Download Late Archaic Age Tyrants were….

CSTS119: CULTURE AND CRISIS IN THE GOLDEN AGE OF ATHENS
TYRANNY AND AFTERMATH
Many of trends that shape Athenian behavior in the fifth century BCE time have origins in
the age of the Greek tyrants.
Late Archaic Age Tyrants were….
• non-hereditary rulers who acquired power by unconstitutional means, usually with
widespread public support.
• Note: because constitutions were not written down,” unconstitutional” means
“contrary to the way our ancestors did things”
• did not produce substantial constitutional changes. They tended to perch on top of
existing constitutional systems without altering them.
• were men of great energy, who ease the economic and social problems of their
times.
• were great builders; they engaged in public works projects to provide jobs for
displaced subsistence farmers.
• weakened aristocratic hold on society; they broadened the base of the aristocracy to
include wealthy outsiders and provided economic stability for small farmer-citizensoldiers who had formerly been dependent on aristocratic patrons for survival.
• represent the breakthrough of the individual in politics. In Greece citizens tended to
identify with strong personalities rather than with political "parties' in the modern
sense.
• represented a transitional experience in the Greek world, nearly every polis was
affected by it to some degree.
• “jump-started” their societies; they created the means to convert their communities
from dispersed subsistence agricultural communities to outward-looking
commercially active cities.
• had no durable political legitimacy. They stayed in power so long as they succeeded
at delivering for their popular support. Once their supporters turned against them,
tyrannies usually collapsed.
• No tyranny survived beyond 3 generations.
• Best two examples to show the effects of tyranny are Sparta and Athens -- Sparta
because it resisted the threat of tyranny to become an extended oligarchy; Athens
because it experienced the full cycle of tyranny to emerge as the most commercially
active, most democratic society in Greece.