Title: The Classical Definition of a Tyrant
Headings: The Classical Definition of a Tyrant
The Classical Definition of a Tyrant
Aristotle and Tyrants
Kings vs. Tyrants

Content: Peisistratus (Pisistratus) was one of the most famous of the Athenian tyrants. It was after the fall of the sons of Peisistratus that Cleisthenes and democracy came to Athens . Aristotle and Tyrants
In his article, "The First Tyrants in Greece," Robert Drews paraphrases Aristotle as saying that the tyrant was a degenerate type of monarch who came to power because of how insufferable the aristocracy was. The people of the demos, fed up, found a tyrant to champion them. Drews adds that the tyrant himself had to be ambitious, possessing the Greek concept of philotimia, which he describes as ​the desire for power and prestige. This quality is also common to the modern version of the self-serving tyrant. Tyrants were sometimes preferred to aristocrats and kings. The article, " Τύραννος. The Semantics of a Political Concept from Archilochus to Aristotle," by Victor Parker says the first use of the term tyrant comes from the mid-seventh century B.C., and the first negative use of the term, about a half-century later or perhaps as late as the second quarter of the sixth. Kings vs. Tyrants
A tyrant could also be a leader who ruled without having inherited the throne;