Title: ancient Greece Tyranny
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Content: 1]
Even though tyranny is defined today as a cruel act, tyranny was not always a bad thing in ancient Greece Pisistratus, who ruled as a tyrant in Athens for most of the time during 561 and 527 BCE Tyrant usually ruled in a way they saw fit, and maintained their power by maintaining the support they received from the people, and by using hired soldiers and mercenaries from other city-states. [ 5] In ancient Greece, tyranny was sustained by tyrants, who were individual rulers, who had assumed power in an illegal manner, using force to overthrow the previous government (usually with murder). [ 5]
Tyranny and Political Culture in Ancient Greece is neither history, historiography, nor hard political science. [ 6]
The most-significant change in the conception of tyranny from the ancient world to the modern lies in the role of the people under a tyrant. [ 3] In the Greek world monarchies were rare and were often only distinguishable from a tyranny when the hereditary ruler was more benevolent and ruled in the genuine interest of his people. [ 7] For the Greeks (or more particularly the Athenians) any system which excluded power from the whole citizen-body and was not a tyranny or monarchy was described as an oligarchy. [ 7] Greek tyranny grew out of the struggle of the under classes against the aristocracy, or against priest-kings where archaic traditions and mythology sanctioned hereditary and/or traditional rights to rule. [ 2] Greek attitudes toward tyranny, as already noted, changed over time, shaped by external events. [ 3]
For the ancient Greeks, a tyrant was not necessarily a bad ruler; in its original form ( tyrannos ) the word was used to describe a person who held absolute and personal power within a state, as distinct from a monarch, whose rule was bound by constitution and law. [