The Ancient Greeks and Tyranny Quiz

Answer: Gyges

Gyges (716-678 BC) was the ruler of the Kingdom of Lydia, before it became a part of the Persian Empire, in western Anatolia, and thus was not Greek. He is said, per tradition, to have come to have killed King Candaules with the assistance of the king's wife. Archilochos wrote of the tyranny of Gyges in connection with his vast wealth, and this influenced Herodotus'views on eastern despotism and tyranny. Greeks viewed with suspicion anybody who saw themselves on the same level as the the gods and exercised power.

The danger of "hubris"-- unbridled pride-- was always present in the Greek mind, as evidenced by the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

Answer: Oligarchy

The Bacchiades of Corinth (c.747-657 BC)are an excellent example of a narrow oligarchy. This family, which had become corrupt and heavy-handed, had ruled Corinth for around 100 years until they were overthrown by a tyrant.
A great deal was going on in eighth and seventh century Greece (overpopulation, colonization, economic inequality, rising political demands for more power from some groups) that was not being addressed by the Greek oligarchies. The rise of tyrannies was in some measure a response to these problems.
The rise of the tyrant Pheidon, King of Argos, sometime in the first half of the seventh century, was an exception. He was a hereditary ruler, who exceeded his historical and traditional powers, gained too much power for his own good and became a tyrant in the minds of many Greeks.

On the whole, tyranny was a response to the abuses, and unresponsiveness, of oligarchies throughout Greece to many social and economic problems.

Answer: Heiro I

Xenophon, never a friend of the masses, wrote a political tract on Heiro, who appears to have been an excellent military commander and also a patron of the arts. Many tyrants were known to court the attention of poets, lyrists, sculptors, singers and other artists, as a means of bringing glory to their reigns It is said that Elizabeth I of England had Xenophon's work translated for her reading. Other Syracusan tyrants were Gelon (Heiro's older brother), Dionysus I, Dionysus the Younger, Dion and many others.

The constant military threat from the Carthaginians across the Halycus River for hundreds of years may have made for particularly fertile soil in eastern Sicily for the rise of talented military "strong men". It lasted much longer on the island than other places in the Greek world.

Answer: True

The single most enduring trait of what the Greeks considered a "tyrant" was someone coming to power through extra-constitutional means. In many cases, it meant coming to power through violence.

Herodotus also thought that abuses of wealth, sexual power, political freedoms and the presence of bodyguards or mercenaries were all signs of tyranny.

Answer: False

Quite the contrary. Sparta, with its dual monarchy and military elite, and checks and balances constitution, had the reputation of being one of the the most anti-tyrant cities in Greece. On at least two occasions in the sixth century BC, Sparta intervened militarily in the internal politics of other Greek cities to overthrow tyrants and install oligarchies. Within the Greek world, for probably about 300 years, Sparta had the reputation of being a firmly based constitutional political order that often opposed tyranny.

Answer: Polycrates/naval power

Polycrates came to power in a coup d'état, but was a highly effective tyrant. He was also, according to Herodotus, "very fond of money." He made Samos a first rate naval power and his public works projects kept the economic lower class people employed; thus he was somewhat popular. He built fortifications, the Temple of Hera and dug a tunnel all the way through a mountain to give Samos a steady, dependable water supply.
A Spartan-Corinthian expedition was sent to aid Samian rebels in 525 --which Polycrates survived, barely-- but he was eventually killed by Oroetus, the Persian Satrap of Lydia, in 522 BC. His ambitions appear to have got the better of him-- the definition of tyrant, as the Greeks saw it.
Another common theme of Greek tyrants was that they were often men of great talent who came from marginal political families who took advantage of any political flux in the polis, usually with the assistance of the military or a personal bodyguard. Cepsylus of Corinth was half Bacchiad. Julius Caesar(old family on hard times) and Napoleon (impoverished Corsican aristocracy) were later historical examples of this phenomenon in Western history.

Answer: Cypselus

Hoplites were farmers who could afford the arms and armor and served as heavy infantry in the Greek phalanx. The rise of tyranny was co-extensive with the rise of hoplite warfare. Hoplite warfare in turn was co-extensive with the rise of the increasingly wealthy agricultural class, from which the hoplites came, and its demands for more political rights from the entrenched aristocratic elite.

While it is impossible to know for sure, some historians believe that Cypselus was a good example of how a charismatic military man could seize power as tyrant and use it to break the hold of the old aristocratic elite and make way for a new political order. Thus tyranny was often a response to a political need, bringing about reform on behalf of the political and economic have-nots.
He is another example of how a tyrant, while holding great power or coming to power extra-constitutionally, can be and was highly effective. Corinth became an even greater economic/colonial/naval architecture during his reign.

Answer: Hippias

Hippias had some reason to go over to the dark side of tyranny, so to speak, when an assassination attempt was made on him that ended up killing his brother, Hipparchus. But Athenians gradually saw him as an oppressor and the Spartans, led by King Cleomenes I, overthrew him in 510 BC, assisting Cleisthenes the Athenian to power. Cleisthenes would play a key role in making Athens a mass democracy in that year.

Answer: Orthagoras

Orthagoras, a non-Dorian, started out as a cook (according to one story) and came to power based on his ability to lead hoplites. His successor tyrant son Cleisthenes (c.600-570), grandfather of Cleisthenes the democrat of Athens, was another successful military man. He changed the tribal structure-- which in Sicyon had probably been in place for hundreds of years-- giving more power to non-Dorians over Dorians, something which constituted very nearly a political revolution. He also won independence for Sicyon from the city Argos because of its Dorian heritage. The Orgorathids ruled about 100 years.

Tyranny could also be class-based. Many tyrants could be classified as demagogues, who railed against the rich and powerful. Theagenes of Megara (c. 650 BC) was said to have slaughtered all the flocks of the rich. Why he did this is not exactly clear.

Answer: Alien to being Greek

The historians and philosophers both thought that tyranny was somehow un-Greek. Greeks were free men. They were the only people in the world who lived in a polis, a requirement for freedom. It reminded Herodotus of how the Persian Empire was ruled by the Great King. Plato thought that it was also an eastern despotic phenomenon, but did believe it was the natural result of democracy.
Greek tyranny, as most historians believe Greeks saw it, was therefore not an entirely negative thing, though it had its downside, and came about as pressure built up with rising economic and political inequities throughout Greece.
For the most part, the Age of Tyranny passed into history with the beginning of the fifth century BC, as the issues which brought it on in the first place were better addressed.