The views expressed in the following chapters were first published in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1906 in a short paper which gave a few pages each to Samos and Athens and a few sentences each to Lydia, Miletus, Ephesus, Argos, Corinth, and Megara. The chapters on Argos, Corinth, and Rome are based on papers read to the Oxford Philological Society in 1913 and to the Bristol branch of the Classical Association in 1914. As regards the presentation of my material here, it has been my endeav

The seventh and sixth centuries B.C. constitute from many points of view one of the most momentous periods in the whole of the world’s history. No doubt the greatest final achievements of the Greek race belong to the two centuries that followed. But practically all that is meant by the Greek spirit and the Greek genius had its birth in the earlier period. Literature and art, philosophy and science are at this present day largely following the lines that were then laid down for them, and this is

Of all the tyrants of the seventh and sixth centuries none are so well known to us as those who reigned at Athens. No other city has left us so clear a picture of the state of things not only during the tyranny but also immediately before and after it. Solon lived to see Peisistratus make himself supreme. Herodotus, born a Persian subject about 484 B.C. , must have had opportunities of questioning first-hand authorities on the later years of the Athenian tyranny, while his younger contemporary T

The Samians had from early times been great shipbuilders and sailors. They were among the first of the Greeks to adopt the Corinthian invention of the trireme, somewhere about the year 700 B.C. [353] , and in most of the naval warfare of the next two hundred years they are found playing a prominent part [354] . Still more important were the achievements of their merchantmen. It was a Samian ship, commanded by Kolaios, that “sailing towards Egypt, put out for Platea (in Libya) ... and hugging the

Fig. 11. Psamtek I. The sixth century tyrants of Athens and Samos may be regarded with some probability as rulers who had come to their power by means of their wealth. Before proceeding to deal with the earlier Greek tyrants, as to whose antecedents the evidence is necessarily much more meagre and indecisive, it will be found convenient to turn our attention for a while to Egypt and Lydia. In both these states we shall find evidence, some of it very positive, that from the end of the eighth cent

In an enquiry into the connexions between the new form of government and the new form of wealth that both arose at the opening of the classical epoch Lydia has a special interest and importance for the reason that both coinage and tyranny are said on good authority to have been of Lydian origin. Considering how much Lydia was then in the background of the Greek world this fact by itself is suggestive. It becomes important to determine the dates, and connexions if any, of the first Lydian tyrant

Fig. 20. Early Aeginetan “tortoises.” Our earliest account of the one tyrant of Argos is found in Herodotus and runs as follows: “and from the Peloponnesus came Leokedes the son of Pheidon the tyrant of the Argives, that Pheidon who created for the Peloponnesians their measures and behaved quite the most outrageously of all the Greeks, who having removed the Eleian directors of the games himself directed the games at Olympia [792] .” Pheidon belonged to the royal house of Temenos [793] , and app

ἡ μὲν δὴ πόλις ἡ τῶν Κορινθίων μεγάλη τε καὶ πλουσία διὰ παντὸς ὑπῆρξεν, ἀνδρῶν τε ηὐπόρησεν ἀγαθῶν εἴς τε τὰ πολιτικὰ καὶ εἰς τὰς τέχνας τὰς δημιουργικάς. Strabo VIII. 382. In the passage of Thucydides [945] in which he associates the origin of tyranny with the acquisition of wealth, one other development is mentioned as characteristic of the age. “Greece began to fit out fleets and took more to the sea.” If the views expressed in the last chapter are not entirely mistaken, then in Greece Prope

“All the historical labours bestowed on the early centuries of Rome will, in general, be wasted.”—Sir George Cornewall Lewis, On the Credibility of Early Roman History (1855), vol. II. p. 556. At the time of the birth of Herodotus, which took place about the year 484 B.C. , Polycrates, Peisistratus, and Croesus had been dead less than fifty years: in Corinth and Sicyon it was not more than a century since the tyranny had been suppressed. The historian had probably met people who remembered the t

The tyranny at Sicyon lasted longer than in any other Greek state [1296] . It started about the same time as that of Cypselus at Corinth and continued in the same family for about a century. The tyrants rested their power on the support of the pre-Dorian population of their city, and the establishment of the tyranny was probably to a large extent a racial movement representing a rising of the pre-Dorian stratum of the population against their Dorian conquerors. How the tyrant family secured its

