The Cultural Policy of the Tyrants
From Werner Jaeger's, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture
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The Place of Tyranny in Greek History
Our study of aristocratic poetry has taken us into the fifth century, when it was still in its full splendour. But before this there was an intermediate stage between the rule of the nobility and the rule of the people. This was tyranny—a phenomenon no less important in the history of culture than in the development of the Greek state. It has been mentioned before, and must now be discussed at length.
As Thucydides realized, the rule of the Sicilian tyrants (for two of whom Pindar wrote his great odes) was quite unlike the usual Greek tyranny. In the western outposts of Hellenism, facing the aggrandisements of the naval and commercial power of Carthage, autocracy lived far longer than in any other Greek land; but in Hellas itself, that epoch of political history was closed by the fall of the Athenian Pisistratids in 510. In Sicily, tyranny was brought about by conditions totally different from the inevitable social process which had produced it in Greece proper and its eastern colonies. It did indeed coincide with the collapse of aristocratic rule and the rise of the masses; but it was quite as much military and diplomatic expression of the commercial imperialism of powerful Sicilian cities like Acragas, Gela, and Syracuse. Even later, after half a century of democracy, the needs of Sicily produced, by inevitable logic, the tyranny of the Dionysii: and it was its very inevitability which Plato held to be its historical justification.
Let us turn back to consider Athens and the rich cities of the Isthmus as they were in the middle of the sixth century, when the time was ripe for the appearance of tyranny in Greece proper.
Athens represented the last stage of the movement towards tyranny. Solon had long prophesied its coming; in the poems of his old age, he spoke of it as imminent, and finally he lived to see it become a fact. Although sprung from the Athenian nobility, he had broken away from the traditions of his caste. His poems had prefigured, his laws had delineated, and his life had embodied a new ideal of human character, an ideal whose attainment was independent of the privileges of birth and property. Yet when he demanded justice for the oppressed workers of Attica, he never envisaged anything like the democracy which later claimed him as its founder. He merely wished the old aristocratic state to justify itself morally and economically, and at first he had no thought of its impending downfall. But the nobles had learned nothing from history, and they learned nothing from Solon. After he retired from office, party strife broke out again with renewed fury. [^]
Historical Explanation for the Rise of Tyranny
Tyranny is of the utmost importance, both as a historical phenomenon, and as a motive force behind the far-reaching cultural revolution which begins in the sixth century with the fall of the aristocracy and the political rise of the bourgeoisie. As a typical example, we shall examine the Athenian tyranny in some detail, since we know more about it than any other. But we must first review the previous development of tyranny in other Greek states.
In most of the cities where it existed, we know no more than the name and a few remarkable actions of the tyrant. How the tyranny arose, and what brought it into being, we seldom know; and still more rarely do we know the real personality of the tyrant and the character of his rule. But the surprising unanimity with which all the Greek states turned to this kind of government in and after the seventh century indicates that the causes for its appearance were the same everywhere. In the sixth century, where we have more facts to guide us, we can see that the rise of tyranny was part of the great social and economic changes which are known to us chiefly from the work of Solon and Theognis. The landowning nobility, which had until then held the supreme power in every state, found its position terribly shaken by the spread of money as a means of exchange to replace the old system of barter in kind. Clinging to outworn economic techniques, they were largely pushed into the background by the possessors of the new wealth gained from trade and industry.
