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The Tyranny of Dictatorship : When the Greek Tyrant Met the Andreas Kalyvas Political Theory 2007 35: 412 DOI: 10.1177/0090591707302208

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Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at KNOX COLLEGE on April 25, 2011 Political Theory Volume 35 Number 4 August 2007 412-442 © 2007 Sage Publications The Tyranny of Dictatorship 10.1177/0090591707302208 http://ptx.sagepub.com When the Greek Tyrant Met the hosted at http://online.sagepub.com Roman Dictator Andreas Kalyvas New School for Social Research

The article examines the inaugural encounter of the Greek theory of tyranny and the Roman institution of dictatorship. Although the twentieth century is credited for fusing the tyrant and the dictator into one figure/concept, I trace the origins of this conceptual synthesis in a much earlier historical period, that of the later and the early , and in the writings of two Greek historians of , Dionysius of Halicarnassus and of . In their histories, the traditional interest in the relationship between the king and the tyrant is displaced by a new curiosity about the tyrant and the dictator. The two historians placed the two figures alongside one another and found them to be almost identical, blurring any previous empirical, analytical, or normative distinctions. In their Greco-Roman synthesis dictatorship is re-described as ‘temporary tyranny by consent’ and the tyrant as a ‘permanent dictator.’ Dictatorship, a venerated republican magistracy, the ultimate guardian of the , is for the first time radically reinterpreted and explicitly questioned. It meets its first critics.

Keywords: Dionysius; Appian; tyranny; dictatorship; Athens; Rome; democracy; republicanism

or most of the twentieth century the concepts of dictatorship and tyranny F were treated as synonyms, two names for one form of autocratic politi- cal rule. “Dictatorship,” Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw wrote in 1934, “is the form of government the Greeks have very correctly connoted with the term ‘tyranny.’”1 The dictator and the tyrant were fused together in a single figure, that of illegality, violence, and arbitrariness, and perceived as a common threat to political freedom, constitutionalism, and the rule of law,2 a threat the

Author’s Note: I am grateful to Andrew Arato, Melvin Richter, Dmitri Nikoulin, Vassilis Lambropoulos, and Mary Dietz for their advice and insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Nadia Urbinati, Jason Frank, Gerasimos Karavitis, Ann Kornhauser, Claudio Lopez-Guerra, Jim Miller, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive suggestions and criticisms.

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ancients had formulated as political enslavement. Accordingly, throughout the century, this conceptual identification provided normative resources to those who opposed the modern revival of dictatorship. Denunciations of the many forms of dictatorship, both of the Right and the Left, which emerged over the course of the last century as modern manifestations of tyranny mobilized repeatedly these resources.3 The equation of dictatorship and tyranny is not, however, unique to the twentieth century. It appeared as well in a preceding historical period in the shifting political context of the revolutionary upheavals of Europe and its overseas colonies and the decline of the monarchical order.4 Claude Nicolet rightly observes that “since the eighteenth century,” the term dictatorship “has served to refer to despotisms or tyrannies—in other words, essentially pow- ers which are far from having been regularly conferred, and instead had been usurped through force or deceit.”5 The conceptual marriage of the dictator and the tyrant coincided with the radical transformation of Western society and politics in the age of the modern democratic revolutions, legal rational- ization, the gradual inclusion of new groups into the terrain of formal politics, and the successive attempts to institutionally resuscitate Roman dictatorship by such figures as Cromwell, the Jacobins, and Napoleon.6 Nicolet’s narrative accurately captures the modern blending of the two terms and correctly relocates it within the broader historical movement and diffusion of republicanism.7 But his story is incomplete. It disregards a still earlier moment in Western political history when the dictator began to look dangerously like a tyrant. In the turbulent transitional period between the Roman republic and the Principate, and , and their struggle for supreme power gravely tested the institution of dictatorship.8 The ‘abuse’ of this emergency institution, its exercise outside the limits delineated by the established legal framework, its appropriation for the advancement of per- sonal ambitions, and even its use against the republic itself, prompted a pro- found reconsideration of its nature, function, and value. Two Greek historians of the early and high Imperial periods, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (60 BC-after 7 BC) and Appian of Alexandria (95-165 AC) undertook such a radical reassessment.9 While most of the and ‘republican historians’ cherished the memory of the republic and its institutions, among which dictatorship was held in the highest esteem, the writings of the two Greek narrators followed a different path.10 Their his- tories suggest a fresh reconsideration of this emergency magistracy, which they carried out by utilizing concepts and methods borrowed from the classical Greek tradition.11 In their Greco-Roman synthesis dictatorship is re-described as ‘temporary tyranny by consent’ and the tyrant as a ‘permanent

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dictator.’ This historical and conceptual revisionism inaugurated a compar- ative study of the Roman institution of dictatorship and Greek theories of tyranny with some crucial implications. Dionysius and Appian’s Greek histories of Rome include a critical re-examination of dictatorship insofar as they interrogate its very capacity to preserve the constitutional order.12 Was the abuse of Roman dictatorship accidental, the effect of moral decline, or the result of its own unruly nature? As their works raise this question, it seems the two historians were not only engaged in the rewriting of Roman history or in a conceptual revision of classical concepts; they were also involved in a critical debate about the institution of dictatorship as such. It is likely that Marcus Antonius’ law that officially abolished dictatorship in 44 BC (the Lex Antonia de dictatura in perpetuum tollenda) sparked this debate.13 It was rekindled when two decades later, the senate and the people sought to revive the institution by twice offering the Dictatorate, which he declined.14 More impor- tantly, their histories challenged the republican regime as a whole, directly implicating it in its own collapse.15 Unlike and who ascribed the fall of the republic to various external causes and their corrupt effects,16 Dionysius and Appian’s diagnoses suggested the preponderance of internal reasons for the inherent instability, decline, and ultimately fall of the Roman republic. Their histories, for the first time, radically reinterpreted and explicitly questioned dictatorship. This venerated republican magis- tracy, the ultimate guardian of the Roman constitution, met its first critics. Certainly, I am not suggesting to oppose Dionysius and Appian against more renowned and influential historians of their times in the name of some objective, ‘true’ factual attributes of the Roman institution of dictatorship. Rather, I seek to revisit the incipient discursive encounter between tyranny and dictatorship. In particular, I examine how the two concepts gradually came to be associated with new meanings as they were increasingly fused. I consider Dionysius and Appian’s unprecedented equation by focusing on the historical narratives, conceptual translations, and theoretical arguments that permitted the identification of the two terms. It is, however, the nor- mative implications of this encounter that I find intriguing and which have not hitherto been adequately appreciated politically or illuminated inter- pretatively. By identifying the Roman dictator with the Greek tyrant, Dionysius and Appian introduced a new understanding of emergency pow- ers, directly challenging inherited political views and philosophical beliefs. As I see it, the two Greek historians inaugurated a radical conceptual trans- formation in the language of classical politics. With a different political history invested with new meanings and values and brought inside the

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broader category of tyranny, dictatorship acquired a polyvalence and ambi- guity that it originally lacked and which came to characterize the tyranni- cal depiction of the modern dictator. Part one of this essay recreates the intellectual background that preceded Dionysius and Appian’s synthesis in order to underscore the novelty of their respective approaches. To associate the dictator and the tyrant was not the most obvious thing to do at the time. Rather, the norm was to consider tyranny a corrupted form of monarchy, a pathological outgrowth of royal power perverted by unjust kings.17 Thus, the tyrant was primarily a bad king (µοχθηρο′ςβασlλεν′ς / regis injusti).18 In this context, Dionysius and Appian’s historical writings represent a decisive shift in the history of polit- ical concepts. Parts two and three discuss how Dionysius and Appian dis- placed the traditional interest in the relationship between the king and the tyrant with a new curiosity about the tyrant and the dictator. The two Greek historians found the tyrant and the dictator to be almost identical, thereby blurring previous empirical, analytical, and normative distinctions between them.19 This blurring entailed as well a serious reworking of the classical theories of tyranny and a departure from more canonical definitions. Part four explores some of the implications resulting from the equation of the tyrant and the dictator, including the possibility that the downfall of the Republic may have been the fatal result of particular constitutional choices and institutional flaws. Crucially, Dionysius and Appian demythologized the institution of dictatorship, dispelling its republican aura. From a more general point of view, their approaches recast the relationship of Athenian democracy and the Roman republic, indicating a key difference between the two regimes that could potentially contribute to current debates on executive emergency powers and constitutional dictatorship in liberal democratic states.

The King, the Dictator, and the Tyrant

Livy offers a historically influential account of the origins of dictator- ship.20 In 501 BC, a few years after the deposition and exile of the king Tarquinius Superbus and in the face of external dangers caused by the aggression of neighboring tribes, a dictator was appointed for the first time by means of a lex dictatore creando.21 Although his appointment appears to have been constitutional in accordance with certain established rules and procedures, his public display generated a “great fear” among the . Their sudden dread at the sheer sight of dictatorial power, a power beyond

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appeal at the time and not subject to countervailing checks, rendered them obedient while at the same time subduing their enemies and protect- ing the nascent republic.22 Aside from the element of fear and the powerful effects of docility that both dictatorship and tyranny seemed to produce, Livy’s narrative does not suggest other similarities. This absence is not surprising. From the first moment of encounter of the two concepts in late antiquity as Rome expanded eastwards around the time of the Punic wars and the tyrant was brought into the republican language of politics and literature, we find a clear conceptual division of labor.23 The tyrant occupied a fixed, well- defined position in the Roman imaginary, plainly and unambiguously dis- tinguished from the dictator. They marked dissimilar forms of political rule, carrying contrasting, even antithetical meanings. The dictator denoted a legal and regular though extraordinary magistracy intended to protect the public good in moments of crisis and danger; tyranny designated an unjust and violent power, the destruction of the common interest, and the down- fall of legality and freedom. The many differences that set them apart were, in fact, too obvious and dramatic to have been ignored. Dictatorship was a constitutional office appointed legally through the cooperation of the higher republican author- ities and according to “what the law commanded.”24 The tyrant acquired his power extra-constitutionally, through force, deceit, and the violent over- throw of the established regime.25 Moreover, the dictator had a concrete task, the elimination of threats during a crisis and a return to the status quo ante bellum. Although the salvation and re-establishment of the constitution was the strict commission of the dictator, no such authorization existed for the tyrant whose acts were arbitrary and indeterminate, directed toward the satisfaction of his selfish desires and private interests.26 The dictator’s actions were generally considered to be inspired by a strong civic commit- ment to the public good, a real manifestation of the patriotic attachment of the republican citizen. He was the guardian of the republican order; the tyrant its usurper. In short, the dictator was a servant who defended what the tyrant aspired to acquire and destroy. The contrasts proliferate. Most significantly perhaps, the institution of dictatorship was temporally bound.27 The dictator’s rule could never exceed a six-month period and upon the successful completion of his assignment he had to abdicate.28 Tyranny, however, entailed an attempt to seize control of a government in order to hold it indefinitely. Whereas the dictator sus- pended the constitution or parts of it for a limited period, the tyrant did so for an unspecified period, normalizing his rule and endeavoring to habituate

