Drews ("The First Tyrants in Greece") paraphrases Aristotle as saying that the tyrant was a degenerate type of monarch who came to power because of the insufferability of the aristocracy. 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 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.
Parker ("Τύραννος. The Semantics of a Political Concept from Archilochus to Aristotle") 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.
King vs. Tyrant
A tyrant could also be a leader who ruled without having inherited the throne; thus, Oedipus marries Jocasta to become tyrant of Thebes, but in reality, he is the legitimate heir to the throne: the king (basileus). Parker says the use of tyrannos is common to tragedy in preference to basileus, generally synonymously, but sometimes negatively. Sophocles writes that hubris begets a tyrant or tyranny begets hubris [Parker]. Parker adds that for Herodotus, the term tyrant and basileus are applied to the same individuals, although Thucydides (and Xenophon, on the whole) distinguishes them along the same lines of legitimacy as we do.
"The First Tyrants in Greece," by Robert Drews; Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 21, H. 2 (2nd Qtr., 1972), pp. 129-14
"Τύραννος. The Semantics of a Political Concept from Archilochus to Aristotle," by Victor Parker; Hermes , 126. Bd., H. 2 (1998), pp. 145-172.
Tyrants included Cypselus, Periander, and Peisistratus.
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. See Rise of Democracy.
Greg Anderson argues that before the 6th century there was no difference between the tyrannos or tyrant and the legitimate oligarchic ruler, both aiming to dominate but not subvert the existing government. He says that the construct of the age of tyrant was a figment of the late archaic imagination.
- "Before Turannoi Were Tyrants: Rethinking a Chapter of Early Greek History," by Greg Anderson; Classical Antiquity, (2005), pp. 173-222.
