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

Content: his son Hippias was expelled by King Cleomenes I of Sparta in 510. This may be taken as the end of the “age of tyrants” but not the end of tyranny. The Persians preferred to keep tyrants in charge of the Greek cities of Anatolia, which they conquered about 540. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now
In the west, where military autocracy easily took root, the popularity of Gelon of Syracuse rested to a great extent on his defeat of the Carthaginians at Himera in 480; his brother and successor, Hieron, patron of Pindar and others, won a celebrated victory over the Etruscans at Cumae in 474. In 405 Dionysius I of Syracuse, the most powerful of all tyrants, first established his rule during the crisis of another Carthaginian invasion. In the Hellenistic period some tyrants rested their power on class feeling; others were foreign nominees, such as the tyrants supported by the Macedonian kings in the Peloponnese in the 3rd century. The phenomenon continued as long as Greece was free.