Chapter IX Sicyon, Megara, Miletus, Ephesus, Leontini, Agrigentum, Cumae
“Ne perdons rien du passé. Ce n’est qu’avec le passé qu’on fait l’avenir.”
Anatole France.
Sicyon.
The tyranny at Sicyon lasted longer than in any other Greek state1296. It started about the same time as that of Cypselus at Corinth and continued in the same family for about a century. The tyrants rested their power on the support of the pre-Dorian population of their city, and the establishment of the tyranny was probably to a large extent a racial movement representing a rising of the pre-Dorian stratum of the population against their Dorian conquerors.
How the tyrant family secured its power is another question. Until the other day our only information on the subject was to the effect that the founder of the dynasty was a cook or butcher (μάγειρος)1297, who was helped to power by the Delphic oracle1298. Thanks however to a papyrus recently unearthed by the Oxford scholars Grenfell and Hunt and published by them in 1915 we have now considerable fragments of a detailed account of the founder of the dynasty1299.
The fragment confirms the statement that the tyrants of Sicyon were sprung from a butcher and settles the vexed question of the relationship of Andreas and Orthagoras (the two earliest known members of the family) by showing that Orthagoras was the first tyrant and Andreas was father of Orthagoras. It also shows that Orthagoras himself was bred as a butcher. But it is devoted mainly to the military exploits of the youthful Orthagoras, and though it does not take us down to the day when he made himself tyrant it plainly brings us very near it, and as it leaves him in the position of polemarch on active service it seems to illustrate and support the statement of Aristotle that the early tyrants often owed their power to some high magistracy or military position that they had previously secured in the state. But there are several reasons why this military aspect should not be overrated. The account of how Orthagoras actually seized the tyranny is after all wanting. The extant fragment says that he secured the position of polemarch “partly also by reason of the goodwill of the mass of the citizens towards him,” and gives this as a separate reason1300 from that of his military successes. Moreover the author of the fragment was possibly Aristotle himself, who is known to have written a lost Constitution of the Sicyonians; and although Grenfell and Hunt regard Ephorus as more probably the author, Ephorus lived at the same time and wrote under the same historical influences as Aristotle and was probably misled in the same way concerning the character of the early tyranny1301. The outstanding fact in the early career of Orthagoras is still his tradesman origin.
Little is known of the later career of Orthagoras except that he governed mildly, and of his successor Myron (Olympian victor in 648 B.C.1302) nothing is recorded that throws any direct light on the origin of the tyranny: but the case is different when we come to Cleisthenes, the last and most famous of this family of tyrants, whose reign covered roughly the first third of the sixth century1303. With Cleisthenes the Sicyonian tyranny entered on a new phase.
Aristotle quotes Sicyon as an instance of a city where the government changed “from tyranny to tyranny... from that of Myron to that of Cleisthenes1304.” The story of how Cleisthenes got his two brothers out of the way is told by Nicolaus Damascenus1305. But what Nicolaus gives is purely a tale of domestic crime, a change from tyrant to tyrant not from tyranny to tyranny. Perhaps the change referred to by Aristotle is to be connected with the fact that Cleisthenes followed an aggressive foreign policy1306. He was violently hostile to Argos1307, and took a leading part in the “sacred” war that was fought about Delphi at the beginning of the sixth century B.C.1308. He was a contemporary of Periander who appears to have changed the character of the tyranny at Corinth by making the government warlike. It is not unlikely that the change effected by Cleisthenes at Sicyon was in the same direction. In turning to war it does not follow that he forsook trade. He may have held the view that trade follows the flag. The “sacred” war had its secular side. It arose about the refusal of the people of Krisa, who possessed the port of Delphi, to remove their harbour dues.
Krisa was a place of importance in early times1309, so much so that what was later known as the Gulf of Corinth was called the Gulf of Krisa. The territory of the Krisaians lay just opposite Sicyon, and it seems not improbable that the Sicyonians, with their allies the Corinthians1310, aimed at wresting from their rivals across the water their position in the gulf which was the starting-point of trade with the far West1311. According to a Pindar scholiast the Krisaians had control of the sea at the beginning of the war and owed their ultimate defeat to the fact that Cleisthenes built a fleet and destroyed their naval supremacy1312. It looks very much as though Cleisthenes was trying to win for Sicyon the sea-borne trade that had been flowing into Krisa. With the aid of a fleet that must for the time have made Sicyon a really important naval power1313 he crushes the trade rival across the water and wins its place for his own city and himself1314.