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the people to it.29 Dictatorship was exceptional and provisional; tyranny “unnatural” but permanent.30 Because the dictator lacked the legislative powers that the tyrant simply usurped he could not modify, alter, or abolish the established constitutional structure but only suspend it. Thus, while the dictator appealed to the exception to uphold the norm, the tyrant attempted to normalize the exception. Finally, Roman dictatorship was not itself a form of government, but rather an institutional component of a broader republican regime. Tyranny by contrast was generally treated as a regime-type of its own, albeit a perversion and a deviation of the just forms of political rule. The ancient Romans knew these distinctions, which might have had some bearing on their historical inquiries and on how they understood their institutions. However, there were some telling similarities between dicta- torship and tyranny that could not have escaped notice. For example, dicta- torship and tyranny were both closely associated with regal rule and in particular with its stronger personalistic and autocratic versions. In the writ- ings of the and this affinity is reflected in the intimate and privileged relationship both concepts enjoyed with kingship.31 There is here, however, a slight but indicative divergence between the Roman philosopher and the Greek historian. Although Cicero, like Polybius, considered tyranny as a perverted form of monarchy, he also thought that dictatorship, a decisive higher authority with a plenitude of power to over- come the forces of dissolution, rescued the best monarchy had to offer, “for safety prevails over caprice.”32 Cicero commended the survival of monar- chical powers (especially those necessary for war or civil discord) in the institution and practice of dictatorship.33 For him, dictatorship appeared as a remnant of monarchy, a necessary but temporary retreat to royal powers, and an advantageous return to the deposed form of personalistic rule.34 In cases of emergency, the King’s regal authority was revived, so as to set aside the limitations imposed by the collegiate arrangement, the mixed character of the republic, and by the special curtailments of jurisdiction. For Polybius, however, the monarchical derivation of tyranny primarily explained the vicious excesses of the former. In his famous cyclical theory of regime change, Polybius described how the absolute power of kingship necessarily degenerates into tyranny, that is, into the ruler’s instrument for the limitless pursuit of his lawless pleasures and passions.35 Although Cicero agreed with Polybius’ views on the immanent threat of corruption, he also acknowledged the best of monarchy. The ideal of kingship is realized, but, paradoxically, only briefly and provisionally, that is, dictatorially. For Polybius, however, tyranny represented the worst of monarchy, a natural deviation from the right form and a necessary slip into lawlessness.

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It would be wrong to underestimate the difference between dictatorship and tyranny as it emerges out of the contrasting figures of the dictator as the good, temporary king and the tyrant as an unjust, corrupted monarch. However, even though Cicero’s understanding of dictatorship contains positive elements of monarchy while Polybius’ concept of tyranny embodies its negative aspects, both conceptualizations reveal a close affinity with regal ε′ρωτα power, or. what Dio Cassius described as “a love for monarchy” ( µοναρχιας).36 This affinity between dictatorship and kingship recalls ear- lier classical Greek explorations into the nature of tyranny, suggesting cer- tain similarities between dictatorship and tyranny. One similarity is a common claim to supreme power (κυ′ ριος πα′ντων /majus ) once held by a legitimate monarch.37 In this view, the supreme power over the life and death of their subjects, a power without , characterize both dictatorship and tyranny. This autocratic form of power also suggests another similarity between the two concepts regarding their indeterminate and tense relation with the established legal order and their alarming prox- imity to anomie.38 After all, the Romans drew a thin line separating the king from the tyrant in relation to whether a king ruled by law or according to his desires, and it was recognized in the force of corruption to transform kings into tyrants. It is not surprising, therefore, that the dreadful incidents of Sulla (82-79 BC) and Caesar (49 BC, 48-47 BC, 46-45 BC, 45-44 BC) would finally draw attention to these similarities, inviting a serious reexamination of dic- tatorship. Dionysius seems to have been the first to undertake such a revi- sion, and Appian the second.39 Dionysius, a contemporary of Livy, wrote his at the conclusion of a tumultuous, transitional period between the late Republic, its fall, and the consolidation of imperial monar- chy. His Roman Antiquities, consisting of 20 books, began to appear in 7 BC, approximately two decades after his permanent move to Rome, at a moment when the problem of dictatorship was again a topical issue, acquir- ing a new historical and political salience perhaps through the ambiguous legacy of Cicero’s late writings on Caesar and Antonius.40 Unlike most of his fellow historians, Dionysius developed a distinct understanding of dic- tatorship, proposed a new history of its origin and evolution, and pro- foundly reassessed its involvement in the fall of the republic. Appian closely followed and further developed Dionysius’ approach on dictatorship although he completed his Roman History one century and a half later, around 162 AD in a mature and relatively stable imperial order. From the vantage point of a consolidated imperial monarchy, Appian looked back at the instability of the republic and linked dictatorship to a

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series of disruptive and violent civic conflicts that brought about the col- lapse of the res publica. As an emergency magistracy, dictatorship played a decisive role in the republic’s slow and painful descent into discord and dis- order.41 Its direct interventions in the politics of social conflict enjoy a prominent place in Appian’s depiction of the gradual dissolution and ulti- mate death of republican institutions. With Appian, dictatorship remained where Dionysius had relegated it, fallen from its previously lofty constitu- tional position and irremediably tainted by its association with tyranny.

Dionysius and the Elective Tyranny of Dictatorship

Dionysius’ account of the historical origins of the first dictatorship dif- fered sharply from and even at times contradicted Livy’s.42 Several exam- ples illustrate this divergence. First, Dionysius located its birth three years later than Livy, in 498 BC. More importantly, he underplayed the influence of external factors in the creation of this emergency institution that were central in Livy’s account. Dionysius’ narrative stressed almost exclusively the central role of domestic politics.43 It depicted a fragile nascent republi- can order struggling for balance and stability. A highly polarized society, fractured by the problem of the debts, shaken by popular unrest, and threat- ened by civic discord between the patricians and the plebeians, challenged this quest for survival. In this immediate volatile post-monarchical context, Dionysius firmly located the republican genesis of dictatorship at a critical, foundational junction amidst fierce debates over the political identity of the republic, the distribution of freedoms and protections of the different orders, and the shape of its constitutive norms and rules. Dionysius identifies as the main reason behind the establishment of dic- tatorship a law proposed by the consul Publius Valerius (Publicola) and rat- ified by the people. This law sparked a quarrel that further inflamed the conflict between the two orders on the question of debts, endangering the incipient republic.44 Publicola’s law strengthened considerably the position of the plebeians by granting the right to appeal (ius provocationis) to Roman citizens, proposing that no Roman should be punished without a trial. This law made it illegal for a magistrate to put a citizen to death without a trial before a popular court, that is, before one’s peers (provocation ad popu- lum).45 The right to appeal was thus established as a protection of the ple- beians against the political and social predominance of the patricians in the republic.46 Defendants could now appeal the judgment of the consuls to the people and its assemblies,47 an innovation both Livy and Cicero recognized

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as “the unique defense of liberty.”48 Nevertheless, as Dionysius bluntly reports, in order to “prevent the plebeians from creating any fresh distur- bances,” the senate proposed the creation of a new superior magistracy endowed “with authority over war and peace and every other matter, pos- sessed of absolute power and subject to no accounting for either its coun- sels or its actions.”49 Dictatorship was therefore deliberately designed to stop the political ambitions of the multitude and “to the end that the poor might offer no opposition,” the senate “introduce[d] into the government a magistracy of equal power with tyranny (ισοτν′ραννον αρχη′ν ), which should be supe- rior to all the laws.”50 The dictator (δικτα′ τορας) was instituted against Publicola’s legal right to appeal. The implication of the senate’s judgment was, as Dionysius reports, “that while this law remained in force the poor could not be compelled to obey the magistrates . . . whereas, when this law had been repealed, all would be under the greatest necessity of obeying orders.”51 With the dictator, as Livy himself recognized, “there was neither appeal nor help anywhere.”52 The plebs subsequently ratified the senate’s plan for this temporary magistracy. But as Dionysius argued, the nobility deceived and misguided them to vote against their own interests, thereby approving the abolition of the law that guarded their freedom.53 The new decree was immediately put into effect. The senate deliberated and the first dictator was appointed to restore order. After he “terrified the turbulent and the seditious,” he took a census, made a yearly truce with Rome’s neigh- boring enemies, and resigned.54 Dionysius’ approach is not only more detailed than Livy’s but also more sociologically sensitive and politically alert. He associated closely the cre- ation of dictatorship with social struggles, the balance of power between the contending classes, their strategic reasoning and sense of self-interest, and in particular, with the political, legal, and social advancements of the poor after the expulsion of the kings.55 Thus, in Dionysius’ narrative dictatorship appears from its very beginning as an aristocratic political instrument aim- ing at quelling domestic turmoil and preserving the interests and authority of the patricians.56 Dionysius redefined this new. powerful magistracy of dictatorship “elec- tive tyranny” (αι′ρετη′ τνραννις ), thus radically transforming its meaning within the context of Roman political thought.57 The critical thrust of Dionysius’ drastic historical revisionism becomes more palpable in light of his undeniably pejorative views on tyranny. In his critical discussion of Thucydides, for instance, he portrayed tyranny as a bad form of political power that excludes the many from common life by depriving them of those

