Title: tyrant | Definition & Facts | Britannica
Headings: Tyrant
Tyrant
ancient Greece

Content: for example, the mother of Cypselus belonged to the ruling clan of the Bacchiads, but his father did not. The nature of the public discontent that provided them with a following may have varied from place to place. At Sicyon, Cleisthenes, who ruled from about 600 to about 570 and was the most successful of the Orthagorids, expressed or exploited the resentment felt by the non-Dorian and underprivileged element in society toward those who claimed descent from the Dorian invaders. Some historians have supposed that the introduction of the hoplite phalanx early in the 7th century led to the development of a class of substantial farmers, who served in the phalanx and supported the tyrants as their champions against the aristocracies. But although the tyrants may have made use of hoplite tactics, substantial farmers were probably a conservative, not a revolutionary, force, and there is no reason to suppose that farmer-hoplites developed class consciousness. Tyrants eventually came to be considered oppressive, especially by their rivals for political power. Cypselus’s son Periander, whose powerful reign at Corinth lasted about 40 years, came to be regarded as a typically bad tyrant. The Corinthian tyranny fell in the late 580s soon after he died. Sparta, which had developed a constitution under which all citizens were soldiers and theoretically equal, avoided tyranny. Peisistratus established a tyranny at Athens in the middle of the 6th century;