Durham E-Theses Ancient Greek Tyranny: A New Phenomenon or a New Name for an Old Phenomenon? TAYLOR, JAMES,ROBERT,FRANCIS How to cite: TAYLOR, JAMES,ROBERT,FRANCIS (2017) Ancient Greek Tyranny: A New Phenomenon or a New Name for an Old Phenomenon? , Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12086/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Abstract The standard view of Greek tyranny is that it was a unique phenomenon in the ancient Greek world, representing neither continuity nor a long-lived institution. The turannoi are generally described as illegitimate leaders who seized power with the support of the lower classes, usurping the rule of the aristocrats. This school of thought locates the origins of Greek tyranny in the supposed changes in the economic and social climate around the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. Although the image of the tyrant as a populist leader has come under attack in recent years, there has been no attempt to challenge the theory that tyranny was a new phenomenon in the seventh and sixth centuries. This thesis contends that the turannoi were not a new form of ruler born from the supposed turmoil of this period. In reality, the word turannos came to represent a new way of thinking about an old style of leadership. This thesis shows that the Greek tyrants represented a continuation of the form of leadership practised by the Homeric basileis. As new ideas about law and order were formed in the seventh century, such as limited terms of office and magistrates with divided powers, these basileis began to be seen as a negative force by those engaging with the new political concepts and institutions. This change in attitude caused the traditional basileis to become the polar opposite of what was thought to be good for the polis, and not at all compatible with eunomia. Their apparent irreverence towards dikaiosune was at odds with the political atmosphere of the Archaic and Classical Greek polis. These rulers were not seen as representing continuity or a traditional form of rule, but became abhorrent to those practising the new ways of law and politics, attracting the label turannos. 1 Ancient Greek Tyranny: A New Phenomenon or a New Name for an Old Phenomenon? James Robert Francis Taylor A thesis submitted to the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University for the qualification of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 2 Contents Introduction 7 Chapter I: Gaining and Maintaining Power in Homeric Society 23 Chapter II: Archaic Society 98 Chapter III: Archaic Tyrants 160 Chapter IV: Classical Tyrants 227 Conclusion 289 Bibliography 296 3 Acknowledgements A number of individuals have assisted me in the completion of this project, not least my parents and grandparents, Michael and Susan Taylor and Barry and Margaret Payne. Without their generous and wholehearted support this work would not have been possible and I am pleased to dedicate this thesis to them as a small gesture of thanks. Dr Mirko Canevaro and Dr David Lewis provided me with helpful and sage advice and I am grateful to them for readily sharing their knowledge and good sense with me. I would also like to thank Dr Andrej Petrovic for his advice regarding the thesis and general guidance. I must also thank Barnaby Chesterton and Donald MacLennan for reading and commenting on various parts of the thesis and providing helpful comments. It is most important that I thank Professor E.M Harris for his overall guidance as the principal supervisor of this thesis. Professor Harris has been a steady source of support throughout this project and has generously shared his immense knowledge of Greek history with me. Professor Harris’ highly professional and considerate approach to me and to this project enabled its completion and I am extremely grateful for the hard work and generosity he has shown on my behalf. 4 Abbreviations Abbreviations are from the OCD. When not available in the OCD they are the author’s. FGrH F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (1923-) Fornara C.W. Fornara (ed.), Archaic Times to the end of the Peloponnesian War, 2nd edn.: Translated Documents of Greece and Rome 1 (1983) IC M. Guarducci (ed.), Inscriptiones Creticae, 4 vols (1935-1950) IG Inscriptiones Graecae (1873-) IvO Inschriften von Olympia, ed. W. Dittenberger and K. Purgold (1896) Koerner R. Koerner, Inschriftliche Gesetzestexte der frühen griechischen Polis (1993) LSAG L. Jeffery, Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, 2nd edn., rev. A. Johnston (1990) Meiggs and Lewis R. Meiggs and D. Lewis (eds.), A selection of Greek historical inscriptions to the end of the fifth century B.C. (1988) 5 Nomima 1 H. van Effenterre, and F. Ruzé (eds.), Nomima : recueil d'inscriptions politiques et juridiques de l'archaïsme grec. Vol 1 (1994-95). Rhodes and Osborne P.J. Rhodes and R. Osborne (eds.), Greek historical inscriptions, 404-323 BC (2003). SEG Supplementum epigraphicum Graecum (1923-) Tod M.N. Tod (ed.), A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the end of the fifth century B.C. (1946) The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 6 Introduction a) Previous scholarship Archaic and Classical sources mention many tyrants taking power during the Archaic period. The word turannos is not present in Homer or Hesiod and its sudden appearance in poetry from the seventh century combined with the presence of numerous tyrants in Herodotus’ account of the Archaic period has given the impression that turannoi were a new phenomenon. Historians have viewed these tyrants as a new form of ruler and have tried to explain the rise of tyranny in various ways. None of these theories is satisfactory and a new approach to Greek tyranny is clearly required. Recent developments in the study of Archaic Greek archaeology and historiography have made the traditional theories regarding the rise of tyranny in Greece untenable. In the fields of Greek archaeology and history, new discoveries have totally undermined the reliability of established ideas, such as the Archaic ‘hoplite revolution’ and ‘population explosion’ that were widely accepted and consequently factored into the course of Greek political history. As the study of Greek, particularly Archaic, history developed in the late twentieth and early twenty- first century, phenomena such as the hoplite revolution were either recognised to post-date the first recorded tyrant or, like the so-called Archaic population explosion, demonstrated to have never occurred. As the socio-economic factors that were originally believed to have caused the phenomenon of tyranny have been disproven or shifted chronologically, it has become clear that a new examination of the origins of Greek tyranny is necessary. This thesis shows that the Greek tyrants were not a new form of ruler born out of a period of socio-economic crisis, but an old form of ruler that was demonised by those Greeks who subscribed to the rule-of-law 7 ideology that began to emerge in Greece c.650.1 This introduction will review the most recent scholarship that has contributed to the debate on the origins of Greek tyranny. This will not be a comprehensive review of all scholarship concerned with Greek tyranny, but aims to provide an accurate picture of the development of scholarly explanations for the supposed rise of tyranny in the seventh century. The remainder of the introduction will then provide a summary of the four chapters of the thesis and a section on the methodology for working with the various forms of literary sources. Scholarship on Greek tyranny, and particularly its origins, has attributed the rise of tyranny in Greece to a number of factors. There is no single linear development of scholarly thought regarding Greek tyranny but several theories have generally dominated the field. Andrewes’ (1956) book on tyranny was a highly influential work that arguably first popularised the question of the origins of Greek tyranny among Anglophone scholars. Andrewes cited three main factors that caused the rise of tyranny in Greece. These were military, racial and economic factors combined with Anderson’s confident belief in the existence of a fixed class of Greek nobles.2 The racial factor, which described simmering resentment between Dorians and other Greeks never found any real traction among scholars.3 The idea was discarded due to the almost total lack of evidence for an association between Archaic tyrants and racial tensions. Andrewes’ argument was compelled to lean heavily on one or two anecdotes, such as Cleisthenes’ animal epithets for Dorian tribes, rather 1 All dates are B.C. unless otherwise stated. 2 E.g. Andrewes (1956) 84-85. 3 Andrewes (1956) 54-66. Bicknell (1982) 200, for example, has noted that there is no positive evidence for this phenomenon. See also Will (1956) 39-55 and Roussel (1976) 251-253.