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things that are universally advantageous and useful.58 This synoptic disap- proval resonates throughout Dionysius’ Roman history. Based on the description of its genesis, dictatorship was more of a political weapon in Rome’s ongoing civic struggles than a military magistracy aimed at exter- nal foes.59 The senate deliberately designed dictatorship as an instrument for domestic emergencies. Its purpose was to spread fear and insecurity among the disobedient masses, abolish legal protections and rights if needed, suppress popular dissent, and protect the interest and privileges of the patricians. This may explain why, as Theodor Mommsen observed, “since the fall of monarchy, the suppression of dictatorship became in Rome the objective of the party of liberty.”60 As a supreme device of repression, the result of “an aristocratic plot,” institutionally engineered for situations of class warfare, dictatorship neces- sarily militarized political contestation.61 The fact that the first archaic name for the dictator was magister populi underscores the primary function of a military commander.62 Dictatorship not only criminalized political conflict and militarized the city but also transformed the political adversary into a hostis, a public enemy, against whom the dictator could legally apply in full force the law of war.63 As Clinton Rossiter observes, “the resort to the dicta- torship converted the Roman Republic and its complex constitution into the simplest and most absolute of all governments—an armed camp governed by an independent and irresponsible general.”64 All this would have sounded familiar to Greek ears. Tyrants “know. well that all who are subject to their tyranny are their enemies (ε′χθροι ),” Xenophon’s “Hieron” laments, as they live “in a perpetual state of war.”65 Tyranny was a friendless power, and the militarization of the political was considered a defining attribute of tyranni- cal rule.66 , in his historical and comparative investigations on the nature of this form of boundless power, concurred: the tyrant is a war-maker, a “πολεµοποιο′ς.”67 The tyrannical city was always under siege; and so it was with Rome under the rule of a dictator.68 These similarities may have informed Dionysius’ sweeping redefinition of dictatorship as “elective tyranny.” On the one hand, dictatorship was tyrannical because it was absolute and unaccountable, entailed the discre- tionary use of the means of violence, the ability to breach the laws at will, and threatened the life, liberties, and property of its subjects while seeking to protect and advance partial class interests against the common good. On the other hand, it was also elective. The people explicitly consented to sacrifice temporarily their freedom when they ratified the senate’s proposal. That they were fooled and manipulated, as Dionysius maintained, does not alter the fact that in the end they sanctioned the new law, thus surrendering

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. . to a “voluntary tyranny” (αν′θαιρετον τνραννιδα).69 With the Romans, the tyrant became a constitutional choice in moments of crisis and tyranny took the new form of arbitrary personal rule by consent. Dionysius’ radical reappraisal not only challenged established views on dictatorship, it also questioned classical definitions of tyranny. For instance, from the well-known Greek designations of tyranny as a particular form of rule over unwilling subjects, against the law, and in the service of the private interests of the ruler, Dionysius retained the two last attributes, illegality and partial interests, and reduced the significance of the first, involuntary rule.70 As a consequence, the non-consensual foundations of tyranny and its association with usurpation became less important in his use of the term, given that he thought it possible to have a tyranny consented to by the many as long as the ruler remained unaccountable and outside the law, enjoying full powers over his subjects while seeking to advance particular social interests. In this way, Dionysius distanced himself from the classical meanings traceable at least to Herodotus’ story of the first tyrant Gyges, according to which tyranny was an act of usurpation in vio- lation of established norms and rules regulating the acquisition of power.71 Dionysius drew attention instead to the nature and quality of rule itself and not to the method of its possession, thus departing from the view of tyranny as a violation of the procedural law of succession. This reformulation of tyranny anticipates the medieval distinction between tyranny ex defectu tituli (with respect to the illegitimate and non-consensual acquisition of power) and tyranny quoad exercitium (with respect to the way of exercis- ing power).72 This subtraction of the principle of consent from the attributes of tyranny was not fully innovative considering the Aristotelian category of “elective tyranny” that was included in his typology of royalty.73 Aristotle distin- guished among several types of kingship, dissimilar but still partaking in the same regime form, allowing for a more complex, comparative approach. Dionysius’ approach directly relies on one of Aristotle’s royal sub-types, the obscure and almost unknown to us archaic, pre-democratic Greek insti- tution of aesymne–tae, under which a military commander was elected and granted additional powers to save the city from external dangers.74 After the completion of the mission, the aesymne–tes abdicated. Aristotle considered this ancient practice tyrannical because it was absolute in the manner of its rule, notwithstanding its likely origin in popular support or through the established legal forms and procedures. Such regimes “are of the nature of tyrannies,” Aristotle writes, “because they are despotic, but of the nature of kingships because they are elective and rule over willing subjects.”75 The

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aesymne–tes is thus a hybrid of tyranny and kingship, blending absolute, personalistic power with consent in moments of exceptional danger.76 Pittacus, the ruler of Mitylene, for example, was officially an aesymne–tes before he became the legendary tyrant and one of the seven sages.77 Dionysius’ appropriation of the Aristotelian category of “elective tyranny” is crucial for his concluding narrative on Sulla, whose dictator- ship he assessed as having one positive, if inadvertent effect: it finally compelled the Romans to realize the true nature of this magistracy insofar as it exposed the real face of dictatorship in terms of the tyrant within.78 So cruel and harsh was Sulla’s dictatorship, Dionysius wrote, “that the Romans perceived for the first time what they had all along been ignorant of, that dictatorship is a tyranny.”79 Dionysius’ comment does not indict Sulla for abusing the Roman magistracy and its extraordinary powers or for violating its constitutional limitations, as Mommsen would later do in his famous distinction between two types of dictatorship.80 Nor does Dionysius inflect his notion of tyranny with such subjective moral charac- terizations as Sulla’s personal lust to power. Rather, Dionysius’ indictment of Sulla is predicated on the emergency institution of dictatorship itself, devised to tyrannize the republic, even if only temporarily and by consent. In short, for Dionysius, Sulla was the tyrannical symptom of dictatorship, not its cause.

Appian and the Temporary Tyranny of Dictatorship

This incipient but compelling critical redefinition of the republican emergency magistracy was further explored and developed almost a century and a half later in the writings of another Greek historian, Appian of Alexandria.81 Although Appian’s approach is quite dissimilar to that of Dionysius, it nonetheless shares with the latter a common understanding of Roman dictatorship. Thus, their writings on dictatorship complement one another and their shared vision of the tyranny of dictatorship sets their work apart from the other historians of their time. In fact, Appian’s narrative con- firms Dionysius’ interpretation of the tyrannical nature of dictatorship. Dionysius’ thorough examination of the first Roman dictator is matched only by Appian’s equally meticulous discussion of Sulla, one of the last to ascend to absolute power.82 In his history of the Roman republic, Appian shows how during the civil wars Sulla resorted to the institution of dictatorship by walking a thin line between legality and anomie. After invading Rome in 82 BC and taking

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advantage of the death of the two consuls during the civil war, Sulla ‘con- vinced’ the senate to appoint an interrex. He subsequently ‘persuaded’ the interrex not to organize and supervise the elections for the new consuls but instead to appoint him dictator for an indefinite period and with leg- islative powers.83 The interrex followed Sulla’s ‘suggestion’ and proposed a new law which was approved by a weakened and demoralized thus formally appointing Sulla dictator (βασιλεν′ων δικτα′τωρ), and establishing, in effect, a dictatorship by popular election.84 As if history were repeating itself within just a few centuries, “the Romans welcomed this treachery of an election as an appearance and pretence of freedom and appointed Sulla as tyrant with absolute power (τν′ραννον αντοκρα′τορα) for as long as he wished.”85 Like the closing of a circle, the republic’s beginnings met the republic’s end: in “voluntary servitude.”86 Like Dionysius, Appian redefined Sulla’s dictatorship as a tyrannical form of rule.87 What exemplified Sulla’s tyranny was not external, solely because of his skillful manipulation of his appointment procedure. Nor was the tyrannical character of his rule due simply to the crimes he committed and the visceral terror he unleashed. Likewise, Sulla’s dictatorship could not be explained by his legislative constituent powers (dictator legibus scribendis et rei publicae constituendae) which gave him unlimited powers to make laws and amend the constitution.88 Rather, the tyrannical nature of Sulla’s rule was inscribed in the very logic of his dictatorial position as such. As Appian claimed, following on Dionysius’ steps, dictatorship is in itself a form of tyranny and thus “even in the past the dictator’s power had been tyrannical.”89 Dictatorship had always been a tyrannical power, irre- spective of Sulla’s procedural irregularities and innovations. If Appian was right, however, there would be no difference between Sulla and all the previous dictators, all of whom would look like tyrants. Obviously this cannot be the case since Appian is well aware of the histor- ically distinct character of Sulla’s dictatorship. It was the violation of the temporary limits of dictatorship that accounts for Sulla’s historical unique- ness. By removing the time limits, Sulla unleashed the tyrant residing within the emergency magistracy, and its dreadful powers. While. in the past the tyranny of dictatorship “was limited to short periods” (ο′λιγω χρο′νω δ’ο′ριζοµε′νη), with Sulla it became “indeterminate” (α′ο′ριστος).90 Here, Appian’s approach recalls ’s, insofar as it was the latter who a century earlier had defined Caesar’s dictatorship as tyrannical precisely because it was perpetual and who also identified Sulla as “nothing else than always a tyrant.”91 But Plutarch did not qualify his definition. It was in Appian’s histories, as Mario Turchetti correctly notes, that “dictatorship

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was originally a tyrannical power, even if it was short-term limited. But for the first time, granted without limits, it became a perfect tyranny.”92 Appian’s distinction between dictatorship and tyranny derives from the fact that the first is a limited form of the latter. The dictator is a temporary tyrant, whose tyranny is short-lived, regulated, and bounded. Thus, the dif- ference between Sulla and previous dictators was that the latter were limited. In Appian’s narrative, the dictator resembles an interim tyrant, restrained. and contained, designed to exercise “tyrannical power” (τνραννικη′µα′ρχη′ν) only in brief moments of grave emergencies not exceeding the six months of unlimited power, not subject to appeal and to countervailing checks, when the law undoes the temporal chains that bind him.93 As a slumbering tyrant, he lies dormant in normal times, waking up only temporarily during a crisis to wear his dictatorial mantle. By being appointed for an indefinite period, Sulla seems to have fulfilled the tyrannical logic of dictatorship. From a lim- 94 ited tyranny, periodic and segmented, Sulla moved to a. form of tyranny that was, for Appian, pure and absolute (εντελη′ς τνραννις).95 Appian’s argument is subtle but decisive. The constitutional principle of time-limits does not indicate an essential difference between these two forms of power but rather an internal differentiation of degree between a limited and an unlimited tyranny. The temporary suspension of the law amounts to a provisional abolition that subordinates it to the arbitrary rule of human will. Dictatorship and tyranny partake in the same species of power: supreme, discretionary, arbitrary, personal, and violent. Two varia- tions on a common theme, the dictator is a temporary tyrant and the tyrant a permanent dictator. Sulla’s magistracy is thus at once both typical and unique in that it realized the genuinely tyrannical nature of dictatorship by ridding it of temporal limits. By redefining dictatorship as a temporary tyranny and tyranny as a permanent dictatorship, Appian registered the deep affinities between the two concepts, thereby reaffirming Dionysius’ view of dictatorship as tyrannical by nature.96 To be sure, Appian’s account is not identical to Dionysius’. Their inten- tions and preoccupations were not similar as the historical, biographical, cultural, and political contexts of their respective histories diverged sharply. Many differences separate the two Greek historians. Even on the issue of dictatorship, there are some discrepancies in tone and orientation. Appian appears ambivalent toward the tyrannical effects of dictatorship as in one occasion he displayed a kind of appreciation for how in the past dictator- ship had served Rome. He thus acknowledged that this exceptional magis- tracy “had been useful in former times.”97 However, it is unclear why he

Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at KNOX COLLEGE on April 25, 2011 426 Political Theory thought so and how this relates to his more systematic, informed observa- tions on dictatorship and its role in the demise of the republic, where there is no mention of any positive advantage. Might it be that he held a prag- matic view according to which the dictator as a short-term tyrant could still be useful in certain occasions? Here, the interpretative difficulty relates to whether Appian, while stressing the usefulness of dictatorship, recognized the necessity of tyranny for moments of crisis. This puzzle pertains to the consistency and clarity of Appian’s account and how this brief commentary could fit into his broader narrative. But the fact remains that even in this case Appian upheld his description of dictatorship as an absolute power, thus concurring not only with his explicit analysis of this institution as tyrannical and unlimited but also with Dionysius’ version of unaccount- ability. When it comes to their descriptive understanding of the nature of dictatorship the similarities between the two Greek historians are more pronounced than any of the differences that may set them apart.

