Popular Tyranny: Sovereignty and Its Discontents in Ancient Greece

Introduction

K A T H R Y N A . M O R G A N I N T R O D U C T I O N The essays collected together here originated as a series of talks presented at the conference ‘‘Popular Tyranny: Sovereignty and Its Discontents in Classical Athens.’’ This volume, therefore, possesses both the strengths and the weaknesses of collected conference papers. The strength is the vigorous debate occasioned by bringing together a group of historians, archaeologists, and literary critics to discuss a topic that exerts a lively fascination for audiences both ancient and modern. A potential weakness is unevenness of coverage. This volume does not, for example, contain a detailed treatment of the theme of tyranny in Attic oratory or provide even coverage of the Thucydidean material . Nevertheless, I made the decision not to try to extend the coverage of the volume by inviting extra contributions (with the exception of the concluding essay by Robin Osborne). The reasons for this decision were twofold. First, I am doubtful whether complete coverage is possible in a single volume, even given the focus of the majority of essays on the world of Athens. Second , I was anxious to retain the lively interaction of the original participants without dilution. The reader is left to judge the success of this decision. The collection, for the most part, focuses on the conceptual force of tyranny rather than on historical instances of it. Although much interesting work on Archaic and Classical tyrants continues to be done, the ambition of the  conference was to examine tyranny as a foundational ideological force. While not every essay focuses on Athens (indeed, one of our most important conclusions is that an overly Athenocentric approach impoverishes ), all encompass themes that are crucial in our evaluation of Classical Athenian—and Greek—culture. The nature of authority and rule is a persistent worry in the construction of ancient ideology. The figure of the king or tyrant and the sovereignty associated with him provide a powerful source for political speculation and historical analysis. If tyrants had not existed, we and ix the Greeks would still have had to invent them as an indispensable tool for political analysis and construction. Thus this volume starts with ‘‘Imaginary Kings: Alternatives to Monarchy in Early Greece.’’ This is Sarah Morris’ lively attack on the notion of Bronze and Iron Age kingship, in which she forces us to reconsider the strategies by which we construct an originary past. In ‘‘Form and Content: The Question of Tyranny in Herodotus,’’ Carolyn Dewald explores the productive tension between a foundational despotic template associated with the Persian East and the stories of individual Greek despots, whose individualism seeks to escape the narrative template. This tension between an antityrannical template operating at the level of ideology and the unruly behavior of individuals and even citizen bodies is fundamental. It provides the best way to understand the conflicts and inconsistencies explored in the later essays. Kurt Raaflaub then surveys the centrality of tyranny for official fifth-century Athenian ideology in ‘‘Stick and Glue: The Function of Tyranny in Fifth-Century Athenian Democracy.’’ This essay presents the hard-line antityrannical stance of the demos and creates a standard against which later contributions will compare different visions of the nature of democratic authority. Richard Seaford’s examination, ‘‘Tragic Tyranny,’’ criticizes the majority of critics of tragedy for failing to understand the way tyranny operates within tragedy. This failure results from identifying the tragic tyrant with the interests of the polis and interpreting his downfall as a disaster for the community. Seaford’s insistence on the aetiological importance of the tyrant as opposer of the community’s best interests therefore falls into line with the ideological position staked out by Raaflaub. The two following essays, however, map out a different route over fifth-century terrain. ‘‘Dēmos Tyrannos: Wealth, Power, and Economic Patronage’’ by Lisa Kallet argues that the conspicuous use of wealth by the Athenian demos on a ‘‘tyrannical’’ scale reflects an aspect of tyrannical practice that the people would have found attractive and to which they could aspire. Jeffrey Henderson, too, suggests that the ‘‘acquisition of arguably tyrannical powers was considered by the majority of the Athenian demos to be a justifiable, indeed a legitimate ambition.’’ His essay, ‘‘Demos, Demagogue, Tyrant in Attic Old Comedy’’ examines how conjuring with the figure of the tyrant in Attic comedy helped to strengthen radical democracy and imperialism and...