Herodotus and Images of Tyranny: The Tyrants of Corinth

Introduction

This paper considers Herodotus' presentation of the tyrants of Corinth (3.48–53, 5.92) and some recent readings of the same.¹ The speech that Herodotus puts into the mouth of Socles of Corinth (5.92) is a main source for the tyranny of Cypselus and Periander, and also for the relations of the Spartans with their Peloponnesian allies and Athens, for it seems to persuade the allies to oppose the Spartans in their desire to reimpose tyranny on Athens by offering a negative paradigm of tyranny.² Yet historians agree that what Socles says about Cypselus and Periander is cast in the form of patterned stories of questionable value for "real history" and that the image of tyranny does not in all respects meet the aims of the persuasion.³ Socles has called tyranny "more unjust and more murderous" than anything else in the world, yet they believe that he offers a sympathetic portrayal of the early history of Cypselus, the founder of the dynasty. The oracles that seem to say that he will bring justice to Corinth and the story of his survival as a babe, saved from death only by his smile, the pity of those sent to butcher him, and his mother's actions, should be explained, since they do not seem appropriate to a denunciation of tyranny. The usual explanation is that Herodotus has given too free a rein to his liking for a good story and has not succeeded in making Socles say what he ought to be saying. "The fairy–tale and the friendly oracles agree very ill with the general tendency of Herodotus' account, and we can best explain their presence in his text by supposing that they were already traditional elements in the stories before his time, and that he took them over without quite noticing how they told against his speaker's view of Cypselus."⁴ John Gould reads the speech as "narrative as persuasion," in which the narrative parts company with the persuasion and takes on an independent life of its own. Socles starts at the beginning and explains how the tyranny came to be, instead of proceeding to an ordered denunciation of its injustice.⁵ The general precedent for the practice is Homeric: Phoenix's use of the story of Meleager to persuade Achilles to return to battle seems to part company from the persuasion in similar ways (Iliad 9.527–99).⁶ The portrayal of Periander is generally agreed to serve the denunciation better, but even here the stripping of the women of Corinth has struck some as anti–climactic.⁷ Gould believes that the narrative story of Periander and Lycophron, which is the other main evidence for the tyrants of Corinth (3.48–53), also drifts free of its author and context: "The story has a scale and a power and a weight out of all proportion to its overt function as an explanatory link in the larger narrative, and in this it resembles a whole range of other Herodotean stories."⁸ Christiane Sourvinou–Inwood finds it to be so patterned by mythic consciousness that the historical data are almost irrecoverable.⁹

The first aim of this paper is to offer a reading of the speech of Socles in which the persuasion does not part company with the narrative, but remains firmly tied to it. The images of tyranny in the story of Cypselus, as in that of Periander and Lycophron, which has not had the same critical attention, are shaped by their context. The method will be to note the similarities and differences between their stories and other stories of similar pattern in Herodotus.¹⁰ Comparison will illuminate the adaptations that Herodotus has made to fit the pattern to the requirements of the various contexts and more clearly demonstrate the influence of context on the images of tyranny which they produce.

The second aim of the paper is to emphasise the difficulties that the influence of context poses for the idea of a stereotype of tyranny in Herodotus. There is scholarly interest in whether Herodotus...