Dictatorship and the Legalization of Tyranny

Dionysius and Appian’s strikingly original contribution is to have noticed a tyrannical presence in the republican institution of dictatorship. By doing so, the two Greek historians inaugurated a powerful revision of one of ancient republicanism’s more esteemed institutions and a conceptual transformation with some critical ramifications. The first and most signifi- cant is the heterodox redefinition of dictatorship, now understood as a ‘tem- porary tyranny by consent.’ This redefinition points at a novel theory of the Roman magistracy as ‘legalized tyranny.’ Dictatorship represents the legal- ization of tyranny wherein the tyrant is legally summoned by a higher instance of the republican constitution in moments of danger to protect the existing order. As Cicero himself finally came to recognize (but only in the particular case of Sulla thus missing the general significance of his own observation), while “in other cities, when tyrants are established all laws are extinguished and destroyed, in the republic it is by law that a tyrant was established.”98 As legalized and proceduralized tyranny, dictatorship embodies the desire to tame and control the tyrant. There is a yearning to use his supreme powers for one’s own advantage, for love of country. To command the tyrant and unleash him with full discretion against enemies and for one’s own collective survival is what makes dictatorship an attrac- tive option. ‘Legal tyranny’ promises that absolute power outside the law can be domesticated without losing any of its repressive effects.

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A second implication is that this atypical view of dictatorship as legal tyranny challenges the historiography of Dionysius and Appian’s times, unsettles received opinions about this exceptional emergency office, and implicates it in the fall of the Roman republic. For instance, the two Greek historians depart significantly from Livy’s more canonical narrative of dic- tatorship and accountability according to which a dictator could be charged with crimes committed after laying down his office. For the Roman histo- rian, although the right to appeal was suspended during the dictator’s actual tenure of office, it could be reactivated following his resignation, thus allowing for his impeachment as a private person. Livy mentioned only one such case where a dictator, Gaius Manius, and his master of horse were brought to trial after holding office in 314 BC.99 Unfortunately, it is impos- sible to know how Dionysius and Appian described or interpreted this event because the relevant books of their histories that might have mentioned it have not survived.100 Because the historical sources are very scanty and those that survive vary on this issue there is no conclusive evidence to resolve their differing versions between Dionysius and Appian on the one hand and Livy on the other, the problem of the accountability of dictator- ship remains undecided and controversial.101 Andrew Lintott, who is more inclined to side with Livy on this matter, recognizes that “how absolute the power of the dictator was, seems to have been an issue which was deter- mined not by statute or by any clear rule, but by casuistry, and it remained debatable at the time when the annalist tradition was being developed in the last two centuries of the Republic. As with many uncertain constitutional issues, the different positions that could be taken reflected either an aristo- cratic, authoritarian ideology or one that was popular and libertarian.”102 Here, however, the question is not to choose between Livy on the one hand and Dionysius and Appian on the other, in a futile search for histori- cal objectivity, but rather to underscore the originality of two less known, underestimated reinterpretations of dictatorship that stand out as the only surviving accounts that share a similar tyrannical depiction of this Roman extraordinary institution, and which have customarily been disregarded in favor of Livy’s single reference. Once these two dissenting interpretations are taken seriously, not only do we witness in detail the ancient formation of what Melvin Richter has called “family concepts,” but we also gain a privileged access to an unusually audacious revision of the classical republican regime-type.103 Dionysius and Appian’s Greco-Roman synthesis altered the normative connotations associated with classical ideal of dictatorship. It demystifies the republican portrayal of dictatorship and exposes the monster lurking

Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at KNOX COLLEGE on April 25, 2011 428 Political Theory behind the hero, the wolf inside the soldier, the anomie inhibiting the law. The towering reputation dictatorship enjoyed with its aura of nobil- ity, an ethical embodiment of civic virtue and patriotism, are now all cast aside as institutional and oratory ornaments to reveal that dictatorship is another name for tyranny. As a consequence their histories disclosed a tyrannical kernel hidden inside the institutional fabric of republican government. Furthermore, an additional ramification is that both Dionysius and Appian’s views question much later attempts, such as those of Mommsen and Carl Schmitt, to distinguish between two different dictatorships: an older, ancient dictatorship and its irregular, radical reinvention by Sulla and Caesar.104 Against this influential interpretation of two types of dictatorship, the one commissarial and the other constituent, the two Greek historians point to the historical continuity and institutional consistency of Roman dictatorship. For instance, in their historical revisions of Roman history, Sulla’s dictatorial tyranny loses all of its exceptional or innovative charac- ter. It is neither an unfortunate anomaly nor an erratic occurrence. His dic- tatorship does not signify a break in the history of the institution. Instead, it is regarded as the repressed but permanent, endemic tyrannical possibil- ity of dictatorial powers. Tyranny, therefore, is seen as an integral part of dictatorship. They may differ from a formal point of view but they are sim- ilar in substance. In fact, if the two Greek historians did not consider Sulla’s rule accidental or ground-breaking, it is only because they situated its tyrannical deeds within the very structure and logic of this supreme emer- gency magistracy that offers itself to abuse.105 Here, one cannot help but notice the tragic irony, even poetic justice, of Dionysius and Appian’s histories. Although the Romans took pride in over- throwing the monarchy, elevating the removal of Tarquinius to a republican foundational myth, to an anti-tyrannical instituting act, they were ultimately unable to rid themselves of the (bad) king.106 And along with praising them- selves for their devotion to the law and their patriotic respect for tradition and custom, the Romans opened up a permanent gap, an internal fissure in the legal edifice of their republic. To save the city, the constitution created this void, this empty space of the law, the space of a-nomia, where the dic- tator comes to encounter the tyrant in their common ambition to fill it up with the power once owed by the kings. It is ironic that despite the Romans’ renowned hatred of kings (odium regni), the expulsion of Tarquinius, and the collegiality of the consuls, the tyrant was never really barred from the city but rather remained harbored within the republican institution of dic- tatorship.107 By retaining the kingly powers, the Romans ‘inadvertently’

Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at KNOX COLLEGE on April 25, 2011 Kalyvas / The Tyranny of Dictatorship 429 preserved as well their tyrannical potential and failed to fully break away from their monarchical past.108 In fact, kingship, whose abolition was predicated on the dangers it posed to liberty, was preserved by the republic in the ‘minimal’ form of dictator- ship with the utmost task of defending the city in its most vulnerable moments.109 In the Roman republic, the enemy of freedom was elevated as its defender. And what was meant to be used against internal and external enemies was turned ultimately against the Roman constitution itself, which thus fell victim to its own dangerous creation. Plotting to strengthen exec- utive power beyond law, the constitution ended up caught in its own trap, undermining the freedoms that had sustained its very existence and identity. By importing the tyrant into their republic after the expulsion of the kings under the guise of extraordinary emergency powers, the ancient Romans made an ill-fated choice that eventually contributed to the loss of their lib- erty. To lose their libertas, what the citizens feared and hated the most, finally became a reality. With Sulla and Caesar the dictator is finally exposed: he is the tyrant within a free city, a Trojan horse situated at the heart of the Roman constitution. Thus, Tarquinius might have been ban- ished but his abusive, tyrannical powers survived in the new emergency magistracy and returned with a vengeance to play an active part in the con- flicts that brought the republic to an end. Many centuries later, this reinterpretation of dictatorship would reverber- ate in modern political thought in a radically altered historical context. With the return of dictatorship and its dissemination through republican doctrines of politics, the moderns gradually rediscovered its tyrannical nature. From this rich and fascinating period, one telling example stands out. It is in Thomas Jefferson’s writings that Dionysius and Appian’s analysis is fully resuscitated and brought to its ultimate conclusion. In a section of his Notes on Virginia regarding the defects of the Virginia State constitution he denounced two proposals made in 1776 and 1781 “to create a dictator, invested with every power legislative, executive, and judiciary, civil and mil- itary, of life and of death, over our persons and over our properties.”110 Jefferson used his disagreement with these two proposals as an occasion not only to deplore dictatorship but, more tellingly, to attack tyranny. Commenting on the Romans, he keenly reproached their republican consti- tution because it “allowed a temporary tyrant to be erected, under the name of a Dictator; and that temporary tyrant, after a few examples, became perpetual.”111 Temporality is the crucial feature, the one that blends the tyrant and the dictator together. More forthright than Dionysus and Appian, Jefferson explicitly recognized the extent of the destructive potential of

