Title: Tyranny - Greek tyrants | Britannica
Headings: Greek
tyrants

Greek tyrants
Tyranny in Rome
Tyranny and the people
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Greek tyrants
Greek attitudes toward tyranny, as already noted, changed over time, shaped by external events. In the beginning the tyrant figures in the poetic sources as an enviable status, something to which an aristocrat might aspire. In the early stages of the Greek polis (city-state), the hereditary aristocracy held all political power and ruled as a group, with the mass of citizens excluded from political life. Tyrants first appear in that milieu in the mid-7th century bce, but there is controversy about precisely how. One view sees rivalry between aristocratic families who vied to take all power into their own hands; the other suggests that tyrants were representative of a newly politically conscious dēmos (people) who supported their rise in the hope of improving their position within the state. Although the idea of any political consciousness on the part of the dēmos in the 7th century is optimistic, it is true that early tyrants tended to have popular support. Figures such as Cypselus at Corinth and Cleisthenes at Sicyon offered an alternative to exploitation by the aristocrats, and certainly tyrants introduced reforms intended to please the dēmos, codifying the laws and establishing justice—Peisistratus in Athens set up traveling courts—and gathering resources for public projects, such as fountains to supply water and grand temples. Thus, the tyrants of the Archaic age of ancient Greece ( c. 900–500 bce )—Cypselus, Cleisthenes, Peisistratus, and Polycrates —were popular, presiding as they did over an era of prosperity and expansion. But those attitudes shifted in the course of the 5th century under the influence of the Persian invasions of Greece in 480–479 bce.