THE ORIGIN OF TYRANNY.*
PROFESSOR Urtz has written a fascinating book on the Greek world in the seventh and sixth centuries before Christ, with
the object of showing that its problems were in some respects comparable to those of our own day. His theory is :— " That the seventh and sixth century Greek tyrants were the first men in their various cities to realize the political possi- bilities of the new conditions created by the introduction of the new coinage, and that to a large extent they owed their position as tyrants to a financial or commercial supremacy which they had already established before they attained to supreme political power in their several States."
Ho regards such despots as Peisistratus at Athens, Cleisthenes at Sicyon, Gyges in Lydia, Psammetichus I. in Egypt, and the Tarquins at Rome as analogous to the Medici in Florence or the ]3entivogli in Bologna—wealthy merchants and bankers who by their riches gained control of the State. He infers that the invention of a metal coinage must have given the Greek merchants their opportunity, just as the development of banking, international loans and bills of exchange helped the Medici to acquire immense wealth, or as the modem evolution of the limited company and the credit system have concentrated enormous power in the hands of a few great financiers in Europe and America. It is an attractive theory which gives coherence to a mass of scattered stories and traditions, and throws light on a most obscure period in the history of Greece. In support of it, Professor Ure marshals a mass of evidence and conjecture, partly from literary sources, partly from modem archaeological researches in which he himself has played a distinguished part. There is much to be said for his plea that, while bygone scholars were unduly credulous, modem students, in face of the received accounts, carry scepticism to excessive lengths. He outlines, by way of example, the destructive criticism that would have been applied to the story of King Alfred, if the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Asser's life had not survived to prove that Alfred was not, as the legend of the cakes suggests, "a vegetation deity of the same order as Demeter." We are reminded of Whately's Historic Doubts Concerning the Existence of Napoleon Emsap2rte, the classic satire on the over-sceptical.
We shall not attempt to follow the author's closely woven argument, which shows very wide knowledge of recent work and abundant ingenuity. Its merit lies in the assumption of ordinary human motives to explain men's actions in those remote days. When Aristotle tells us that Thales, the philosopher of Miletus, foreseeing a plentiful olive harvest, made a fortune by buying up all the oil-presses in advance, it is clear, whether the story is true or not, that commercial methods were much the same then as now. There is nothing inconceivable in the view that Peisistratus became, as the Americans would say, the " boss " of sixth-century Athens by first of all building up a fortune out of the silver-mines of Lauriura and of Thrace—in the Strums valley which we now call Macedonia—and then organ- izing the miners' vote. The miners in his day were free men and probably, as in South Wales and other mining communities and indeed as in the modem Lauriura, were a mixed population unhamperedbythetraditions of the old Attica and its well-defined parties, the men of the plain and the coast. It is comprehen- sible that a shrewd and daring man, backed by his crowds of well-paid miners, could have overcome the older factions. We can thus understand why the Persian conquest of Thrace coin- cided with the fall of Hippies, son of Peisistratus, who thus lost a main source of his family wealth and could not bribe his supporters so lavishly as before. We can understand why Peisistratus himself spent vast sums on public works, such as the temple of Zeus, which gave employment to vast numbers of skilled artisans. It is easy to see, moreover, why Pericles, a member of the great Alcmaeonid family, which had been deprived of power by the tyrant, was careful on the one hand to provide abundant employment f or the workmen in the adornment of Athens and on the other hand to pay citizens for performing their duties on the council and the jury for which they were selected by lot. The rich man, under this system, could no longer exercise an overwhelming political influence. On the contrary, he was at a disadvantage ; "to make a public display of wealth became a perilous thing." Trades and handi- crafts were allowed to pass to aliens and slaves, while the citizens devoted themselves to politics and war, and sneered at commerce. All this becomes more intelligible if the tyranny
• The Origin of rromay. By P. N. Um. Cambridge : et the University Pram fads. new
to which the Athenians looked back with horror was in fact the rule of an over-mighty Silver Trust president, - Professor Ure's chapter on the Tarquins at Rome is specially interesting because he shows how recent discoveries in the city and elsewhere confirm—or at any rate lend probability to— the statements of the 'early historians, to the effect that Tar- quiiaius Prisons was the son of a Corinthian merchant, Demaratus, who emigrated with skilled workmen to Cometo, in Etruria. Priseus is said to have built shops round the Forum, Servius Tullius is associated with a copper coinage, and Tarquinius Superbus, the last king, is recorded by Livy and Dionysius to have employed large numbers of free workmen on public under- takings. Like Hippias at Athens, Tarquin the Proud seems to have lost his power when his funds were exhausted. Professor Um points to the finds of early Corinthian pottery and Greek term cottas in Etruria and at Rome itself as showing that there must be a substratum of truth in these stories. And, as at Athens, so in Republican Rome we find repeated evidence of the fear which very rich men inspired in the aristocratic class which controlled the State. Thus Spurius Cassius and Cpurius Maelius both came to grief because they spent largo sums in distributing corn to the hungry poor. If the Tarquins were in fact commercial men who acquired excessive power through their wealth, the Roman Senate's prejudice against ambitious millionaires is explicable enough. Professor Ure has, we think, substantiated his main contention, though many details in his argument, as he admits, are conjectural and controversial. In any case his book imparts fresh interest to an important and difficult period of Greek and Mediterranean history.
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