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tyrannical rule which he did not think could be tamed and regulated in the form of dictatorship. The temporal constraints would not last forever to per- petually bind this extraordinary device of domination and to compel it to act for the preservation of the republic. Once included in the constitutional arrangement of dictatorship, tyranny becomes a permanent, endemic threat to that same arrangement. This threat arises because the tyrant cannot be moderated by or accommodated within an institutional mechanism and an overarching constitutional system of mixed powers. Instead, he will throw the mixed constitution out of balance. The tyrant, who inhibits the dictator, will seek to permanently unbind himself from the legal restrictions and use his exceptional power to subvert constitutional constraints. The ancient Greeks noticed early on this unruly drive of tyranny and reg- istered it in classical. political philosophy. Tyranny is excessive, “unlimited” (α′ο′ριστος τνραννις), striving voraciously for absolute sovereignty (απα′ντων κν′ριο′ς).112 It amounts, for Herodotus, to hubris, as the tyrant’s desires overreach, never to be satisfied.113 Plato’s description of the excess of tyranny remains telling as well. The tyrannical life, Gorgias commends, is “a life of insatiable licentiousness,” that same life which Socrates deplored as “always greedy, suffering from unfulfilled desires.”114 Tyranny is pure immoderation caught in the vicious circle of power for the sake of power. These classical depictions of tyrannical power question directly the capac- ity of legal stipulations regulating dictatorship ever to succeed in perma- nently containing and neutralizing the tyrant within the dictator. In addition, Jefferson did not shy away from drawing a second conclu- sion from the tyrannical character of dictatorship. The Roman constitution was self-defeating for the simple reason that although the dictatorship was “proved fatal” to the republic, it was also indispensable to it.115 Rome’s republican constitution was trapped in a deadly paradox: its factional poli- tics, an “unfeeling aristocracy,” and a “ferocious” and impoverished people made its survival in moments of internal dissension dependent on a tyrant who would save the republic only to destroy it himself at a later time.116 Herein lays the Jeffersonian paradox: by its very nature the Roman republic could not survive emergencies without the assistance of tyranny, the very form of political rule that most endangered its very existence. Consequently, the instrument that was vital for the survival of the republic was simultaneously the tool of its downfall. As a “remedy,” dictatorship is worse than the malady, yet it is essential.117 Hence the paradoxical situation of an institution that is both essential to the ancient republic’s survival as well as the cause of its ultimate demise. The Jeffersonian paradox directly questions the ideal of the republican constitution and in particular its claim

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of stability and permanence generated and sustained by an institutional equilibrium.118 It is not a coincidence that Jefferson was particularly severe in his judgment of Roman republicanism: its structural defects outdo any possible benefits and therefore it is not a model to emulate.119 Aside the issue of historical reception, there is a much broader implica- tion. If Dionysius and Appian are right and dictatorship is indeed another name for tyrannical rule, a significant historical and political difference between the Athenian democracy and the Roman republic comes to the fore. The fusion of the dictator and the tyrant in these interpretations pro- vides a unique point of entry to reconsider the broader question of the rela- tionship between the two ancient regimes and points to the likely relevance of this account of the Roman experience with dictatorship to current debates on emergency powers and constitutional regimes of exception in liberal democracies.120 Here I will comment briefly only on one aspect of this relationship in need of further elaboration elsewhere. Although democratic Athens and republican Rome are often identified as the two archetypical free regimes of antiquity, they diverged on the crucial issues of the role of absolute, autocratic power within their respective polit- ical and legal frameworks. Whereas democratic Athens banned the tyranni- cal form of power in the name of freedom, the Roman republic legalized it in the name of liberty. What was excluded from the constitutional arrange- ment of Athens was fully included in the mixed regime of Rome. From the writings of Dionysius and Appian it seems as though the Roman constitution welcomed unwittingly the tyrant to cross over the line separating the state of nature (and war) and the city. Dictatorship is the result of this republican invitation. By contrast, ancient democracy was the only regime we know of that legislated explicitly against the tyrant, designating him a “public enemy” (πολε′µιος) and calling for his assassination.121 Not only was the tyrant outlawed, but as has been correctly noted, “In Athens there was no provision in the constitution for dealing with emergencies such as the Roman tumultus or the modern martial law.”122 Considering this difference from the perspective of Dionysius and Appian’s histories, it seems that while in democratic Athens the tyrant was an enemy to be resisted, in republican Rome he was a friend to rely on. These are two very different attitudes toward tyrannical power. This distinction is important because it suggests that while historically republics could accommodate themselves to the tyranny of dictatorship, democracies could not. This also denotes two different attitudes toward power, its scope and directionality, and its relationship to the law. From the perspective of democratic, anti-tyrannical legislation the figure of the

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temporary tyrant must have looked not only paradoxical, but deeply unrea- sonable and dangerous. How is it possible that in moments of crisis a free city appeals to a tyrant for its survival as the only means to restore order? Can the tyrant whom Cicero described, following Plato, as “the most monstrous of the wild beasts in the cruelty of his nature . . . who desires no bond of shared law, no partnership in human life with his fellow citizens” be constitutionally bound as to safeguard the republic?123 Can a tyrant ever be trusted? Can he defend liberty? From a democratic standpoint, the republican theory of dic- tatorship now viewed through the lens of Dionysius and Appian asks of citi- zens that they entrust provisionally their freedoms, life, and property to a power they most fear and find insufferable, “since no free man willingly endures such a rule.”124 It demands to surrender the defense of the city to its enemy and it undoes the civic vow of democratic citizenship. Finally, and more crucially, Dionysius and Appian help us grapple with the politically pressing issue of whether it is wise for citizens of constitu- tional democracies to grant extraordinary emergency powers for security reasons (even if temporally limited and constitutionally defined) to an office which stands in an ambiguous relation to the rule of law.125 Especially in a time when democratic republics are willingly or tacitly opting to suspend some of their constitutional liberties for purportedly greater security, Dionysius and Appian’s radical reinterpretation of Roman dictatorship appears astonishingly salient. Of course, one should not expect to find in their ancient histories precise answers and definitive solutions to today’s problems and dilemmas regarding constitutional dictatorship and the threat of terrorism. But precisely because they recognized that Roman dictatorship can enjoy a semblance of democratic legitimacy and accommodate itself with electoral consent, their investigation into the origins and effects of this ancient exceptional institution could advance a more informed, critical, and politically incisive understanding of emergency regimes in liberal democra- tic states. The enduring legacy of the two Greek historians is to have refor- mulated the question of whether the citizens or their elected representatives in exceptional moments of crisis should have recourse to a dictator in terms of the more fundamental issue about the relative advantages of tyranny and its unpredictable, counter-productive consequences.

Notes

1. Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw, “Democracy or Dictatorships?” The Contemporary Review, 286 (1934), p. 432. Also see, Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class, Hannah D. Kahn (trans.), New York: McGrawn-Hill Book Company, 1939, pp. 355, 486; Giovanni Sartori, The

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Theory of Democracy Revised, Vol. I, Chatham, New Jersey: Chatham House Publishers, 1987, p. 204. 2. Norberto Bobbio, Democracy and Dictatorship, Peter Kennedy (trans.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989, p. 166. 3. For example, see E. E. Kettlet, The Story of Dictatorship. From the Earliest Times till Today, London: Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1937; Alfred Cobban, Dictatorship: Its History and Theory, New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1939; Oscar Jászi and John D. Lewis, Against the Tyrant: The Tradition and Theory of Tyrannicide, Illinois: The Free Press, 1957; Maurice Latey, Patterns of Tyranny, New York: Atheneum, 1969; Maurice Latey, Tyranny: A Study in the Abuse of Power, London: Macmillan, 1969; Raymond Aron, De la dictature, Paris: René Julliard, 1961; Raymond Aron, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes, Paris: Édi- tions de Fallois, 1993; Brian Loveman, The Constitution of Tyranny: Regimes of Exception in America, University of Pittsburgh, 1993; Alan Axelrod and Charles Phillips, Dictators and Tyrants: Absolute Rulers and Would-Be Rulers in World History; Facts on File, 1995; Daniel Chirot, Modern Tyrants: The Power and Prevalence of Evil in Our Age, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996; Simon Tormey, Making Sense to Tyranny: Interpretations of Totalitarianism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995; Roger Boesche, Theories of Tyranny From Plato to Arendt, University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996; For three noticeable exceptions, see Élie Halévy, The Era of Tyrannies: Essays on Socialism and War, New York: New York University Press, 1966, p. 308; Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: A Harvest Book, 1975, p. 6; Andrew Arato, “Good-bye to Dictatorship?” Social Research, 67:4 (2000), pp. 926, 937. Franz Neumann adopts a different view in his “Notes on the Theory of Dictatorship.” See Franz Neumann, The Democratic and the Authoritarian State: Essays in Political and Legal Theory, Herbert Marcuse (ed.), New York: The Free Press, 1957, pp. 233-256. For an illuminating dis- cussion of dictatorship and tyranny in the twentieth century, see Melvin Richter, “A Family of Political Concepts: Tyranny, Despotism, Bonapartism, Caesarism, Dictatorship, 1750-1917,” European Journal of Political Theory, 4:3 (2005), pp. 242-243. 4. Chantal Millon-Delson, “Dictature et despotisme, chez les Anciens et chez les Modernes,” Revue Française D’Histoire des Idées Politiques, 6 (1997), pp. 245-251. 5. Claude Nicolet, “Dictatorship in Rome,” Peter Baehr and Melvin Richter (eds.), Dictatorship in History and Theory. Bonapartism, Caesarism, and Totalitarianism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 263. 6. It may well be that Cromwell was the first modern to be considered by many of his contemporaries to be both a tyrant and a dictator. Pierre Jeannin, “Cromwell: une dictature introuvable?” Maurice Duverger, Dictatures et Légitimité, Paris: PUF, 1982, pp. 143-158; R. Zaller, “The Figure of the Tyrant in English Revolutionary Thought,” Journal of the History of Political Ideas, 54 (1993), pp. 585–610. 7. Claude Nicolet, L’idée républicaine en france (1789-1924), Paris: Gallimard, 1994, p. 101-105. 8. François Hinard, “De la dictature à la tyrannie. Réflexions sur la dictature de Sylla,” François Hinard (ed.), Dictatures, Actes de la Table ronde de Paris, 27-28 février 1984, Paris: De Boccard, 1988, pp. 87-96. 9. For the Greek historians of the , see G. W. Bowersock, Augustus and the Greek World, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1965; G. W. Bowersock, “Historical Problems in Late Republican and Augustan Classicism,” T. Gelzer, F. W. Bowersock (eds.), Le classi- cisme à Rome aux I siècle avant et apres J.-C., Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1978, pp. 65-72; Bettie Forte, Rome and the Romans as the Greeks Saw Them, Rome: American Academy in Rome,

