GREECE
BY JEFFREY S. CARNES
Th e famous quotation from Aristotle “Man is a political ani-
mal” actually means “Man is an animal that lives in a polis”—
that is, in a relatively small city that is self-governing and not
subject to the control of a larger governmental entity. (Polis is
usually translated as “city-state.”) Th e entire history of Greek
self-government from the earliest records (ca. 1200 b.c.e.) to
the time of Alexander (late fourth century b.c.e.) is the history
of such poleis, over 1,000 in number and ranging in size from
a few thousand inhabitants to perhaps 300,000 in Athens at
the height of its power in the mid-fi ft h century. Th ere must
have been a tremendous variety of systems of government, the
details of which are mostly lost to us, but they can be broken
down into three basic types. Cities were ruled by a single indi-
vidual (whether a king or a tyrannos, a word which did not yet
have the negative connotations of “tyrant”); by a small group,
either a hereditary aristocracy or an economic elite (typically
called an oligarchy, literally “rule by the few”); or by the entire
citizen body, the demos (democracy, a Greek invention).
THE AGE OF KINGS
Our information about Greek political systems before about
700 b.c.e. comes primarily from the epic poetry of Homer
and Hesiod. Th ese poems show us a world in which poleis
are ruled by individuals known as basileis, or kings. Th ere
is evidence for kingship dating back to Mycenaean times
(ca. 1600–1100 b.c.e.) in the form of inscriptions in the early
Greek syllabic writing system known as Linear B, and since
Homer’s Iliad (probably written down in its current form
around 700 b.c.e.) was the result of a long oral tradition, we
can be confi dent that much of the material there refl ects ear-
lier practices.
Th e Greek basileus (king) diff ered in many respects from
the kings more familiar to us in European history. To begin
with, given the relatively small size of most poleis, the area
and resources controlled by even a powerful basileus were not
large. Based on the (probably exaggerated) fi gures for troop
strength in the Iliad, combined with what can be surmised
about ancient population sizes, the most powerful leaders of
the Homeric era ruled over kingdoms of perhaps 100,000 in-
dividuals, and most of them substantially fewer. Moreover,
the power of these kings seems to have been limited both
in peace and in war. Th e version of the Trojan War told by
Homer has a Greek expeditionary force made up of several
dozen basileis, each leading his own contingent of troops,
with Agamemnon in command by virtue of having brought
the largest army. He is shown using whatever force or per-
suasion he can to get the leaders of the coalition to follow
him, but nowhere does Homer suggest that Agamemnon has
absolute legal or moral authority over them. When Achilles
quarrels with Agamemnon and withdraws from the war, the
other Greek leaders are displeased with his action, but none
questions his right to take his ships and go home.
Kings seem to have ruled with a certain degree of con-
sent from their subjects; in both the Iliad and Odyssey they
call assemblies to seek advice from other nobles. Hesiod,
in his Th eogony, explicitly values kings for their wisdom in
judging and settling disputes: “In the assembly... wrongs
are righted [by kings] with gentle persuasion”; elsewhere he
speaks of bad kings as “devourers of bribes.” As Greeks’ con-
ceptions of justice evolved, their views of the gods came to
be infl uenced by their views of kingship, with Zeus serving
as a representation of the ideal king. By the seventh century
b.c.e., however, kingship was essentially unknown in Greece
and was considered a form of government practiced by for-
eign peoples.THE AGE OF TYRANTS
Th e word tyrannos, apparently of non-Greek origin, fi rst ap-
pears in the mid-sixth century b.c.e. applied to Gyges, the
ruler of Lydia, a non-Greek kingdom in Asia Minor. Unlike
its modern derivative tyrant, the word was not necessarily
pejorative: A tyrant was simply an individual who held sole
power in the state. Th e tyrannos was in many ways similar to
a king, the chief diff erence being that a tyrant generally pos-
sessed no hereditary claim to his position. Of course, most
tyrants wished to pass on power to their descendants: Gyges,
for example, aft er acquiring power by murdering the king,
founded a dynasty that ruled Lydia for over 100 years, and he
is usually referred to as a king himself despite his illegitimate
acquisition of the throne.
Tyrants were a varied lot, with diff erent reasons for com-
ing to power and widely varying styles of rule. In the early
days tyranny seems to have been a response to a change in
social conditions that was driven largely by a change in war-
fare tactics, namely, the switch to hoplite warfare in the early
seventh century. Hoplites were heavily armed foot soldiers
who fought in tight formation, making the cohesiveness of
the army of paramount importance. Hoplites came from nei-
ther the richest classes (who could aff ord to keep and train
horses and therefore formed the cavalry) nor the poorest
(who could not aff ord hoplite armor). Th is “middle class”
naturally wanted a greater share of political power, and came
into confl ict with the established aristocracy. In this situation
tyrants arose—paradoxically enough—as champions of the
middle class. Th is theory, fi rst put forward by Aristotle in his
Politics, is confi rmed for some poleis and quite plausible for
others. In Athens the reforms of Solon in the 590s b.c.e. gave
the lower property classes more power, and Solon specifi cally
rejected taking on the role of tyrant—yet when these reforms
proved insuffi cient to maintain harmony, a tyranny arose
some 30 years later under Peisistratus. In Sparta, by contrast,
the hoplite class was offi cially composed of equals and had a
large share in ruling the state; this may be the reason there
was never a tyranny in Sparta. At any rate, the Age of Tyrants
can be seen as a necessary precondition for the creation of
democracy, since it was an era in which political rights were
being given to ever-increasing segments of the population.government organization: Greece 527