Bury assigns to Cleisthenes the leading part in the reorganizing of the Pythian games at Delphi after the Sacred War1315, and pictures the Sicyonian tyrant as doing for the Delphic Pythia much what Periander and Peisistratus are depicted as doing for the Corinthian Isthmia and the Athenian Panathenaia and Pheidon very possibly did for the great games at Olympia. Bury’s general picture of the early tyrants as founders or reorganizers of these great Greek games is quite in harmony with the chronological evidence and with all that is known about the various tyrants’ activities and characters1316. Developing these games might well be part of a broad commercial policy, the more so as the games were under divine patronage and ensured periodic opportunities for peaceful intercourse in an age of chronic warfare1317. Under such circumstances gatherings of this kind naturally tend to become the “commercial affair (ἐμπορικὸν πρᾶγμα)” that the Delian festival admittedly grew to be1318. Everything known about the early Greek tyrants shows how capable they were of turning such a tendency to good account. That Delphi in particular had from early times a commercial character has already been conjectured by Cornford1319. In the early years of the Sicyonian tyranny the greatness of the Euboean cities Chalcis and Eretria had begun to be steadily on the decline. The time had come to change the course of the Eastern part of this great trade route and instead of Krisa, Delphi, Thebes, Euboea to substitute another line, in which Sicyon and probably Athens should be dominating points. This is probably what Cleisthenes had in view when he so strongly supported Solon in the Sacred War.
It follows that to make him the founder of the Delphic Pythia is a view that cannot be accepted without reservations. The available evidence represents Cleisthenes as rather the rival than the champion of Delphi. A Pindar scholiast already quoted states that he instituted Pythian games in his own Sicyon. There is no other evidence for Pythian games at Sicyon, but Herodotus gives a long account of the way in which Cleisthenes radically reformed the chief existing festival in the city. This festival, like the Delphic Pythia of the days before the Sacred War, was devoted largely to musical and poetical competitions. Its patron was the ancient hero Adrastus, whose connexions were all with Argos, the Dorian city whose influence in Sicyon Cleisthenes was bent on overthrowing. Cleisthenes ejected Adrastus from Sicyon by the curious process of burying beside him the body of his bitterest enemy, the Theban Melanippus (which he borrowed for the purpose from Thebes), and then removing the body of Adrastus which was assumed to depart voluntarily from so unpleasant a neighbourhood.
The reformed festival was held in honour of this Theban hero and the Theban wine god Dionysus. The ejected Adrastus had been one of the leaders in the famous expedition of the Seven against Thebes1320. There can be little doubt that when the festival was instituted Cleisthenes was aiming at an entente with the great inland city that formed the first main stage on the route from Delphi to Euboea and the North. But the attempt was a failure. Thebes was conspicuously unrepresented at the wooing of Cleisthenes’ daughter Agariste1321, and the tyrant is furious when one of the suitors performs what has plausibly been suggested to have been a Theban dance1322. Relations with Delphi may have run a similar course. In the first celebration of the reformed Delphian Pythia Cleisthenes competed; and the way that he approached the Delphic oracle before reorganizing his own Sicyonian festival shows that he wanted an understanding with the authorities there, to whom his family was perhaps largely indebted for its throne1323. But the oracle would have nothing to do with Cleisthenes’ proposals and used abusive language to the tyrant for making them. Relations between the god and the tyrant can hardly have remained cordial after this incident and the Thebans presumably sided with the god.
