrust of philoi and the greed. Control over the relatively new phenom- enon of money allows the tyrant to dispense with the ancient principles of solidarity through kinship and of reciprocity , for he is able to create his following by paying them. Of course, paying mercenaries involves reciprocity in the broad sense that the mercenaries fi ght in return for pay. But if we look at the means of creating a following in Homer, we do not fi nd money, which (on any sensible defi nition of money) does not exist in Homer. We do not indeed fi nd any single thing binding the Homeric 6 3.123.1 ἱμείρετο γὰρ χρημάτων μεγάλως . See also Diod. Sic. 10.16.4. 7 3.45.3 ἐπικουροί τε μισθωτοὶ καὶ τοξόται οἰκήιοι ἦσαν πλήθει πολλοί (‘there were numerous paid auxiliaries and native archers’); also 3.54.2. Herodotus also recounts a ‘silly story’ (3.56.2) that Polykrates bought off an invading force of Spartans with gilded lead coins. Polykrates also attracted the doctor Demokedes by off ering him a larger salary (two talents) than that off ered by the Aeginetans (one talent) and the Athenians (100 minas) (Hdt. 3.131). 8 On the complex representation of tyranny by Herodotus see Dewald 2003 . 9 Cf. esp. Eur. fr. 605; Arist. Pol . 1312b9– 17. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Warwick, on 10 Nov 2020 at 13:11:21, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316761588.006 93 5 Tragic Tyranny 93 leader to followers but a range of factors that include his accepted right to redistribute booty, his charisma, his martial prowess, his interpersonal relationships with his followers and his ability to lead, all of them creating a sense of gratitude or indebtedness among his followers. 10 What the mercenaries value, on the other hand, is the objective power of a single thing, money. Th e presence and interconnection of our three specifi c tyrannical practices – abuse of the sacred, killing family and power through money – can be found in various historical and philosophical texts. Herodotus said that Periander the tyrant of Korinth killed his wife, Melissa, and suff ered in consequence the hostility of his son, but also sent to his dead wife the clothes of all the women of Korinth by telling them to come to the temple of Hera. When [ 98 ] they came in their best clothes ‘as if for a festival’, he had them all stripped. 11 Th e festival is used to despoil the citizens.

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