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1972; E. L. Bowie, “The Greeks and their Past in the Second Sophistic,” Studies in Ancient Society, M. I. Finley (ed.), London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1974, pp. 166-209; Hugh J. Mason, Greek Terms for Roman Institutions, Toronto: American Studies in Papyrology, 1974; André Hurst, “Un critique grec dans la Rome d’Auguste: Denys d’Halicarnasse,” ANRW II. 30.1, 1982, pp. 839-865; Claude Nicolet (ed.), Demokratia et Arisokratia. A propos de Caius Gracchus: mots grecs et réalites romaines, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1983; Emilio Gabba, “The Historians and Augustus,” Fergus Millar and Erich Segal (eds.), Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, pp. 61-88; Erich S. Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, pp. 316-356; Robert Syme, “Greeks Invading the Roman Government,” Roman Papers,4, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 1-20; Claude Nicolet, “Dictateurs Romains, stratégoi autokratores et généraux carthaginois,” Dictatures, pp. 27-47; I. S. Moxon, J. D. Smart, and A. J. Woodman (eds.), Past Perspectives. Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; George A. Kennedy (ed.), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Vol. I: Classical Criticism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; Kurt A. Raaflaub and Mark Toher (eds.), Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990; Michael Grant, Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation, London: Routledge, 1995; Paul Cartledge, Peter Garnsey, Erich Gruen (eds.), Hellenistic Constructs: Essays in Culture, History, and Historiography, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996; Simon Swain, Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, AD 50-250, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996; David S. Potter, Literary Texts and the Roman Historian, London: Routledge 1999; Fergus Millar, The Roman Republic in Political Thought, Hanover and London: The University Press of New England, 2002, pp. 37-49; Timothy E. Duff, The Greek and Roman Historians, London: Bristol Classical Press, 2003. 10. T. J. Cornell, “The formation of the historical tradition of early Rome,” Past Perspectives. Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writings, pp. 74, 80-81; Emilio Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, pp. 10-11, 21-22, 87-96, 152; Harvey C. Mansfield, Taming the Prince. The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, pp. 84-85; Gregory S. Bucher, “The Origins, Program, and Composition of Appian’s Roman History,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, 130 (2000), pp. 411-458; Duff, The Greek and Roman Historians, p. 118. 11. Nicolet, “Dictateurs Romains, stratégoi autokratores et généraux carthaginois,” pp. 35-36, 38; Schultze, “Dionysius of Halicarnassus and his audience,” p. 128; Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome, pp. 23-59; Matthew Fox, “History and Rhetoric in Dionysius of Halicarnassus,” The Journal of Roman Studies, 83 (1993), p. 42; Alain M. Gowing, The Triumviral Narratives of Appian and , Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992, pp. 283-287; Swain, Hellenism and Empire, pp. 253, 414-421; Millar, The Roman Republic in Political Thought, pp. 38-39; Mario Turchetti, Tyrannie et Tyrannicide de l’Antiquité à nos jours, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001, pp. 162-164. 12. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971, Book V: 70-77, pp. 211-237; Appian, Roman History: The Civil Wars, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002, Book I: 98-115, pp. 181-215. 13. Cicero, “Philippic I,” Philippics, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001, 1, p. 23; Cicero, “Philippic II,” Philippics, 36, p. 155; Appian, The Civil Wars, Book III:25, p. 565; Dio Cassius, Roman History, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. Book 54:51, p. 401, Book 54:2, pp. 283-285.

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14. Res Gestae Divi Augusti, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002, 5, p. 353; Theodor Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Paris: Thorin et fils, Éditeurs, Vol. IV, 1894, pp. 428-429, 436-438; Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 53-54; Cobban, Dictatorship. Its History and Theory, p. 331; Arthur Kaplan, Dictatorships and “Ultimate” Degrees in the Early Roman Republic 501-201 BC, New York: Revisionist Press, 1977, pp. 6, 165. 15. Clemence Schultze, “Dionysius of Halicarnassus and his audience,” Past Perspectives. Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writings, pp. 131-134; Bucher, “The Origins, Program, and Composition of Appian’s Roman History,” pp. 431, 433-437, 441. 16. For example, see Sallust, The Conspiracy of Catiline, New York and London: Penguin Books, 1963, Book I: 10-12, p. 181-183; Livy, History of Rome, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998, Book I: Preface, pp. 3-9; Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome, pp. 211-213. 17. Polybius, The Histories, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Book VI: 7-8, pp. 283-285; Cicero, De Re Publica, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Book I: 33, 42, pp. 77, 97-99; Book II: 26-29, 32, pp. 150, 167-169. Also, see Roger Dunkle, “The Rhetorical Tyrant in Roman Historiography: Sallust, Livy, ,” Classical World,65 (1971), pp. 12-20; Alain Michel, La philosophie politique a Rome d’Auguste a Marc Aurèle, Paris: Armand Colin, 1969, pp. 22-27. 18. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999, Book VIII: 10, p. 491; Cicero, De Re Publica, II: 27, p. 159; Melvin Richter, “A Family of Political Concepts: Tyranny, Despotism, Bonapartism, Caesarism, Dictatorship, 1750-1917,” p. 224. 19. For the merging of the Roman king and the Greek tyrant, see Roger Dunkle, “The Greek Tyrant and Roman Political Invective of the Late republic,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 98 (1967), pp. 151-171. 20. Livy, History of Rome, Book II: 18, pp. 275-277; Cicero, De Re Publica, Book II: 56, p. 69-71. More generally, see D. Cohen, “The Origin of Roman Dictatorship,” Mnemosyne, 4:10 (1957), pp. 300-318. 21. Livy, History of Rome, Book II: 18, pp. 275-277. Also see, Clifton Walker Keyes, “The Constitutional Position of the Roman Dictatorship,” Studies in Philology, 14 (1917), pp. 298- 305; Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Paris: Thorin et fils, Éditeurs, Vol. III, 1893, p. 163; Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 109-113. 22. Livy, History of Rome, Book II: 18, pp. 277. A reaction mentioned by Cicero as well. Cicero, De Re Publica, Book I: 60, p. 95; Nicolet, “Dictateurs Romains, stratégoi autokratores et généraux carthaginois,” p. 30. 23. Dunkle, “The Greek Tyrant and Roman Political Invective of the Late Republic,” pp. 153-156; J. Béranger, “Tyrannus: Notes sur la notion de la tyrannie chez les Romains particulièrement a l’époque de César et de Cicéron,” Revue de études Latines, 13 (1935), pp. 89-90; Jászi and Lewis, Against the Tyrant, pp. 10-11; Mario Turchetti, Tyrannie et Tyrannicide de l’Antiquité à nos jours, pp.160-164; Cicero, “Pro rege Deiotaro,” Orations, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000, p. 501-541; Jean-Louis Ferrary, “Cicéron et la. dictature,” Dictatures, pp. 97-105; Neal Wood, Cicero’s Social and Political Thought, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988, pp. 155-158. 24. Livy, History of Rome, Book II: 18, pp. 275-276; Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. III, pp. 162-163.

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25. Aristotle, Politics, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990, Book V: 10, pp. 457; Plato, The Republic, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994, Book VIII: 19, p. 333; Book II: 3, pp. 117-119; Diogenes Laertius, “Plato,” Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Vol. I, Cambridge: Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000, III: 83, p. 349; Heredotus’ story of Gyges, the first tyrant, exemplifies the violent, murderous beginnings of tyranny. Herodotus, Histories, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995, Book I: 8-15, pp. 11-19; Cicero, De re publica, Book I: 64, pp. 101-103. For the relationship between tyranny and violent usurpation, see Dolores Hegyi, “Notes on the Origins of Greek Tyrannis,” Academia scientiarum Hungarica, Acta Antiqua, 13 (1965), pp. 303-318; H. W. Plecket, “The Archaic tyrannis,” Talanta, 1 (1969), pp. 19-61; Jules Labarbe, “L’apparition de la notion de tyrannie dans la Grèce archaique,” L’Antiquité Classique, 40 (1971), pp. 471-504. 26. Aristotle, Politics, Book IV:8, p. 327; Book VI:2, p. 507; Polybius, The Histories, Book VI:7, pp. 283-284. 27. Cicero, Laws, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994, Book III:3, p. 467. 28. This contrasts with the arbitrariness and indeterminacy of tyranny that made law its enemy. For an insightful discussion of this aspect of tyranny, tyranny as freedom, see Arlene W. Saxonhouse, “The Tyranny of Reason in the World of the Polis,” The American Political Science Review, 82:4 (1988), pp. 1261-1275. 29. Aristotle, Politics, Book V:9, 10-11, p. 467. 30. Aristotle, Politics, Book III:11, pp. 269-271; Book V:9, p. 459-475; Plato, The Laws, Book VIII, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 832c, pp. 137-139; Nicolet, “Dictatorship in Rome,” p. 265; Lucien Jerphagnon, “Que le tyran est contre-nature. Sur quelques clichés de l’historiography romaine,” Actes du Colloque: La Tyrannie, Centre de Publication de l’Université de Caen: Cahiers de philosophie politique et juridique, 1984, pp. 39-50. 31. Herodotus, Histories, Book III:80, p. 105; Aristotle, Politics, Book III:5, p. 207; Cicero, De Re Publica; Book II:32, pp. 169; Dio Cassius, Roman History, Book IV:13 (Zonaras), p. 107; Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. III, pp. 7, 164-165, 191-197; D. Cohen, “The Origins of Dictatorship,” pp. 300-318; F. E. Adcock, Roman Political Ideas and Practice, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1967, p. 46; Mansfield, Taming the Prince. The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power, pp. 82-85. Polybius and Cicero rec- ognized in the tyrant a deviant ruler, an unjust king. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII: 10, pp. 489-491; Cicero, De Re Publica, II:27, p. 159; Book I: 28-31, 60, 62, pp. 69- 71, 93-95, 97; Book II: 25-27, 32, pp. 155-161, 169; Polybius, The Histories, Book VI:7, pp. 284-285. Tyranny was regarded as an almost inevitable, natural perversion of kingship in that the limits separating them did not mark any real difference. See, Aristotle, Politics, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994, Book III:5, p. 209; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII:10, pp. 489-491; Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book I:8, p. 89; Polybius, The Histories, Book VI:7, p. 285; Cicero, De Re Publica, Book II:25, 157; Claude Nicolet, “Polybe et les institutions romaines,” Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique de la Fondation Hardt, XX, Genève: Vandoeuvres, 1974, p. 209-265; Neal Wood, Cicero’s Social and Political Thought, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988, pp. 156-157. 32. Cicero, De Re Publica, Book I: 30, p. 95; Dio Cassius, Roman History, Book IV:13 (Zonaras), pp. 107-109; Carl Schmitt, Die Dictatur, Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1994, p. 2l; Clinton Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2004, pp. 17-18. 33. Cicero, De Re Publica, Book I:40-43, pp. 93-101; Book II:26-30, 32, pp. 157-163, 169; Dio Cassius, Roman History, Book IV:13 (Zonaras), p. 107. Also, see Jean-Louis Ferrary,