And their own ranks were split by the differences which arose when some of the old houses turned to trade also, and acquired new wealth. There were many noble families which became impoverished (as Theognis shows) and could no longer maintain their social position. Others, like the Almaeonids in Attica, accumulated such wealth that their power became intolerable to their fellow-nobles, and they themselves could not resist the temptation to bid for political power. By severe legislation which virtually made bankrupt peasants and tenant-farmers into serfs of the landowner, the agricultural workers were driven to thoughts of revolution; and discontented noblemen could easily seize power by putting themselves at the head of the unorganized masses. The nouveaux riches who joined the side of the landowning nobility were not welcomed--the nobleman has never been sympathetic to the millionaire merchant—and even the accession of strength which they brought was a doubtful gain. For, joined by the rich, the nobles moved further than ever away from the landless and moneyless masses, and now that the situation had narrowed to the simple conflict of rich against poor, revolution was much nearer. The rise of tyranny was aided by the fact that, without a leader, the commons could not shake off the coercion of the aristocracy, although when they had done so they were usually content to accept the domination of their leader, now the tyrant. After centuries of obedience to their masters, they could not yet conceive the ideal of a free people ruling itself. They were even less capable of attaining such an ideal then, than in the era of the great demagogues: in fact, they could never have attained it even in a later age without the demagogues, and Aristotle was right to base his history of Athenian democracy in the Constitution of the Athenians upon the succession of these, its leaders. [^]
Hellenic League of Tyrants
Tyranny seems to have appeared at the same time in Greece proper as in the cities of Ionia and the islands, where we should expect a higher stage of intellectual and political development to have produced it earlier. About the year 600, Miletus, Ephesus, Lesbos and Samos were all ruled by famous tyrants, who as a rule maintained close relations with their fellow-tyrants in mainland Greece. Although, or even because, the tyrants had reached power purely through internal revolution, they were associated with one another by bonds of international solidarity, frequently strengthened by dynastic marriages. In fact, they anticipated the democratic and oligarchic party-solidarity which was so widespread in the fifth century. And thus, oddly enough, they created the first far-seeing foreign policy for their respective states, and (for instance in Corinth, Athens, and Megara) even carried it into action by founding colonies. [^]
Challenges of Tyrannical Rule
A tyranny never lasted longer than two or three generations. It was usually overthrown by the aristocracy after it learned its lesson and became certain of its policy; but the aristocracy seldom held the power it had recaptured, and usually, as in Athens, had to surrender it to the common people. As Polybius explains in his theory of the succession of types of government, the fall of a tyranny was chiefly caused by the inability of the tyrant's sons or grandsons (less brilliant than himself) to maintain the power which they had inherited, or by the despotic misuse of the power which they had received from the people. Tyranny became the bogey of the fallen aristocrats, and they bequeathed their terror of it to the democracies. But hatred of tyranny was only a one-sided expression of the fighting spirit in politics. As Burckhardt neatly says, in every Greek there was a hidden tyrant; to be a tyrant was such an obvious and generally accepted form of happiness that Archilochus could describe the contented carpenter no better than by saying that he did not covet a tyranny. The Greeks always felt that the rule of one supremely able man was, in Aristotle's words, 'according. to nature' , and they tended to acquiesce in it when it appeared. [^]
Characteristics of Tyrannical Rule
The earlier tyrannies were something half-way between the patriarchal kingships of primitive Greece and the rule of the demagogues in the later democracies. Maintaining the external forms of aristocratic government, the despot endeavoured to unite all authority in his own person and in those of his adherents. He was supported by a small but effective body of troops. If a state does not produce a legal and efficient form of government for itself, backed by the will of all or most of its citizens, it can be ruled only by an armed minority. But the tyrant's armed force was always visible; and its unpopularity did not diminish with the passing of time. The tyrant was therefore compelled to counterbalance it by carefully maintaining the external forms of election to official posts, by systematically cultivating public loyalty to his person, and by pursuing an economic policy which would satisfy the majority of his subjects. Pisistratus sometimes appeared in court when he was involved in a lawsuit, in order to demonstrate that the rule of law and order was unshaken: this made a great impression on the public. Every tyrant kept down the old aristocratic families with a strong hand, and banished noblemen who might become dangerous rivals, or gave them honourable duties to perform in another part of Greece: thus Pisistratus supported Miltiades in his important campaign to conquer and colonize the Chersonese. And no tyrant allowed the citizen body to flock to the cities, where it might form an organized power to endanger his rule. Both economic and political motives induced Pisistratus to favour the country people of Attica, who loved him dearly in return. Many years later, his tyranny was still called 'the reign of Kronos', the Golden Age; and many sympathetic anecdotes were told of his personal visits to the country and his conversations with the simple peasants, whose hearts he won by a combination of pleasant manners and low taxes. His tactics were a blend of political shrewdness and sound agrarian instinct. He even took the trouble to spare the peasants the journey into town to attend court: for he himself made regular trips round Attica to hold the assizes.