Whatever the precise outcome of Cleisthenes’ policy with Delphi and Thebes the likelihood remains that one main object of that policy had been to give a new direction to the city’s trade. We have been assuming that the Sicyon of the tyrants was an important centre of commerce and industry. This has been denied by Eduard Meyer1324. The evidence is meagre: but as far as it goes it is entirely against Meyer’s hypothesis, which makes it hard to explain how the city became so great and prosperous at this time. We have seen already that Cleisthenes possessed a powerful fleet and that his proceedings suggest far-reaching commercial designs. The evidence as to industry points in the same direction. Some distinguished archaeologists have actually assigned to the Sicyon of Andreas and Orthagoras one of the leading industries of the period, the making of the remarkably fine pottery now usually known as Proto-Corinthian. Their arguments are by no means decisive1325, and in any case there is nothing to associate the Sicyonian tyrants personally with Sicyonian potteries; but there are literary notices which point to the Orthagorids as having been, like the other early tyrants, builders and, presumably, employers of local labour. The Olympian “treasury” which Pausanias thought to have been put up by the tyrant Myron1326 has been shown by excavation to have been fifth century work1327. But in this treasury Pausanias saw two “bronze chambers” (models of buildings?) one of which bore an inscription saying that it was a dedication of Myron and the people of Sicyon. This inscription may have misled Pausanias into ascribing to Myron the building that contained it1328. The bronze chamber on which the dedication was inscribed was on a large scale. It weighed 500 Aeginetan talents or about 19 tons. From towards the end of the period of the tyranny Sicyon was famous for its school of sculptors, who worked largely in bronze, and though no statement has been preserved as to the workmanship of Myron’s dedication, it may not unreasonably be used as evidence that the Sicyonians of his reign were already experts in the working of bronze1329. As regards buildings, Cleisthenes with the spoils that he gained in the Sacred War is known to have erected at Sicyon a magnificent portico1330.
Pollux, the lexicographer of the second century A.D., says that the Sicyonians in the time of the tyrants (as also the Athenians under the Peisistratids) wore a particular kind of rough woollen dress “that they might be ashamed to go down into the city1331.” The statement may be true and the explanation false. If both are accepted, it by no means follows that the policy of the Sicyonian tyrants was dominantly agricultural1332. We may possibly have here a record of a measure intended to prevent the commercialized city from attracting to itself the agricultural population that was of such vital importance to the normal self-sufficing Greek city-state. There is little doubt that the government of the Sicyonian tyrants was popular with the lower classes. Aristotle declares that it lasted so long because they treated their subjects so well1333. If Herodotus and Ephorus give a less favourable account of them, the reason is probably that their sources were aristocratic and anti-tyrannical1334.
Megara.
The tyranny at Megara is associated with the single name of Theagenes1335, whose reign is dated by the support that he gave to his son-in-law Cylon, winner of an Olympian victory in 640 B.C.1336 and would-be tyrant of Athens.
According to Aristotle in the Rhetoric Theagenes, like Peisistratus and Dionysius, scheming to make himself tyrant asked for the (usual) bodyguard, and having secured it became tyrant. But as pointed out in the first chapter this only shows that winning the tyranny meant possessing an armed force. It says nothing as to how the armed force was acquired. Armed forces are not to be had for the asking. For the way in which Theagenes got his our only evidence is another passage of Aristotle, this time from the Politics, which says that Theagenes secured his power “after slaughtering the flocks and herds of the wealthy1337.”
In the latter part of the fifth century “most of the Megareans got their living by making exomides” (the normal dress of the poorer classes)1338. Meyer assumes this to have been a fourth (sic) century development, but altogether against the evidence1339. Not only is the woollen industry known to have been one of the main occupations of Megara in the fifth century, but the prosperity of the city in the seventh century is only comprehensible if we assume that it was already engaged in the woollen trade. As observed by Busolt1340, Megaris has on the whole a barren stony soil that was mostly suited only for the pasture of its numerous flocks of sheep. The Megareans must have manufactured goods to take to their distant colonies, from which they imported corn and other raw material.
The colonial activities of Megara went back well into the seventh century. Some of her colonies such as Chalcedon and Byzantium and Heraclea Pontica1341 lay on the route of the Argonauts that led to the land of the golden fleece. Other seventh century colonies of Megara lay in the far West in Sicily, where she founded Megara Hyblaea in the latter part of the eighth century and Selinus in the second half of the seventh.
Thus Megara’s colonial activities in the seventh century correspond closely with those of Miletus, the city that colonized most of the ports of the Black Sea and owed so much of her wealth to her trade in wool with the Italian Sybaris1342.
