Author Description

Review excerpt from The American Political Science Review, Volume 16: The Origin of Tyranny is an extremely interesting and well-written discussion of the earlier Greek tyrants, including also Rome, Lydia and the Saite dynasty of Egypt, with especially careful utilization of the archaeological evidence. The author shows that the source of the tyrant's power in the earlier period was primarily financial and commercial; this is true for the Peisistratids also. They do not per se represent a democratic reaction against the nobility. The later conception of the tyrants in Plato and Aristotle is anachronistic, being derived primarily from the Syracusan despots of their day.