themselves were in some cases on a similar level of culture. Where the natives were still backward or barbarous, they came of a stock either closely related to the Greek, or at least separated from it by no great physical differences. We need only contrast the Carian, the Sicel, the Thracian or even the Scythian, with the native Australian, the Hottentot, the Red Indian or the Maori, to apprehend the advantage of the Greek. Amalgamation with the native races was easy, and it involved neither physical nor intellectual degeneracy as its consequence. Of the races with which the Greeks came in contact the Thracian was far from the highest in the scale of culture; yet three of the greatest names in the Great Age of Athens are those of men who had Thracian blood in their veins, viz. Themistocles, Cimon and the historian Thucydides. In the absence of any distinction of colour, no insuperable barrier existed between the Greek and the hellenized native. The demos of the colonial cities was largely recruited from the native population,[1] nor was there anything in the Greek world analogous to the “mean whites” or the “black belt.” Of hardly less importance were the climatic conditions. In this respect the Mediterranean area is unique. There is no other region of the world of equal extent in which these conditions are at once so uniform and so favourable. Nowhere had the Greek settler to encounter a climate which was either unsuited to his labour or subversive of his vigour. That in spite of these advantages so little, comparatively speaking, was effected in the work of Hellenization before the epoch of Alexander and the Diadochi, was the effect of a single counteracting cause. The Greek colonist, like the Greek trader, clung to the shore. He penetrated no farther inland than the sea-breeze. Hence it was only in islands, such as Sicily or Cyprus, that the process of Hellenization was complete. Elsewhere the Greek settlements formed a mere fringe along the coast.
To the 7th century there belongs another movement of high importance in its bearing upon the economic, religious and literary development of Greece, as well as upon its constitutional history. This movement is the rise of the tyrannis. In the political writers of a later age the word possesses a clear-cut connotation. From other forms The tyrants. of monarchy it is distinguished by a twofold differentiation. The tyrannus is an unconstitutional ruler, and his authority is exercised over unwilling subjects. In the 7th and 6th centuries the line was not drawn so distinctly between the tyrant and the legitimate monarch. Even Herodotus uses the words “tyrant” and “king” interchangeably (e.g. the princes of Cyprus are called “kings” in v. 110 and “tyrants” in v. 109), so that it is sometimes difficult to decide whether a legitimate monarch or a tyrant is meant (e.g. Aristophilides of Tarentum, iii. 136, or Telys of Sybaris, v. 44). But the distinction between the tyrant and the king of the Heroic Age is a valid one. It is not true that his rule was always exercised over unwilling subjects; it is true that his position was always unconstitutional. The Homeric king is a legitimate monarch; his authority is invested with the sanctions of religion and immemorial custom. The tyrant is an illegitimate ruler; his authority is not recognized, either by customary usage or by express enactment. But the word “tyrant” was originally a neutral team; it did not necessarily imply a misuse of power. The origin of the tyrannis is obscure. The word tyrannus has been thought, with some reason, to be a Lydian one. Probably both the name and the thing originated in the Greek colonies of Asia Minor, though the earliest tyrants of whom we hear in Asia Minor (at Ephesus and Miletus) are a generation later than the earliest in Greece itself, where, both at Sicyon and at Corinth, tyranny appears to date back to the second quarter of the 7th century. It is not unusual to regard tyranny as a universal stage in the constitutional development of the Greek states, and as a stage that occurs everywhere at one and the same period. In reality, tyranny is confined to certain regions, and it is a phenomenon that is peculiar to no one age or century. In Greece proper, before the 4th century B.C., it is confined to a small group of states round the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs. The greater part of the Peloponnese was exempt from it, and there is no good evidence for its existence north of the Isthmus, except at Megara and Athens. It plays no part in the history of the Greek cities in Chalcidice and Thrace. It appears to have been rare in the Cyclades. The regions in which it finds a congenial soil are two, Asia Minor and Sicily. Thus it is incorrect to say that most Greek states passed through this stage. It is still wider of the mark to assume that they passed through it at the same time. There is no “Age of the Tyrants.” Tyranny began in the Peloponnese a hundred years before it appears in Sicily, and it has disappeared in the Peloponnese almost before it begins in Sicily. In the latter the great age of tyranny comes at the beginning of the 5th century; in the former it is at the end of the 7th and the beginning of the 6th. At Athens the history of tyranny begins after it has ended both at Sicyon and Corinth. There is, indeed, a period in which tyranny is non-existent in the Greek states; roughly speaking, the last sixty years of the 5th century. But with this exception, there is no period in which the tyrant is not to be found. The greatest of all the tyrannies, that of Dionysius at Syracuse, belongs to the 4th century. Nor must it be assumed that tyranny always comes at the same stage in the history of a constitution; that it is always a stage between oligarchy and democracy. At Corinth it is followed, not by democracy but by oligarchy, and it is an oligarchy that lasts, with a brief interruption, for two hundred and fifty years. At Athens it is not immediately preceded by oligarchy. Between the Eupatrid oligarchy and the rule of Peisistratus there comes the timocracy of Solon. These exceptions do not stand alone. The cause of tyranny is, in one sense, uniform. In the earlier centuries, at any rate, tyranny is always the expression of discontent; the tyrant is always the champion of a cause. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the discontent is necessarily political, or that the cause which he champions is always a constitutional one. At Sicyon it is a racial one; Cleisthenes is the champion of the older population against their Dorian oppressors (see Herod. v. 67, 68). At Athens the discontent is economic rather than political; Peisistratus is the champion of the Diacrii, the inhabitants of the poorest region of Attica. The party-strifes of which we hear in the early history of Miletus, which doubtless gave the tyrant his opportunity, are concerned with the claims of rival industrial classes. In Sicily the tyrant is the ally of the rich and the foe of the demos, and the cause which he champions, both in the 5th century and the 4th, is a national one, that of the Greek against the Carthaginian. We may suspect that in Greece itself the tyrannies of the 7th century are the expression of an anti-Dorian reaction. It can hardly be an accident that the states in which the tyrannis is found at this epoch, Corinth, Megara, Sicyon, Epidaurus, are all of them states in which a Dorian upper class ruled over a subject population. In Asia Minor the tyrannis assumes a peculiar character after the Persian conquest. The tyrant rules as the deputy of the Persian satrap. Thus in the East the tyrant is the enemy of the national cause; in the West, in Sicily, he is its champion.
Tyranny is not a phenomenon peculiar to Greek history. It is possible to find analogies to it in Roman history, in the power of Caesar, or of the Caesars; in the despotisms of medieval Italy; or even in the Napoleonic empire. Between the tyrant and the Italian despot there is indeed a real analogy; but between the Roman principate and the Greek tyrannis there are two essential differences. In the first place, the principate was expressed in constitutional forms, or veiled under constitutional fictions; the tyrant stood altogether outside the constitution. And, secondly, at Rome both Julius and Augustus owed their position to the power of the sword. The power of the sword, it is true, plays a large part in the history of the later tyrants (e.g. Dionysius of Syracuse); the earlier ones, however, had no mercenary armies at their command. We can hardly compare the bodyguard of Peisistratus to the legions of the first or the second Caesar.
- ↑ At Syracuse the demos makes common cause with the Sicel serf-population against the nobles (Herod. vii. 155).