That Megara herself was engaged in the woollen industry at this early date is made not unlikely by several fragments of evidence. Demeter at Megara bore the title Malophoros. “Various statements,” says Pausanias, “are made about this title, and in particular that Demeter was named Malophoros by those who first reared sheep in the land1343.” The word Malophoros may mean either “Sheep-bearing” or “Apple-bearing,” but the account of the title in Pausanias shows that the Megareans understood it as meaning “Sheep-bearing,” and regarded it as of high antiquity and certainly as older than the days when the flocks of the well-to-do were slaughtered by Theagenes.
According to Pliny1344 fulling was invented by a Megarean named Nikias. Buechsenschuetz1345 infers from this passage that fulling or milling was of great importance in the ancient wool industry. Bluemner1346 quotes it to prove the importance of the industry at Megara. The most important inference to be drawn from it both of them seem to have overlooked, namely that the industry at Megara must have been of high antiquity.
The care bestowed by the Megareans on sheep-breeding is alluded to by the sixth century Theognis
κριοὺς μὲν καὶ ὄνους διζήμεθα, Κύρνε, καὶ ἵππους
εὐγενέας1347.
Megarean woollen goods at the end of the fifth century were much worn by Athenian slaves who, as Cauer observes1348, came largely from the region of the early Megarean colonies.
It seems therefore not unlikely that when Theagenes slaughtered the flocks of the wealthy at Megara his blow was aimed at a class of capitalists whose wealth was already based on the woollen trade, as was that of the direct ancestors in Tudor times of our own modern capitalists1349.
This possibility has been recognized by Poehlmann1350 who quotes Xenophon on the Megarean wool industry in reference to Theagenes. Poehlmann imagines the blow as dealt by the discontented masses and inspired by simple hatred. But our one authority attributes it not to the rebellious masses but to Theagenes himself. On a point of definite fact like this Aristotle deserves to be taken precisely as he expresses himself. Can it be that Theagenes’ coup was a simple but effective means of securing for himself the monopoly of the Megarean woollen industry?
If this was in fact the aim of Theagenes he was merely anticipating the methods of certain modern monopolists. In December 1888 the Whiskey Combination in the United States is said to have blown up a troublesome independent still in Chicago1351. There are records of a similar attempt to blow up rival works at Buffalo1352. For these cases I quote again from a work on the danger of a new tyranny of wealth that the writer, whose book appeared in 1894, thought at the time to be threatening the United States.
The most lasting memorial that Theagenes left behind him was the water conduit that he constructed for the city1353. The extant remains seem to belong to a later date, but this is no reason for either post-dating the tyrant or not accepting him as its constructor. The remains now to be seen may well be due to a reconstruction, perhaps by the famous Megarean Eupalinus, who constructed the Samian waterworks for Polycrates. Underground conduits like the Megarean were being made half a century before the reign of Theagenes, as is shown by the underground canal constructed by Hezekiah to bring to Jerusalem the waters of Miriam (Gihon)1354. Tyranny at Megara was short lived. The only tyrant ended his life in exile.
When they had banished Theagenes the Megareans for a short while behaved with moderation... but after that they began behaving outrageously to the rich: in particular the poor entered their houses and demanded to be entertained and feasted sumptuously, and treated them all with violence and insult if they did not get what they desired. Finally they passed a decree and recovered from the money-lenders the interest that they happened to have paid.
This passage of Plutarch1355 throws no direct light on either the character or the basis of Theagenes’ power. The outbreak that it describes may have been due to the comparative weakness of the new government. It is equally possible that it occurred because the fall of the tyranny had made things much worse for the working classes, on whose support and favour Theagenes had probably based his power1356.
This period of Megarean history is better known than the corresponding phase of any other Greek city, thanks to the verses of Theognis. Their evidence for the character of the early tyrannies has been discussed in Chapter I. If, as there maintained, his exhortations not to be won over by gains to exalt any tyrant and his complaints about tradesmen controlling the state all point to fears of a tyranny of wealth, then it is particularly likely that his alarm may have had a historical basis in the career of Theagenes.
Miletus.