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“Cicéron et la dictature,” pp. 97-105; Béranger, “Tyrannus: Notes sur la notion de la tyrannie chez les Romains particulièrement a l’époque de César et de Cicéron,” pp. 89-90. 34. Clinton l. Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship, p. 17. 35. Polybius, The Histories, Book VI: 7, pp. 284-285; Kurt von Fritz, The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity. A Critical Analysis of Polybius’s Political Ideas, New York: Columbia University Press, 1954; T. Cole, “The Sources and Composition of Polybius VI,” Historia, 13 (1964), pp. 440-486; Claude Nicolet, “Polybe et les institutions romaines,” Emilio Gabba (ed.), Polybe. Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique, Geneva: Vandoeuvres, 1973, pp. 209-259; S. Podes, “Polybius and his Theory of Anacyclosis—Problems of not just Ancient Political Theory,” History of Political Thought, 12:4 (1991), pp. 577-587. 36. Dio Cassius, Roman History, Book IV:13 (Zonaras), p. 109. 37. Aristotle, Politics, Book III:4, p. 201, Book III:9, p. 249; Polybius, The Histories; Book III:86, 87, pp. 213, 215; Cicero, De Re Publica, Book I:32, p. 77, Book I:60, p. 95, Book II:32, p. 169. Also see, James F. McGlew, Tyranny and Political Culture in Ancient Greece, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993, pp. 9. Here, the term anomia refers to its original ancient Greek meaning and not to its modern appropriation by Emile Durkheim. 38. For tyranny as anomy, see Plato, Republic, Book IX: 572b, 575a-b, pp. 339, 349; Plato, Statesman, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995, 302e-303a, p. 163; Aristotle, Politics, Book IV:8, pp. 325-327; Dionysius, Roman Antiquities, Book V:70, p. 211. Raymond Weil, “De la tyrannie dans la pensée politique grecque de l’époque classique,” Dictatures et Légitimité, p. 38. For an insightful discussion of nomos, anomie, and tyranny, see Angel Sanchez de la Torre, La tyrannie dans la Grèce antique, Paris: Éditions Bière, 1999, pp. 23-124. 39. P.-M., Martin, L’idée de royauté à Rome. Vol. II. Haine de la royauté et séductions monarchiques (du IVe siècle av. J.-C. au principat augustéen), Clermont-Ferrand: Adosa, 1994, pp. 104-105. 40. Hinard, “De la dictature à la tyrannie. Réflexions sur la dictature de Sylla,” pp. 89-92; Ferrary, “Cicéron et la dictature,” pp. 101-105. 41. Martin, L’idée de royauté à Rome. Vol. II. Haine de la royauté et séductions monarchiques (du IVe siècle av. J.-C. au principat augustéen), pp. 104-105. 42. For a brief but clear comparative presentation of the two accounts, see Kaplan, Dictatorships and “Ultimate” Degrees in the Early Roman Republic 501-201 BC, pp. 18-20; Fox, “History and Rhetoric in Dionysius of Halicarnassus,” pp. 134-135; H. Hill, “Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the Origins of Rome,” The Journal of Roman Studies, 51:1-2 (1961), p. 92; Emilio Gabba, “Diogini e la dittatura a Roma,” Tria Corda. Scritti in onore di Arnaldo momigliano, Como: Biblioteca di Athenaeum, 1983, pp. 215-228. 43. Emilio Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome, pp. 140-141; Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic, p. 110; Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. III, p. 163; Paul M. Martin, L’idée de royaté à Rome. Vol. I. De la Rome royale au consensus républicain, Paris: Adosa, 1982, p. 302. 44. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books V: 70, p. 211. Cicero proposes a different account of Publius Valerius and his legislation. Cicero, De Re Publica, Book II:31, p. 165. 45. A. W. Lintott, “Provocatio: From the Struggle of the Orders to the Principate,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 1:2 (1972), pp. 226-267; A. W. Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 12-13; A. W. Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic, p. 33. Also see, A. H. J. Greenidge, “The Procedure of the ‘Provocatio,’” The Classical Review, 9:1 (1895), pp. 4-8; A. H. J. Greenidge, “The ‘Provocatio Militiae’ and Provincial Jurisdiction,” The Classical Review, 10:5 (1896), pp. 225-233;

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E. S. Staveley, “Provocatio during the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC,” Historia, III (1954- 1955), p. 412-428. Cloud J. Duncan, “The Origin of Provocatio,” RPh, 72:1 (1998), p. 25-48. 46. M. Humbert, “Le tribunat de la plèbe et le tribunal du people: remarques sur l’histoire de la provocation ad populum,” Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, 100 (1988), pp. 431-503; Michèle Ducos, Les Romains et la Loi. Reserches sur les rapports de la philosophie grecque et de la tradition romaine á la fin de la République, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1984, pp. 71-79. 47. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books V: 70, pp. 211-215; Livy, History of Rome, Book II: 7-8, pp. 239-245; Plutarch, “Publicola,” Lives, Vol. I, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998, sections xi-xii, pp. 531-535. 48. Livy, History of Rome, Book III:55, p. 183; Cicero, De Re Publica, Book II:31, 53, p. 165; Cicero, De Oratore, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Book II:199, p. 343. Also, see Ch. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate, Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1950, pp. 25-27. 49. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books V: 70, p. 211. 50. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books V: 70, p. 213. 51. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books V: 70, p. 213. 52. Livy, History of Rome, Book II:18, 29-30, p. 277, 313-315; Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. IV, p. 461. 53. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books V: 70, p. 215. 54. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books V: 75, p. 229. 55. Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome, p. 140. 56. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books V: 70, 71, pp. 215, 213, 217. 57. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books V: 73, p. 223. Also, see Forte, Rome and the Romans as the Greeks Saw Them, p. 200; Nicolet, “Dictateurs Romains, stratégoi autokratores et généraux carthaginois,” pp. 30, 34-37, 42; Hinard, “De la dictature à la tyrannie. Réflexions sur la dictature de Sylla,” pp. 94-96; Ferrary, “Cicéron et la dictature,” p. 103. 58. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, “Thucydides,” Critical Essays. Vol. 1: Ancient Orators, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973, 51, p. 617; Hurst, “Un critique grec dans la Rome d’Auguste: Denys d’Halicarnasse,” pp. 841-843; Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome, p. 147. 59. Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome, p. 140. 60. Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. IV, p. 187. 61. Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome, p. 140; Mansfield, Taming the Prince. The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power, pp. 84-85; Hugh J. Mason, “The Roman Government in Greek Sources: The Effect of Literary Theory on the Translation of Official Titles,” Phoenix, 24:2 (1970), pp. 153-154. 62. Cicero, De Re Publica, Book I:63, p. 95; Cicero, , Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Book III:3, p. 467; Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic, p. 110; Giuseppe Valditara, Studi sul magister populi. Dagli ausiliari militari del rex ai primi magistrati repubblicani, Milano: Giuffré, 1989. 63. Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. III, pp. 187. 64. Clinton Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship. Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies, p. 25. 65. Xenophon, “Hieron,” Scripta Minora, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000, 4, p. 35; 6, p. 29. 66. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII: 12, pp. 497-499; , “The Downward Journey, or the Tyrant,” Lucian, Vol. II, 11, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 23; Melvin Richter, “A Family of Political Concepts: Tyranny, Despotism, Bonapartism, Caesarism, Dictatorship, 1750-1917,” p. 224.

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67. Aristotle, Politics, Book V:9, p. 463. 68. Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. III, pp. 187; Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship. Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies, p. 25. 69. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books V: 70, p. 211; Nicolet, “Dictateurs Romains, stratégoi autokratores et généraux carthaginois,” pp. 34-35. For the con- cept of “voluntary tyranny,” see Jim MacAdam, “Voluntary Tyranny,” University of Ottawa Quarterly, 56:2 (1986), pp. 153-161. 70. Aristotle, Politics, Book III: 9, p. 251, Book IV: 8, pp. 325-326; Book V: 8, p. 441; Book V: 8, p. 457; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII: 10, p. 491; Xenophon, Memorabilia, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Book: IV: 6, p. 345. 71. Herodotus, Histories, Book I: 8-15, pp. 11-19. 72. Jászi and Lewis, Against the Tyrant: The Tradition and Theory of Tyrannicide, pp. 7, 26-27. 73. Aristotle, Politics, Book III: 9, p. 247. 74. Aristotle, Politics, Book III: 9-10, pp. 251-253, 261-263, Book IV: 8, p. 325. Also, see Raymond Weil, “De la tyrannie dans la penseé politique grecque de l’époque classique,” Dictatures et Légitimité, pp. 42-47; Roger Boesche, “Aristotle’s ‘Science’ of Tyranny,” History of Political Thought, 14 (1993), pp. 1-25. 75. Aristotle, Politics, Book III: 9, p. 251. 76. Aristotle, Politics, Book IV: 8, pp. 325-327. 77. Aristotle, Politics, Books III: 9, p. 251. For the tyranny of Pittacus, see A. Andrewes, The Greek Tyrants, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1956, pp. 92-99; Claude Mossé, La tyran- nie dans la Gréce antique, Paris: PUF, 1969, 14-15; H. W. Pleket, “The Archaic Tyrannis,” Atalanta, 1 (1969), pp. 19-61. Dionysius supplements Aristotle’s observation about this extra- ordinary office by reporting an additional broader function, that of restoring the Republic to its foundational principles against the destructive force of corruption. Here, the dictator assumes the form of the founder and legislator. 78. For a different, less sympathetic, interpretation of Dionysius’ appropriation of this Aristotelian term, see Mason, “The Roman Government in Greek Sources: The Effect of Literary Theory on the Translation of Official Titles,” pp. 153-154, 159. 79. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, Books V: 77, p. 235; Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome, p. 143; Nicolet, “Dictateurs Romains, stratégoi autokratores et généraux carthaginois,” p. 30. 80. Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. IV, pp. 425-470. 81. Istvan, Hahn, “Appians Darstellung der sullanischen Diktatur,” Acta classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis, 10-11 (1974-1975), pp. 111-120. 82. For Appian’s interest in emergencies and conflicts, see Gowing, The Triumviral Narratives of Appian and Cassius Dio, p. 280; Bucher, “The Origins, Program, and Composition of Appian’s Roman History,” p. 420. 83. Appian, The Civil Wars, Book I: 99, pp. 183-185; Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. IV, p. 440. 84. Appian, The Civil Wars, Book I: 3, 99, pp. 7, 183-185; Kaplan, Dictatorships and “Ultimate” Degrees in the Early Roman Republic, p. 144. 85. Appian, The Civil Wars, Book I: 99, 3, p. 183, 7. On Appian’s conceptual equation, see James Luce Jr., “Appian’s Magisterial Terminology,” Classical Philology, 56:1 (1961), pp. 25-27. 86. Appian, The Civil Wars, Book II:137, p. 481. 87. Nicolet, “Dictateurs Romains, stratégoi autokratores et généraux carthaginois,” pp. 37-39, 42.

