Answer by Roger Brock
Tyrants, sole rulers whose power resulted from usurpation rather than constitutional claims, were a major feature of the archaic period and so are prominent in Herodotus’ work. Herodotus is opposed to tyranny on principle, but he doesn’t demonise individual tyrants, regarding them as real people, not monsters. His principles come out most clearly when he is talking about Athens: he contrasts democratic freedom and tyranny (5.66, 78; see also 1.62, 3.143, 6.5) and the demotivating effect of ‘working for a master’ as opposed to fighting for oneself (there are similar ideas about Asiatic rulers in the roughly contemporary Hippocratic Airs Waters Places 16, 23), just as being ‘held down’ by the tyrant Peisistratus (1.59, 65) writes off Athens as a potential ally for King Croesus of Lydia.
The Persian Otanes expands the same antithesis into a general principle in the Persian ‘constitutional debate’ (3.80), where his portrait of the tyrant’s crimes echoes the Athenian stereotype as it appears for example in Theseus’ speech in Euripides’ tragedy from 423 BCE, Suppliant women (444-55). For Otanes, monarchy in any form is inherently liable to corruption, and kings of Persia in Herodotus do tend to align with a template of despotism that also applies to tyrants: for both, their autocracy makes them unaccountable, and arbiters of law rather than subject to it. Hence, they frequently descend into lawless and outrageous behaviour, transgressing social norms and resorting to violence and mutilation: the Corinthian tyrant Periander, who murders his wife, engages in necrophilia, abuses women, and attempts to use castration as a punishment, is a conspicuous Greek example (3.48, 50, 5.92, and for mutilation, see Pheretime of Barce: 4.202).
However, Herodotus is conscious that monarchy works for some cultures, and indeed the constitutional debate is won by Darius, who argues that sole rule is the reason for Persian power (3.82). It is equally beneficial for the Ethiopians and Massagetae, whose virtuous rulers successfully resist Persian imperialism (1.205-14; 3.17-25).
He is also aware of the allure of tyranny, which causes benefactors of the Great King to ask for it as a reward (always a bad choice!), and he sometimes reflects the popular admiration of the power and wealth of tyrants, as when he contrasts the Samian tyrant Polycrates’ horrible death with his previous magnificence (3.125). Tyrants could be ‘special’, too: the birth of the first Corinthian tyrant Cypselus is foretold by oracles, after which he miraculously avoids death as a baby (5.92), and there’s a portent before Peisistratus’ birth too (1.59). At Athens, Peisistratus also receives an oracle which helps him finally secure power: that’s because he has the skill to interpret it (1.62-3), and tyrants are often clever investigators and problem-solvers, as when Periander catches out the sailors who tried to rob and murder the kitharodic poet Arion (1.24).
Tyrants can be effective political operators, too: Herodotus concedes that Peisistratus ruled moderately (1.59), and Thrasybulus fools the Lydians (1.21-2) and sends Periander memorably cunning political advice (5.92) – the object lesson about cutting off the tall ears of corn recurs in Aristotle’s Politics in the fourth century BCE. To be sure, they areoften morally equivocal at best (Polycrates robs friends too, so that they’ll be more grateful to him for getting their property back: 3.39), but they’re also practically effective: Periander was included among the Seven Sages, alongside the general and autocrat Pittacus of Mytilene.
Finally, whatever their failings, Herodotus’ tyrants are always comprehensibly human, in contrast to, say, the lyric poet Pindar’s citation of Phalaris of Acragas as emblematic of wickedness (Pythian 1.95-6): their actions and motives are comprehensible, they have human weaknesses, and their family lives are often messed up in a way that invites a measure of sympathy, notably in the case of Periander and his alienated younger son (3.52-3), or the desperate attempt of Polycrates’ daughter to forestall his fatal journey, which shows that even tyrants can have someone who loves them (3.124). As so often, Herodotus’ view is nuanced, thoughtful, and sensitive to the diversity of human experience.
For more on tyranny and Herodotus’ view of it, here are a few suggestions:
Dewald, Carolyn. 2003. ‘Form and content: the question of tyranny in Herodotus’, in K. Morgan (ed.) Popular tyranny. Austin, Texas. 25-58.
Gray, Vivienne. 1996. ‘Herodotus and images of tyranny: the tyrants of Corinth’, American journal of philology 117: 361-89.
Lewis, Sian. 2009. Greek tyranny. Bristol.
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