At Miletus during the seventh and sixth centuries1357 there appear to have been several periods of tyranny with intervals of anarchy in between. The most famous and powerful of the Milesian tyrants was Thrasybulus, whose reign must have begun towards the end of the seventh century. While he was tyrant the city enjoyed great material prosperity. Then in the middle of the sixth she was afflicted with two generations of civil war, after which there came a great revival of prosperity under the tyrant Histiaeus. Plutarch records the names of two other tyrants, Thoas and Damasenor, but only to introduce an account of the state of things that followed their overthrow. They may have been joint successors of Thrasybulus1358, much as the Athenians tended to regard Peisistratus as having been succeeded by Hippias and Hipparchus ruling conjointly. Or possibly Plutarch is mentioning two successive rulers of a distinct period of tyranny, the latter of whom only was deposed, in which case they are probably to be put before Thrasybulus1359, somewhere about the middle of the seventh century.
The fall of Thoas and Damasenor was followed by a struggle between two parties called Ploutis (?) and Cheiromache, names which sound remarkably like Capital and Labour.
There is no certainty as to either the etymological or the historical meaning of these names. Plutarch seems to identify the Ploutis (?) faction with a body called Aeinautai (always on shipboard)1360 and the reading Plontis, connected with πλοῖον (ship), has been proposed by Plass1361. Cheiromache again means not hand-workers but hand-fighters, a name that need not have any industrial implication. Hand-fighters might be just people who did not wear swords, the lower classes generally. But Cheiromache is said by Eustathius to have been a synonym for χειρώναξ, a common word for artizan1362, and Suidas speaks of rival parties in Miletus composed of the wealthy (πλούσιοι) and the manual labourers (Γέργηθες, s.v., explained as χειρώνακτες), and though the period to which he is referring is quite uncertain, he still lends some support to the Capital and Labour interpretation of Plutarch’s Ploutis (?) and Cheiromache1363. The latter name would have been given to the party by its opponents, much as though enemies of a modern labour party should call them the Strikers or Down-Toolers. The other name for labour (Γέργιθες or Γέργηθες) is said by Heraclides Ponticus1364 to have been given to it by the faction of the wealthy, a statement quite compatible with the explanation of the name as derived from a place and denoting the poor subject Carians, the descendants of the pre-Hellenic population of the Milesian territory1365. Perhaps we may see a hint that Gergethes and Cheiromache were alternative names both given to labour by its rich opponents in the reply given by the oracle to the party of the rich after they had been brutally massacring the party of the poor. “I too” says the god “take heed of the murder of the unwarlike Gergithes1366.” The rebuke gains in point if the Gergithes had been also called Cheiromachoi, the manual fighters1367.
Of the early careers of the Milesian tyrants we know practically nothing. Aristotle indeed1368 refers to Miletus as a place where tyranny arose from the great power possessed by the magistrate called prytanis. But as argued already in discussing the office of polemarch held before his tyranny by Cypselus, a position of this kind does not by itself explain a tyrant’s rise to supreme power. Moreover in the case of Miletus there is nothing to show which tyrant Aristotle is referring to. When on the throne Thrasybulus pursued the policy of “cutting off the heads of those ears of corn which he saw higher than the rest” or in other words of “putting to death those who were eminent among his subjects1369.” It is fairly certain that a ruler who pursued this policy did not rest his power on the support of the upper classes. One of the few anecdotes about the tyrant tells how he outwitted the king of Lydia by a misleading display of corn in the Milesian market-place1370.
The accession of Histiaeus seems to have synchronized with a revival of the commercial prosperity of Miletus. Histiaeus was the friend and vassal of Darius of Persia, and the basis of his power must therefore not be sought exclusively in the internal conditions of Miletus. But on the other hand the Persians seem to have been remarkably free from any tendency to Persianize the nations they subdued. Their sins were those rather of Abdul Hamid than of the Young Turks. Purely internal conditions continued to operate much as before1371.