Stress has been laid on the influence that has been exercised by Dionysius of Syracuse upon all who have written about the early tyranny since he came to power. This of course does not mean that the military-demagogue type of tyrant, of which Dionysius is the supreme example, was never at all anticipated in any of its features by any of the rulers of the seventh and sixth centuries. Nor does it mean that the new order of things that culminated in Dionysius completely swamped the old. Aristotle h

The age of the first known metal coins is also the age of the first rulers to be called tyrants. Ancient evidence and modern analogy both suggest that the new form of government was based on the new form of capital. The modern analogy is to be found in the financial revolution which has largely replaced metal coins by paper (thereby rendering capital very much more mobile, just as was done by the financial revolution of the age of the tyrants) and has led many people to fear a new tyranny of wea

The value of the various items of evidence collected and reviewed in the preceding chapters varies very greatly. In some cases we have precise statements bearing closely on the point in question and made by almost contemporary writers. At the other end of the list we have anecdotes of doubtful relevance and doubtful authenticity found in writers who lived centuries after the period to which they refer. It is difficult to sum up the value of so miscellaneous a collection. The estimate is bound to

But granted that the various items of evidence that we have so far collected have all a real historical value, and granted too that they lend one another a considerable amount of mutual support, there is a further line of criticism that deserves a careful consideration. The evidence may all be true and yet the inferences that have been drawn from it be false, or at least ill-balanced and misleading. Kings and tyrants have in all ages tended to be extremely rich. In most ages great riches have be

The agricultural or pastoral explanation of the party that supported Peisistratus has no inherent probability [1485] . Of course if it was specifically stated on good authority that in his days people of either of these two classes played the decisive part in politics, objections would be silenced. But the ancient evidence points all the other way. Aristotle repeatedly states that of all people farmers and herdsmen are least prone to support revolutions [1486] , and definitely pictures these two

Fig. 43. Dipylon vase. The outstanding facts in the history of Attic pottery are these. During the dark ages Attic pottery takes perhaps the foremost place in the whole of Greece Proper. The dominant ware of this period is of a well defined style generally known as Geometric, of which the Attic “Dipylon” ware (fig. 43) is a superior and well represented variety [1526] , that appears to have been in considerable request beyond the borders of Attica [1527] . The period of eclipse for Attic pottery

The earliest naval battle known to Thucydides was fought between the Corinthians and the Corcyraeans in 664 B.C. [1568] . The Dipylon ships are built with rams (fig. 45. a ), which by itself sufficiently shows their warlike character [1569] . Some of them are depicted fighting, or with fallen sailors lying all around (fig. 45. c ) [1570] , a fact which led Kroker [1571] to date them after 664 B.C. If Kroker’s argument was sound, they would have to be dated later still, for it is highly unlikely

Thucydides [1637] quotes Athenian dress in the introductory chapters of his first book to illustrate his thesis that civilization and comfort are extremely modern things. He divides Athenian history from this standpoint into three periods, the first that when men went about armed, the second that of luxurious Ionic fashions, and the third that in which they reverted to simple or rational dress ( μετρία ἐσθής ). It is difficult to date the beginning of Thucydides’ second period later than the fir

Among the Forum vases that look late are some skyphoi like the “Later Ionic” of Sieveking and Hackl’s Munich Catalogue, e.g. Notiz. 1903, p. 137, fig. 17, pp. 407 f., figs. 36, 42, 55, 57 (the last two from the same grave as fig. 53, see ibid. fig. 52). These skyphoi are closely related to a series of small, flat, handleless bowls similarly decorated, Notiz. 1903, p. 137, fig. 17, p. 388, figs. 14, 15 (grave G), p. 409, fig. 39 (grave I), p. 425, fig. 56 (grave K): for the stylistic connexion cp

Servius declares that the people of Rome and other cities originally buried all their dead within the city and actually within the house [1647] . The latter statement appears to be an inference from the worship of the lares, “people used all to be buried in their own houses, whence has arisen the practice of worshipping the lares within the house,” but may be none the less true for that reason [1648] . Intramural burials are prohibited in the Twelve Tables, “ hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepelito