Tyranny in the City-State of Corinth, 657–585 B.C.E.

In some city-states, competition among the social elite became so bitter that a single family would suppress all its rivals and establish itself in rule. The family’s leader thus became a tyrant, a dictator who gained political dominance by force. Tyrants usually rallied support by promising support for poor citizens, such as public employment schemes. Since few tyrants successfully passed their dominance on to their heirs, tyrannies tended to be short-lived.

Tyrants usually preserved their city-states’ existing laws and political institutions. If a city-state had an assembly, for example, the tyrant would allow it to continue to meet, expecting it to follow his direction. Although today the word tyrant indicates a brutal or unwanted leader, tyrants in Archaic Greece did not always fit that description. Ordinary Greeks evaluated tyrants according to their behavior, opposing the ruthless and violent ones but accepting the fair and generous ones.

The most famous early tyranny arose at Corinth in 657 B.C.E., when the family of Cypselus rebelled against the city’s harsh oligarchic leadership. Corinth’s location on the isthmus controlling land access to the Peloponnese and a huge amount of seaborne trade made it the most prosperous city-state of the Archaic Age. Cypselus “became one of the most admired of Corinth’s citizens because he was courageous, prudent, and helpful to the people, unlike the oligarchs in power, who were insolent and violent,” according to a later historian. Cypselus’s son succeeded him at his death in 625 B.C.E. and aggressively continued Corinth’s economic expansion by founding colonies to increase trade. He also pursued commercial contacts with Egypt. Unlike his father, the son lost popular support by ruling harshly. He held on to power until his death in 585 B.C.E., but the hostility he had provoked soon led to the overthrow of his own heir. The social elite, to prevent tyranny, then installed an oligarchic government based on a board of officials and a council.