In the absence therefore of all evidence as to how Histiaeus came by his power1372 it becomes interesting to see how he sought to expand it. The chance came to him when he had won Darius’ confidence and gratitude in his Scythian campaign and the Great King invited him to choose his reward. “He asked for Myrcinus in Edonia, wishing to found in it a city1373.” Darius granted his request and the foundation was begun. But when the news of this gift reached Megabazus, the able Persian officer who had reduced Edonia and other parts of Thrace and Macedonia, he was much alarmed, and remonstrated with his master:
O King, what manner of thing hast thou done, granting to a clever and cunning Greek to acquire a city in Thrace? Where there is an inexhaustible supply of timber for building ships and oars, and mines of silver, and a large population of Greeks living in the neighbourhood and a large population of barbarians: if they get a patron (προστάτης) they will do what he directs day and night. Now therefore do thou stop him from doing this, that thou be not involved in a war against thine own1374.
As pointed out by Grundy1375 Myrcinus occupied a most important site on great strategic and commercial highways. But there is no reason to suspect Herodotus when he tells us that the town owed its importance first and foremost not to its geographical situation but to its minerals and forests. It is as a great mine-owner and shipbuilder and the employer of hosts of miners and shipbuilders and seamen that Histiaeus threatens to make himself a ruler sufficiently powerful to be a danger to the Great King himself1376.
Ephesus.
The earliest tyrant of Ephesus appears to have been Pythagoras, who overthrew the government of the Basilidae. Baton of Sinope1377, who wrote a history of the tyrants of Ephesus1378, states that Pythagoras lived “before Cyrus the Persian.” This seems to be rather an understatement of the tyrant’s antiquity, since we hear of two other tyrants, Melas and Pindaros, of whom the latter was son and successor of the former and was deprived of his throne by Croesus1379, and of yet another pair, by name Athenagoras and Komas, who lived at the same time as the poet Hipponax and must therefore be assigned to about the middle of the sixth century1380, while during part of the reign of Croesus, after the fall of Pindaros, Ephesus appears to have enjoyed a moderate democracy guided by the aesymnetes Aristarchus1381. All this leaves little room for Pythagoras in the period just preceding Cyrus, and since too the Basilidae were almost certainly one of the hereditary aristocracies, like the Bacchiadae of Corinth, that overthrew the hereditary monarchy in most Greek cities before the end of the dark ages, it becomes probable that Pythagoras flourished at the beginning of the sixth century or possibly even in the seventh1382.
According to our only authority Suidas, who quotes Baton on the date of Pythagoras and very possibly used him for the rest of his notice, Pythagoras displayed an insatiable passion for money (ἔρως χρημάτων ἄμετρος) and showed himself a cruel tyrant (τύραννος πικρότατος) but “with the people and the multitude he both was and appeared to be well liked, sometimes making them hopeful by his promises, sometimes secretly distributing small gratuities1383.” “Those however who enjoyed reputation or power he plundered and subjected to confiscations1384.” Suidas deals only with the tyrant on the throne and draws plainly from a most unfriendly source1385: but as far as he goes he suggests that the power of Pythagoras was based on wealth.
The tyrant Pindarus, who was overthrown by Croesus, was a grandson of Alyattes, Croesus’ father and predecessor1386. Ephesus was one of the chief termini of the great caravan route from the Far East that ran to Sardis and then branched to several places on the coast. In the chapter on Lydia we have had occasion to notice the story of the eighth century Lydian Ardys, who when banished from his native land went into business at Cyme (another of these branch termini) and from there returned as ruler to Sardis. Radet may therefore be right in thinking that the Ephesian tyrants shared with the Lydian the monopoly of the trade that traversed this great road1387. The overthrow of Pindarus is perhaps to be associated with the story of the financial dealings of Croesus while his father Alyattes was still on the throne1388. To pave the way to his own succession as against his half brother, the half Greek Pantaleon, Croesus has to borrow large sums of money. He first tries in Sardis, and failing there proceeds to Ephesus, where he succeeds in raising money, not however from the house of Melas, but from a certain Pamphaes the son of Theocharides. It is hardly rash to assume that the tyrant family at Ephesus were putting their money on the half Greek candidate, and that Pindarus fell because his family had taken the wrong side in this great battle of high finance.
Leontini.
