Ancient Greece, as the source of Western civilization, has left countless valuable legacies for world culture, especially the city-state politics bred in the environment of mountainous islands and small countries and widows.
What we know more about is the democratic politics of the ancient Greek city-states, but in ancient Greece there is not only a kind of democracy, tyranny is a political system that we are not familiar with but did exist in the history of ancient Greece and had a great impact on the development and change of the political system.
Tyranny is a kind of dictatorship peculiar to ancient Greece, the so-called tyrants refer to those who do not follow legal procedures and do not have the authorization of citizens to usurp state power, that is, to usurp the political power originally enjoyed by citizens collectively. Usurpation means trespassing, that is, in a hierarchical society, people at a lower rank enjoy higher-level treatment or exercise higher-level powers without authorization.
Tyranny is a form of city-state government proposed by Plato, which refers to the military leaders, nobles, or anyone who gets the opportunity to seize power through a coup or civil war, and the military dictatorship established is the tyranny system. Tyranny existed mainly in ancient Greece from the 7th to the 6th century BC, when the old Greek system was disintegrating and the new political system was still in its infancy.
Aristotle gave a very extreme and inferior evaluation of "tyranny" in his book Political Science. But in fact, the tyranny that existed in ancient Greece was not exactly as bad as Aristotle described, and tyranny also contributed profoundly to the development of democracy in ancient Greece as a whole in the process of its emergence and development.
The American scholar Stavrianos described tyranny in his magnum opus General History of the Globe as follows: "The term tyrant refers to those who rule without legal rights, but the name does not carry any moral condemnation, and in fact tyrants usually support the common people against the privileged classes, and often accelerate the advent of democratic politics, although not always." "Most of the roles played by the early authentic tyrants were the transition period between the aristocratic and the civil community, and the later tyrants, although no longer following this process, still maintained the characteristics of tyrants in the form of governance.
Although as a short-lived polity, it has existed for a short time in history, but as a polity, it still has its perfect internal structure, not only the main constituent factors but also the object constituent factors. Although the tyrants under the tyrannical system use the individual as the representative of the supreme power and control the characteristics of the regime, it does not mean that the tyrant alone is in charge of the administrative, judicial, legislative and other affairs and rights.
At the same time as the tyranny system existed, the three major functions of the government were not concentrated on the tyrant because of its existence, but the functions of the government system in this period existed differently from the situation in other periods. Tyrannical regimes throughout history have existed for a short time, either ending in internal change or overthrown by violent revolutions.
Historically, tyrants have never directly called themselves tyrants during their reign, and they have more often referred to themselves as consuls or military chiefs. Most of the city-states of ancient Greece, such as Athens, Corinth, and Syracuse, had a system of tyranny. What we now call the "age of tyrants" usually ends with the expulsion of the Athenian tyrant Piscetratus from Athens in 511 BC, announcing the end of tyranny.
But in fact, after this, some new tyrants appeared on the Western continent, such as Rome and Persia, but their political and historical background and the political situation in which they existed have long been very different from the tyrants of the ancient Greek period. The tyranny that existed in the "tyrant era" was often produced in the process of Greek expansion, in its colonized urban areas, and the initial emergence was obviously formed to facilitate Greek rule, but in the process of its continuous development, the tyrant regimes of most of the city-states continued to grow stronger, gradually breaking away from the control of the mother state to form their own force. Syracuse, who defeated Carthage, was a typical form of government under the tyrant Goron.
From the meaning of tyranny, the use of the term "tyrant" even later than the era of "tyrant politics" existed. Tyrants have two main meanings, one is those who have obtained them through irregular means, and who have taken the rights they deserve, thus reaching the peak of their rights. The other refers to the ruler who, after gaining power, exerts tyranny and dictatorship. Thus, in most theories, the tyrannical system is considered to be the representative of the tyranny of the monarchical system, and the tyranny subject is made the opposite of the monarchy under the monarchical system. However, judging from the reality of tyranny politics, a large part of the tyrants are elected by the people, that is, the so-called "elected tyrants".
For the "elected tyrants", their legitimacy is determined by the system of public election, the people are elected by the exercise of public power, they are appointed according to law, the official position is not hereditary, and they are elected by the people to obtain legal possession of power as consuls. To some extent, "elected tyrants" have similarities with populist politics or oligarchy, but the political rights exercised in their time as rulers often go beyond their own rights, or they use tyranny to exercise dictatorship, which makes the rights they acquire long beyond the laws themselves, forming the characteristics of tyranny that conform to the law and exceed their rights.