Unfortunately, we cannot give such a detailed description of any other tyrant's internal policy; and even this account of Pisistratus we owe to Aristotle, who built it up from the Attic chronicles. It is impossible to overlook the strong economic element in his work: compared with it, his political acts were only stopgap solutions. The really attractive thing about tyranny, especially that of Pisistratus, was its success; but that success can only be attributed to the supreme personal rule of one man, genuinely gifted, and entirely devoted to the service of his people.We may well doubt whether all tyrants were as gifted or as devoted; but we must judge the régime only by its best representatives. On the standard of success, it was a period of rapid and valuable progress. [^]
Tyrants v Lawgivers
On the spiritual side, the rule of the sixth-century tyrant may be compared with that of his political opponents, the great lawgivers and arsymnetai. These were temporary dictators appointed by many cities and given extraordinary powers in order to introduce permanent changes into the constitution or to restore it after a disturbance. They influenced the general standard of culture principally by creating, through their legislation, an ideal which allowed and even enjoined political activity on the part of the citizens; while the tyrant repressed all individual initiative and himself promoted every action undertaken by the state. Although, then, the tyrant did not educate the citizens towards universal political areté, he became their model in another sense. Without the responsibility which attached to their position, he was the prototype of the statesmen of later centuries.
He was the first to show that a nation could be governed on a far-sighted plan involving long-term calculations of means and ends. That is, he was the first to engage in real politics. In political life he was the characteristic expression of the newly awakened individualism of the seventh and sixth centuries, as the poet and the philosopher were, in different but related spheres. During the fourth century, when the general interest in great individuals increased and produced the new literary form, biography, its favourite subjects were poets, philosophers, and tyrants. And the seven wise men who became famous about the beginning of the sixth century included not only lawgivers and poets but tyrants like Periander and Pittacus. A particularly significant fact is that nearly all the poets of that period lived at the courts of tyrants. Individualism was not yet a general rule, and there was no universal levelling-down of the intellect: individualism still meant true spiritual independence. And for that very reason the few independent souls sought one another out for mutual support. [^]
The Tyrant’s Court Became a Hub of Culture
The concentration of culture at the courts of tyrants had the effect of intensifying intellectual and aesthetic life not only in the narrow circle of artists and connoisseurs but throughout the country. Such was the result of the patronage of Polycrates at Samos, of the Pisistratids in Athens, of Periander in Corinth, and of Hieron in Syracuse—to name only the most brilliant of the despots. In Athens, we know more details of the tyranny, and we can estimate the full effect on the development of Attica which was produced by the tyrants' interest in art, poetry, and. religion. Their court was the studio of Anacreon, Simonides, Pratinas, Lasus, and Onomacritus. It fostered the beginnings of comic and tragic drama, and of Athenian music, which reached such a high development in the fifth century. It encouraged the great recitations of Homer, and incorporated them in the Panathenaca, the national festival which Pisistratus so splendidly reorganized. It planned the great festivals of Dionysus, and stimulated the practice of the fine arts, sculpture, architecture, and painting. It made Athens what she always remained a city of the Muses. From it flowed a joyful new spirit of enterprise and a finer sense of pleasure. In a dialogue falsely attributed to Plato, Pisistratus' younger son Hipparchus is described as the first aesthete, and Aristotle calls him 'an amorist and a lover of the arts'. It was a real tragedy that this gay, politically harmless man should have been struck down by the tyrannicides in 514. While he lived, he was a generous patron to many poets. One of them, Onomacritus, repaid his patronage by forging oracular verses in support of the Pisistratid dynasty, and writing entire epics under the name of Orpheus to suit the court's fancy for mystical religions. The thing became such a scandal that the tyrants were eventually forced to abandon him to popular feeling. He was banished, and saw his patrons no more until Hippias joined him in exile.
