Tyranny
One man seizing supreme power outside the law — ruling by his own will rather than by inheritance or constitution, a thing Greek thinkers came to brand the worst way a state can be governed.
Tyranny (tyrannis) meant rule by a single man who took power unconstitutionally, usually by a coup, as opposed to a lawful hereditary king. The word tyrannos is not Homeric; it enters Greek in the 7th c. BCE, with the poet Archilochus among the earliest to use it, of Gyges of Lydia. Real 'tyrants' such as Peisistratus of Athens and Periander of Corinth often ruled effectively, and even popularly. Later philosophy turned the term sharply negative. Plato, in the Republic (4th c. BCE), painted the tyrant as the most enslaved and unhappy of men, and Aristotle, in the Politics, classed tyranny as the corrupt counterpart of kingship — rule by one man in his own interest rather than for the common good — fixing it as the worst of the regimes in Western political thought.
How it traveled
- HistoriesThurii (Magna Graecia) · -425explains
- History of the Peloponnesian WarAthens · -400explains
- RepublicAthens · -375explains
- HieroAthens · -354explains
- HellenicaAthens · -354explains
- LettersAthens · -348explains
- Res Publica AtheniensiumChalcis · -325explains
- PoliticsChalcis · -322explains
- HistoriesMegalopolis · -118explains
- In C. VerremFormiae · -70explains
- De Lege AgrariaFormiae · -63explains
- De RepublicaFormiae · -54explains
- PhilippicaeFormiae · -44explains
- Ab urbe conditaPadua · -27explains
- GeographyAmaseia · 24explains
- DionChaeronea · 120explains
- TimoleonChaeronea · 120explains
- AratusChaeronea · 120explains
- CaesarChaeronea · 120explains
- SolonChaeronea · 120explains
- PompeyChaeronea · 120explains
- Civil WarsAlexandria · 165explains
- Mithridatic WarsAlexandria · 165explains
- Description of Greece— · 180explains
- TyrannicidaSamosata · 180explains
- DeipnosophistaeNaucratis · 230explains
- Vitae philosophorum— · 240explains
- Historical LibrarySyracuse (Sicily)explains
- Historia RomanaRomeexplains
- Antiquitates RomanaeRomeexplains
- Jewish Antiquities—explains
- The Jewish War—explains
- De BellisConstantinople (Istanbul)explains
- Epitome HistoriarumConstantinople (Istanbul)explains
- Declamatio 43Antiochexplains
- OrationesPrusaexplains
- ControversiaeRomeexplains
- Suidae lexicon—explains
- Historia ArcanaConstantinople (Istanbul)explains
- Strategemata—explains
Key passages(20)
Thus Sulla became king, or tyrant, de facto, not elected, but holding power by force and violence. As, however, he needed some pretence of being elected it was managed in this way. The kings of the Ro
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It was necessary that the decision should be that of the best men, but that the deed should be done by a few. When it was done the Senate voiced the general approval clearly by proposing rewards to th
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It remained for us to speak of tyranny, not because there is much that can be said about it, but in order that it may receive its part in our inquiry, since we rank this also as one among the kinds of
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to protect the owners of estates from suffering injustice and the people from suffering insult, but tyranny, as has repeatedly been said, pays regard to no common interest unless for the sake of its p
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as somebody killed Sardanapallus when he saw him combing his hair with his women (if this story told by the narrators of legends is true—and if it did not happen with Sardanapallus, it might quite wel
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if some state with an opposite constitution is stronger (for the wish to destroy it will clearly be present in such a neighbor because of the opposition of principle, and all men do what they wish if
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in fact the close watch upon all things that usually engender the two emotions of pride and confidence, and the prevention of the formation of study-circles and other conferences for debate, and the e
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In fact owing to this tyranny is a friend of the base; for tyrants enjoy being flattered, but nobody would ever flatter them if he possessed a free spirit—men of character love their ruler, or at all
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not squandering presents such as the multitudes resent, when tyrants take money from the people themselves while they toil and labor in penury and lavish it on mistresses and foreigners and craftsmen,
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if they think that their ruler has religious scruples and pays regard to the gods, and also they plot against him less, thinking that he has even the gods as allies), though he should not display a fo
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that it is necessary to appear to the subjects to be not a tyrannical ruler but a steward and a royal governor, and not an appropriator of wealth but a trustee, and to pursue the moderate things of li
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