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88. Appian, The Civil Wars, Book I: 99, p. 185. Also, see Kaplan, Dictatorships and “Ultimate” Decrees in the Early Roman Republic 501-202 BC, p. 144; Frédéric Hurlet, La dictature de Sylla: Monarchie ou magistrature Republicaine? Brussels: Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 1993, pp. 93-108; Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. IV, pp. 425-470. 89. Appian, The Civil Wars, Book I: 99, p. 183. 90. Appian, The Civil Wars, Book I: 99, p. 183. In addition, the exceptional trait of Sulla’s tyranny also was due, according to Appian, to the unparalleled fact that “he was the first man, so far as I know,” who “desired to turn himself . . . from a tyrant into a private citizen” and “had the courage to lay down his tyrannical power voluntarily.” Appian, The Civil Wars, Book I: 3, 104, p. 7, 195. 91. Plutarch, “Caesar,” Lives VII, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994, 53:1-2, pp. 575; Plutarch, “Lysander and Sulla,” Lives IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000, 1:1, p. 447. 92. Turchetti, Tyrannie et Tyrannicide de l’Antiquité à nos jours, p. 163. 93. Appian, The Civil Wars, Book I: 3, p. 7. 94. I say “almost all” because there are three recorded cases, that of Furius Camillus II (390 BC), L. Aemilius Mamercinus Privenas (316 BC), and M. Servilius Pulex Geminus (202 BC), which violated the six-month limit. Another irregular dictatorship was that of Minucius in 217 BC. T. A. Dorey, “The Dictatorship of Minucius,” The Journal of Roman Studies, 45: 1-2. (1955), pp. 92-96. For these and some additional violations, see Saint-Bonnet, L’État d’excep- tion, pp. 59-60. 95. Appian, The Civil Wars, Book I: 99, pp. 183-184. 96. Appian’s tyrannical dictatorship reappears timidly and ambivalently in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s republican vision. Although Rousseau approves of the institution and the practice, he warns, echoing Appian, that “in the crises that call for its establishment the state is soon destroyed or saved, and once the pressing need has passed, the dictatorship becomes tyranni- cal or useless.” Departing clearly from his more canonical and “precise” definition of tyranny as usurpation of royal authority, Rousseau places it in the void opened up by the absence of temporal limits, suggesting that the tyrant is a permanent dictator. This formulation evokes Appian in that the affinity between the dictator and the tyrant unfolds in a temporal horizon. For this reason Rousseau insists that the best protection against this ominous prospect is to never extend or prolong a dictator’s commission. However, there is an important difference between the two thinkers. While Appian understands the temporal factor as only one of degree, Rousseau sees it as a bridge allowing the crossing from one form of rule over to another. In that sense, although the Roman institution of dictatorship appears to be liable to abuse once it is abused it is not the same anymore. It has undergone a qualitative transformation into some- thing else: tyranny. Here one can sense the presence of Rousseau’s canonical definition. The dictator who has violated the law regulating the length of his magistracy has in fact usurped a title “without having any right to it.” In that sense, the tyrant remains a usurper, he who by vio- lating the temporal restrictions seizes illegally dictatorial power. Tyranny is again a stolen, degenerated form of a supreme executive rule and not the secret truth of dictatorship, not even its dark side. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Du Contract Social; ou, Principes du Droit Politique,” Œuvres Complètes, Volume III, Gallimard: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1964, Book IV: 7, pp. 458, 423; Pierangelo Catalano, “Le concept de dictature de Rousseau à Bolivar: essai pour une mise au point politique sur la base du droit romain,” Dictatures, pp. 7-25; Jean Ferrari, “Rousseau, Kant et la tyrannie,” Actes du Colloque: La Tyrannie, pp. 177-189. 97. Appian, The Civil Wars, Book I:16, p. 33.

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98. Cicero, “The Third Speech on the Agrarian Law,” Orations, Vol. IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930, III: 5, p. 489. 99. Livy, History of Rome, Book 9:26, pp. 263-267; Kaplan, Dictatorships and “Ultimate” Decrees in the Early Roman Republic 501-202 BC, pp. 93-94; Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic, p. 112. 100. It is worth noting, however, that Diodorus of Sicily (80-20 BC), another Greek historian contemporary of Livy, does not confirm this interpretation. Although Diodorus recounts the dic- tatorship of Gaius Manius, he does not mention the story of his impeachment. Diodorus of Sicily, Library of History, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002, Book 19:76, p. 43. 101. It seems that Dionysius and Appian’s re-interpretation of tyranny is empirically con- tradicted by the lex repetundarum or recovery law, contained in a fragmented bronze tablet, and which suggests that the dictator could be brought to trial after the end of his tenure in office. Without knowing, however, the exact dating of the law, its duration, and most impor- tantly its author, it is difficult to ascertain with certainty the extent and character of its legal impact on dictatorship. For example, most scholars have suggested that the law was authored by Gaius Gracchus in his struggle to weaken the senatorial class and thus has been interpreted as an instrument in the political warfare between the orders. Two questions are relevant here: (1) How did the demise of Gracchus affect this law? (2) Is it not the case that the law itself is a telling instance of how the institution of dictatorship was turned into a site of political strug- gle and that the problem of the accountability of the dictator was a contested, open-ended issue, depending on relations of power and political interests? On this see, Emilio Badian, “Lex Acilia Repetundarum,” The American Journal of Philology, 74:4 (1954), pp. 374-384; A. N. Sherwin-White, “The Date of the Lex Repetundarun and its Consequences,” The Journal of Roman Studies, 62 (1972), pp. 83-99; A. N. Sherwin-White, “The Lex Repetundarum and the Political Ideas of Gaius Gracchus,” The Journal of Roman Studies, 72 (1982), pp. 18-31. 102. Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic, p. 112. 103. Richter, “A Family of Political Concepts: Tyranny, Despotism, Bonapartism, Caesarism, Dictatorship, 1750-1917,” pp. 221-248. 104. Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. III, pp. 193-194; Vol. IV, pp. 425-470; Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur, Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1994, p. 3; Saint-Bonnet, L’État d’ex- ception, pp. 47-70; Nicolet, “Dictatorship in Rome,” pp. 265-276; Andrew Arato, “Good-bye to Dictatorship?” pp. 925-933. 105. Hinard, “De la dictature à la tyrannie. Réflexions sur la dictature de Sylla,” pp. 87-105. 106. Appian, The Civil Wars, Book I:11, p. 185; Plutarch, “Comparison of Solon and Publicola,” Lives, II-III, pp. 569-575; Dio Cassius, Roman History, Book IV:13 (Zonaras), p. 109; Ch. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968, p. 64. As Aristotle percep- tively observed regarding Greek tyrants, “a mode of securing tyranny is to make it more like kingship.” Aristotle, Politics, Book V: 9, p. 467. 107. Martin, L’idée de royauté à Rome. Vol. II. Haine de la royauté et séductions monar- chiques (du IVe siècle av. J.-C. au principat augustéen), pp. 3-11. 108. Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. III, p. 193; Dio Cassius, Roman History, Book IV: 13 (Zonaras), p. 107. 109. Dio Cassius, Roman History, Book IV: 13 (Zonaras), p. 107. 110. Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on Virginia: Query XIII,” Joyce Appleby and Ball (eds.), Jefferson. Political Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 332. Michael Zuckert offers an illuminating interpretation of Jefferson’s objections to Roman dictatorship within the context of the neo-republican revival. See, Michael P. Zuckert, The

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Natural Rights Republic. Studies in the Foundation of the American Political Tradition, Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996, pp. 212-219. 111. Jefferson, “Notes on Virginia: Query XIII,” p. 335 (emphases added). 112. Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, Book I: 8, p. 89. 113. Herodotus, Histories, Book III:81, p. 107, 114. Plato, Gorgias, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996, 493, p. 417; Plato, The Republic, Book IX: 578, p. 361. 115. Jefferson, “Notes on Virginia: Query XIII,” p. 334. 116. Jefferson, “Notes on Virginia: Query XIII,” pp. 334-335. Also, see Spinoza, A Political Treatise, New York: Dover Publications, 1951, chapter X:1, pp. 378-379. 117. Jefferson, “Notes on Virginia: Query XIII,” p. 335. For dictatorship as a “remedy,” see Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. III, p. 169. 118. Polybius, The Histories, Book VI: 10, p. 291; Cicero, De Re Publica, Book II: 57, p. 167. 119. Jefferson, “Notes on Virginia: Query XIII,” pp. 334-335. 120. For the concept of constitutional dictatorship, see Schmitt, Die Dictatur; Frederick M. Watkins, “The Problem of Constitutional Dictatorship,” Friedrich and Mason (eds.), Public Policy, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1940, pp. 324-378; Carl J. Friedrich, Constitutional Government and Democracy, New York: Ginn and Company, 1950, pp. 572-588; Clinton Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies, pp. 3-32, 288-314; Bruce Ackerman, “The Emergency Constitution,” The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 113:5 (2004), pp. 1029-1091. For a recent opposite approach that opposes the historical and conceptual continuity of constitutional dictatorship, see Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 6-11. Clinton Rossiter, Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies, pp. 5, 8, 288. 121. Antocides, “On the Mysteries,” Minor Attic Orators: Antiphon, Andocides, Vol. I, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982, Book I: 96-98, p. 413; Benjamin D. Meritt, “Greek Inscriptions: Anti-tyrannical Inscription,” Hesperia, 21 (1952), pp. 355-359; Lysias, Against Eratosthenes; Lucian, “Tyrannicide,” Lucian. Vol I, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996; Martin Ostwald, “Athenian Legislation against Tyranny and Subversion,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, 86 (1955), 110-128; Jaszy and Lewis, Against the Tyrant: the Tradition and Theory of Tyrannicide; Antony J. Podlecki, “The Political Significance of Athenian ‘Tyrannicide’ Cult,” Historia, 15:2 (1966), pp. 129-141; F. L. Ford, Political Murder: From Tyrannicide to Political Terrorism, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985; Michael W. Taylor, The Tyrant Slayers. The Heroic Image in the Fifth Century BC: Athenian Art and Politics, Salem: Ayer, 1992. 122. Robert J. Bonner, “Emergency Government in Rome and Athens,” The Classical Journal, 18:3 (1922), p. 144; Saint-Bonnet, L’État d’exception, pp. 45-46. 123. Cicero, De Re Publica, Book II: 26, p. 157; Plato, Republic, Book VIII, 566b, p. 321. 124. Aristotle, Politics, Book IV:8, p. 327. 125. For the continuity between Roman dictatorship and modern theories and practices of the state of emergency, see Mommsen, Le droit public romain, Vol. IV, p. 187.

Andreas Kalyvas is an assistant professor of political science at The New School for Social Research in New York City. He is the author of Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). He is currently completing a coauthored book manuscript on liberalism and republicanism while working as a monograph on tyranny and dictatorship in Western political thought.

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