That one scandal does not diminish the services of the dynasty to the cause of literature. Their court was the source of the inexhaustible stream of poetry and art which flowed for centuries through the symposia of Athens. They were ambitious to win victories in the chariot-race at the great national games; and they supported every form of athletic competition. They provided, in fact, a powerful stimulus to the advance of general culture in the life of their time. Some have believed that the great development of religious festivals and the encouragement of all the arts, which are typical of the Greek tyrannies, were merely stratagems to distract the restless minds of the citizens from political questions and to give them a new but safe interest. Even if these motives did play some part in the cultural policy of the tyrant, his deliberate concentration on his task shows that the development of art and intellect was meant to be a real contribution to the life of the community: it was part of his service to the public. By it he showed that he was a true politikos; he brought his subjects to a deeper understanding of the true great-ness and value of their city. Public interest in religion and the arts was of course not a new thing, but it was suddenly increased to a vast extent when they were systematically cultivated by a rich and powerful ruler. His official encouragement of cultural activity was a proof of the tyrant's affection for the common people. That duty was later taken over by the democratic state, which merely followed his example. After the work of the tyrants, no state could afford to exist without pursuing a systematic cultural policy. At that period, however, the state's interest in culture was confined to the adornment of religion by the arts and the support of artists by the tyrant. These activities never brought the state into conflict with itself. Dissensions within the state could be created only by poetry which invaded public life and ideas more deeply than the lyric poets at the tyrant's court ever ventured to do, or by science and philosophy, which did not then exist at Athens. We never hear that the early tyrants showed any favour to famous philosophers; they concentrated rather on increasing the scope and popularity of the arts, and on improving the aesthetic and physical standards of the people. [^]
The Façade of Culture - Tyrants Lack the Culture Generating Power of True Aristocracy
Sometimes it seems that systematic patronage, as practised by many despots of the Renaissance and later by other enlightened princes, although immensely stimulating to contemporary intellectual life, was somehow artificial, and that the culture which they encouraged was deeply rooted neither in the aristocracy nor among the people, but was the luxurious caprice of a small society. We must not forget that the same kind of culture had already appeared in Greece. The Greek tyrants of the end of the archaic period were the first Medicis — for they also enjoyed culture as something unconnected with the rest of life, as the bloom on the specially favoured existence of a few, and generously imparted it to the common people, to whom it was entirely foreign. The aristocracy had never done so; but the culture which it possessed could not be imparted in that way. And on that very fact was based the permanent importance of the aristocracy, even after its fall from power, in the culture of the nation. But it is natural for spiritual activity to cut itself off from ordinary life, to find an ivory tower a better workshop than the harsh noisy streets of everyday. Great artists and thinkers love the patronage of powerful men: in the words attributed to Simonides, the most important member of Pisistratus' circle, 'the wise must wait at the doors of the rich.' And with the increasing refinement of perception, art and science tend to become more professional and exquisite, to address themselves to a few connoisseurs. The sense of privilege binds artist and patron together, even when they despise each other.
This was true in Greece at the end of the sixth century. In consequence of the high development of intellectual life in Ionia, poetry in the late archaic period was no longer part of the life of society. Theognis and Pindar, being apostles of the aristocratic creed, were exceptions to that rule. They were therefore ahead of their age, and less akin to their other contemporaries than to Aeschylus, the Athenian of the age of the Persian wars. Aeschylus on the one hand, and Theognis and Pindar on the other, although working on different principles, represent the overthrow of the professional art which flourished under the tyrants. Their relation to it is the same as that of Hesiod and Tyrtaeus to the epic poetry of the late rhapsodes. The artists who were patronised by Polycrates, Periander, and the Pisistratids--musicians and poets like Anacreon, Ibycus, Simonides, Lasus, and Pratinas, and the great sculptors of the same period
—were in fact artists in the full sense of the word. They were a special class of men with astounding technical gifts, who were equal to any task and were at ease in any society, but who had no roots anywhere. When the Samian court passed away and Polycrates died on the Persian cross, Anacreon journeyed to the court of Hipparchus in Athens, in a fifty-oared galley specially sent to bring him; and when the last of the Pisistratids was banished from Athens, Simonides migrated to Thessaly, where he lived in the court of the Scopad princes until the whole clan was crushed out of existence by the fall of the roof in their banqueting-hall. There is something symbolic about the tradition that Simonides himself was the only survivor. He migrated once again, at the age of eighty, to the court of the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse. The culture which such men represented was as rootless as their lives. It could entertain a clever nation of beauty-lovers, like the Athenians, but it could not stir their souls. Just as the Athenian gentlemen of the last few years before Marathon were adorned by perfumed Ionian robes and luxurious curls and gold grasshopper hair-brooches, so the city of Athens was adorned by the graceful sculptures and the harmonious poems of the Ionians and Peloponnesians who haunted the tyrants' court. Their art sowed the Athenian air with the seeds of beauty, and infused into it a rich fertilizing light from all the rest of Greece: it was they who made Athens ready for the birth of the great Attic poet who was to fulfil the latent genius of his nation in the hour of its destiny. [^]
This is an excellent post. I have taken the particular point of view of the Tyrants under Persian rule, in Ionia, in my latest book, a historical fiction which I made as faithful to Herodotus as possible. Tyrants are, in general, in precarious positions.
The ebook is 3 USD and free tonight and tomorrow:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FBMFQZ41