Panaitios of Leontini was the first in Sicily to seize the tyranny (Panaitios primus in Sicilia arripuit tyrannidem), which he is stated to have done a few years before the end of the seventh century1389. The stratagem by which he made himself tyrant is described by Polyaenus1390. The people of Leontini were at war with Megara, and Panaitios was polemarch. The actual coup was a matter of disarming the rich citizens who served on horseback (τοῖς εὐπόροις καὶ ἱππεῦσι), which he did with the help of their grooms. But before carrying out this coup d’état Panaitios had started a conflict between these rich knights and the poor who served on foot (τοὺς πένητας καὶ πεζούς). Aristotle1391 adds little. He classes Panaitios with “Cypselus in Corinth, Peisistratus in Athens, and Dionysius in Syracuse, and others who in the same way (became tyrants) from demagogy,” a view that has already been dealt with1392. His other statement, that the government of Panaitios succeeded an oligarchy, is credible but unilluminating1393.
Agrigentum.
Phalaris of Agrigentum, a tax collector, when the citizens wished to erect a temple of Zeus Polieus for two hundred talents on the citadel as being rocky and strong and for the further reason that it would be pious to give the god the highest place, undertook, if he was given charge of the work, to have the best craftsmen and provide the material cheaply and offer sound securities for the money. The people trusted him, thinking that thanks to his life as a tax-collector he had experience of such proceedings. So taking the public money he hired many foreigners and bought many prisoners and carried up to the citadel much material of stone, timber, iron. And when the foundations were already being dug, he sent down his herald to proclaim “whoever gives information against those who stole the stone and iron on the citadel shall receive such and such a reward.” The people were annoyed at the report of the material being stolen. “Well then,” said he, “allow me to enclose the acropolis.” The city allowed him to enclose it and to raise a wall round it. He released the prisoners, armed them with the stones and hatchets and axes, made an attack during the Thesmophoria, killed most of the men, and having established himself as master of women and children, became the tyrant of the city of Agrigentum1394.
For over two centuries the name of Phalaris has been chiefly associated with the famous controversy between the Cambridge Bentley and the Oxford Boyle as to the authenticity of the letters ascribed to him. The spuriousness of these letters was so convincingly established by the Cambridge scholar, that everyone since then seems to have shrunk from attributing historical value to anything whatsoever that Phalaris is reported to have done. It so happens that the best known tradition about Phalaris tells of his extreme cruelty1395, and more particularly how he did his victims to death by roasting them alive in a brazen bull1396. This bull story has no doubt helped further to discredit Phalaris as a strictly historical character.
Yet there can be no dispute that Phalaris did make himself tyrant of Agrigentum and that his cruelty made a lasting impression on the people whom he ruled. His existence and importance is shown by a whole series of references to him that begins with Pindar1397 and includes allusions in Aristotle1398. Considering that the tyrant probably died only one generation before Pindar was born1399, there is no reason why a trustworthy tradition about him should not have been preserved and more particularly why the account of his early days in Polyaenus should not have a historical basis.
If it has, its significance is important. It means that Phalaris owed his tyranny in the ultimate instance to his skill in finance and more immediately to the control of large sums of money that gave him great influence over the lower classes who earned their living by manual labour1400.
Polyaenus cannot be decisively confirmed. But still less can he be decisively discredited. The story itself suggests that its source was the temple of Zeus Polieus, and a temple founded in the sixth century may well have kept some record, oral or written, of the days of its foundation. There is of course the possibility of forgery, but forgeries generally have some motive, such as gain or glory or love of the sensational. No such motive can easily be imputed to this narrative of Polyaenus, whose picture of Phalaris is borne out by notices in various other writers.
Lucian for instance makes the tyrant a great builder and great financier and a great patron of the common people1401. Lucian’s Phalaris is represented as defending himself at Delphi against the charge of cruelty: he certainly utters many paradoxes in so doing; but the point of the picture is that it is based on the received tradition, and it may fairly be used as evidence on a question such as that which is being here considered.
Aristotle classes Phalaris among the tyrants who owed their position to some high office that they had previously held1402, a statement which is good evidence for Phalaris as a historical personage and as far as it goes accords with Polyaenus.
“When the Agrigentines were rid of Phalaris they decreed that nobody should wear a blue-grey cloak: for the servants of the tyrant wore aprons (περιζώματα) of blue-grey1403.” The prohibition of these blue-grey aprons makes it look as if the men who overthrew the tyranny of Phalaris thought it necessary to disband his army of uniformed employees.