In addition to this there are tyrants who have achieved personal dictatorship by despicable means, what we call authentic tyrants. It exists in the form of "a man, without any censorship, rules alone over all those who are equal to or superior to him, and proceeds only from his own selfish interests, with no regard for the interests of the ruled." But the most important thing preserved in the national consciousness of ancient Greece was the national character of attaching great importance to its own rights, and the Greek nation valued its sense of mission as a member of the city-state, so that the Greeks had a deep tradition of participating in political affairs about themselves. It is precisely in this way that tyranny violates the Greeks' own pursuits, and tyrants often do not have the support of the Greek people, and the basis of their rule is unstable, so the short life of tyranny can also be foreseen.
Tyranny is a special political system that emerged during the transition period of ancient Greek society, and its existence is not a historical accident from the perspective of historical development, and the emergence and existence of tyranny have its inevitability. Greek democracy is characterized by the distribution of public power to individual human beings according to their individual abilities. The problems that arise under such conditions that people of different identities and different statuses obtain their right to participate in state affairs through "talent", and the so-called "talent" often has no specific evaluation criteria, and there is no specific means and methods to measure its quantity.
"Wealth" has become the best evaluation criterion for their participation in political life, but wealth has not always been fixed, and with the rapid development of the economy, the gap in wealth has also been narrowing. The 7th to 6th centuries BC of the development of tyranny was also an era of rapid economic development and development in ancient Greece. During this period, the Greek population continued to grow, and the expansion of its territory became an important way to meet economic development. Commerce and handicrafts in this period also developed rapidly with the expansion of the territory, which made merchants and craftsmen who were not high in status begin to grasp a large amount of social wealth. These people held a lot of social wealth, so they gained more voice and political power in political affairs, and most of the early tyrants were wealthy merchants from the emerging class, which was determined by the economic background of their time.
With the extensive development of colonial expansion and the political cause of tyranny, the spread of Greece's own cultural system in foreign conquest and expansion is also a kind of civilizational aggression, so that the civilizational characteristics of Greece are added to a nation and region that was not originally Greek, and this "Hellenistic process" is a process of passive assimilation of colonial residents. In this process, in order to ensure the stability of the colonized area, it is necessary to find a Hellenistic political institution to rule and manage it, so that the existence of tyranny allows the tyrants to exercise "Hellenistic" rule under their dictatorship in the city-states under their jurisdiction, which is indispensable for stabilizing the entire political situation and promoting historical development.
If we look at it from the perspective of class, in fact, tyranny is the product of the struggle between the nobility and the commoners, and the fledgling commoner class needs representatives of its interests to appear and fight against the privileged class, which makes the tyrant seize a good historical opportunity to ascend to the throne and carry out his own autocratic rule in the name of the people. Democracy emerged after aristocratic politics, and the emergence of tyranny marked a turning point in the two wholes.
Although the tyranny system existed for a short time, as an important transitional government, it had a profound impact on the formation and development of several political systems in ancient Greece, and it promoted, hindered, and was more related to other political systems in ancient Greece. The most closely related to tyranny is the monarchy, the monarchy in ancient Greece developed very early and tyranny is a ruling order in which individual rights reach dominance, but its difference from tyranny is that the existence of the monarch is recognized by the people, and the existence of the tyrant only relies on its own rights to restrain the people, so Aristotle believes that tyranny is inferior and the monarchy is noble. At the same time, tyranny can also be regarded as a collection of populist politics and oligarchy, which excludes the elite and the nobility like a common government and distrusts the masses like oligarchy. The existence of tyranny makes people aware of the harm of the concentration of power, which itself represents an important historical process of development under the rule and rule of law of the ancient Greeks, and it is precisely by referring to the shortcomings of the tyranny system that the ideological proposition of the separation of powers between the supreme power constraint and checks and balances has been derived.
The emergence of tyranny represents an inevitable trend of historical development, although its own development is not good, and it can even be said that it is the representative of "evil" in that period, but on the whole, it has a very important historical role in maintaining the unified order of the Greek states during the period of expansion and the subsequent reference to democracy and the opening up of people's wisdom.
Resources:
"An Analysis of the Early Tyranny System in Ancient Greece", Journal of Liaocheng University, No. 2, 2004.
"A Brief Analysis of the Politics of Tyranny in Early Ancient Greece", Master's Thesis of Northeast Normal University.
"Research on the Tyranny System in Ancient Greece", Master's Thesis of Nanjing University.
"Greek Thinkers on Tyranny Politics", Master's Thesis of Tianjin Normal University.
"A Brief Analysis of the Politics of Greek Tyrants", Yinshan Academic Journal, No. 01, 2007.
"Evaluation of the Politics of Tyrants in Ancient Greece", Xi'an Social Sciences, No. 06, 2011.