Further the part of the narrative of Polyaenus that most concerns us here can claim a certain probability from what is known of an early namesake and fellow-townsman of the Syracusan tyrant Agathocles. According to Diodorus1404 this earlier Agathocles, who lived while Syracuse was still under a landed aristocracy called γεωμόροι, probably about 700 B.C.1405,
Being chosen to have charge of the building of the temple of Athena, picked out the finest of the stones that were being quarried and met the expense out of his own pocket (τὴν μὲν δαπάνην ἐκ τῆς ἰδίας οὐσίας ἐποιεῖτο), but misused the stones and built a costly house. At this they say the divine power gave forth a sign: Agathocles was struck by lightning and consumed by fire along with all his house. The Geomoroi confiscated his property to the state, although the kleronomoi (the financial officials) showed that he had taken nothing of the monies of the temple or of the state. They devoted his house to the gods and forbade those who came there to set foot in it, and to this day it is called the embrontaion (i.e. the place struck by lightning).
The positions of Phalaris and Agathocles as described by Polyaenus and Diodorus are very similar. Both are in charge of the building of a great temple, the Greek word in each case being ἐπιστάτης, which means literally superintendent, but is rather a vague term and appears to include the idea of contractor1406. Both again misuse their position, and in neither case is the offender charged with misappropriation. Phalaris secures himself a tyranny, Agathocles builds himself a house. But the house is a very special sort of house, and though the builder is specifically acquitted of any dishonest dealings about it, it brings down on him the wrath both of the gods and of the government. The gods burn him and his house: the government confiscate his property. What sort of a house was it that had such disastrous consequences for its builder? A close parallel is offered by the history of the Roman Maelius, who is said in the fifth century B.C. to have had his house pulled down and his property confiscated. In the case of Agathocles the gods, when they destroyed his house, are said to send a sign (ἐπισημαίνειν): in that of Maelius the offence that caused his house to be demolished is pronounced to be not a scelus but a monstrum. The charge that brought down on Maelius these extreme penalties was that of aiming at the throne. Maelius was extremely rich, and had a large army of clients, and we may reasonably infer that his house was so severely dealt with because it looked too much like a royal palace. Considering the analogies in the story of Agathocles with that of Maelius on the one hand and that of Phalaris on the other, it looks not unlikely that the exception taken to the house of Agathocles was due to its palatial character. Private dwellings in early Greek cities were notoriously simple and unpretentious1407. A house in which it was possible to employ stones intended for a great temple was obviously quite the reverse. It would challenge comparison with the government buildings and might be used as the rallying-place for an armed attack1408 upon the government, and it was this in all probability that brought on it so terrible a fate.
The stories of Agathocles and Maelius lend support to the view that Polyaenus in his account of the rise of Phalaris is describing the normal way in which tyrannies were established at this early period in Sicily and Italy. If so, the normal tyrant in early Sicily and Italy was some very rich man who used his riches to secure financial control of some large section of the labouring classes and this control was sometimes secured by undertaking big building operations which provided not only continuous work for numerous employees but often too a strong and imposing headquarters that could soon be converted into the castle or palace from which he ruled the whole state1409.
Cumae.
Aristodemus of Cumae is dated by the fact that he gave shelter to Tarquinius Superbus when banished from Rome1410. “In those days Cumae was renowned throughout Italy for its wealth and power1411.” Before he became tyrant he is said to have distinguished himself as a soldier1412. But it was not as a soldier that he is represented as securing the tyranny. “He won over the people by turning demagogue... relieving many of the poor out of his own purse... distributing money to them man by man, and depositing for the common good the presents he had received from the people of Aricia1413.” At the end of his reign he is represented as employing citizens on a large scale on manual labour: “he chanced about that time to be making a trench round the place, a work neither necessary nor useful, but merely because he wished to weary and exhaust the citizens with toils and labours. For each was ordered to remove a certain extent of earth1414.” The chronology of the tyrant’s career is not altogether easy and the narrative not entirely credible1415, but we appear to have a tyrant of the early type, taking a prominent part in war and politics but relying largely at any rate on the control of labour and the power of wealth.