Death to Tyrants! (4 page)

13
Harmodios and Aristogeiton killed Hipparchos, the brother of the tyrant Hippias, in 514. See the “Oath of Demophantos” section in
chapter 1
.

14
A full discussion of the Eretrian, Athenian (Eukrates), and Ilian law is found, respectively, in
chapters 2
,
3
, and
6
.

15
A full discussion of the texts from Eresos and Erythrai is found, respectively, in
chapters 4
and
5
.

16
The combination of several factors supports that assertion. First, Sparta—the sole hegemonic power in the Greek world immediately after the Peloponnesian War—sought to establish an oligarchic order in Hellas. See, for example, Diod. Sic. 14.10, 14.13. Second, the Athenian
dunatoi
—those in power in Athens after the Spartans defeated the Athenians—also supported an oligarchic order in the Aegean. Note, admittedly with reference to 411, the actions by Athenian anti-democrats to overthrow the
dēmos
and establish oligarchy in various Aegean poleis: Thuc. 8.64.1, 65. Third, it is unlikely that another large polis would have championed democracy, being a model and defender: Syracuse was governed by the “tyrant” Dionysos I (ruled 406–367), and Argos was not a very influential polis at this time. Fourth, democracy had been discredited: Athens, the paradigmatic example of democratic government, (foolishly) invaded Sicily with tragic results, lost the war with oligarchic Sparta, and suffered through a brutal stasis. It is reasonable to suppose, then, that it would take some time before a sufficient number of individuals in a given polis could convince their (non-thetic) citizens to adopt that form of
politeia
.

17
See the conclusion to
chapter 4
.

18
I am unaware of any overt criticism or problematizing of tyrant killing in ancient Greece on general, theoretical grounds. Aeschylus's
Oresteia
, however, appears to come close: Orestes is clearly depicted as a tyrant killer (e.g.,
Cho
. 973), yet he must stand trial and is barely acquitted (
Eum
. 752–753), and the furies, who drove Orestes to become a tyrant killer (i.e., to take the law into his own hands, as it were) are escorted beneath the earth (
Eum
. 1007, 1023) and largely rendered inoperable in the future. It is possible that the recent and no doubt politically motivated assassination of Ephialtes convinced Aeschylus that unreflective praise of tyrant killing could actually harm the community. In addition, there are examples of certain individuals finding fault with specific anti-tyranny acts. For example, Aratos, a prominent leader of the Achaean League during the second half of the third century, was apparently tried in absentia before the Mantineians and fined for plotting to depose Aristippos, the tyrant of Argos (Plut.
Arat
. 25). And according to Plutarch (
Tim
. 5), some men in Korinth—those who “could not bear to live in a democracy”—were outraged by the assassination of Timophanes, the tyrant of Korinth.

19
Aristotle: “accordingly high honors are awarded to one who kills a tyrant”; Xenophon: “cities heap honors on one who kills a tyrant”; Isokrates: “those who kill [tyrants] receive the highest rewards from their fellow citizens”; Polybios: “the killer of a traitor or tyrant everywhere receives honors and the front seat at festivals.”

20
Plutarch writes (
Phil
. 21.5) that, after he died, the citizens of many cities erected statues of Philopoimen and gave him honors.

21
Another interesting indication of the widespread praise for tyrannicide: the people of Messana reportedly brought their children to a theater to witness the torture and execution of their tyrant Hippo (Plut.
Tim
. 34). One should also note that Aeneas Tacticus (10.16–17) apparently advised the public announcing of rewards that would be given to a tyrant killer. This can be taken as an indication of the popularity of tyrant-killing legislation. On the passage in Aeneas Tacticus, see Whitehead (1990: 125) and the note on pp. 58–59 of the Loeb edition.

22
That the number of potential pro-democrats (i.e., the poor) in a given city was greater than the potential number of anti-democrats (i.e., the rich) is asserted and discussed by Aristotle (
Pol
. 1279b11–1280a6).

23
For an extended analysis of unilateral deterrence, see Zagare and Kilgour (2000: 133–66).

I

The Invention of Tyrant-Killing
Legislation

1

The Decree of Demophantos

Introduction

The history of democratic governance in Athens nearly ended in 404. In the spring of that year, the Athenians surrendered to the Spartans, thereby losing both the lengthy Peloponnesian War (431–404) and their naval empire. During the following several months, enterprising anti-democrats diligently worked within their network of conspiratorial clubs in order to overthrow the Athenian democracy and establish a
politeia
inspired by the Spartan system.
¹
The conspiracy of the oligarchs culminated in late summer 404, during a notorious meeting of the Athenian assembly wherein the
dēmos
, under strong pressure from the Spartan admiral Lysander, ratified a decree establishing a board of thirty men to “draw up the ancestral laws according to which they would govern” (Xen.
Hell
. 2.3.2).
²
Those thirty men, known to history as the Thirty Tyrants, subsequently dominated the polis. With help from a Spartan garrison, they controlled the council and other magistrates and restricted citizenship to three thousand men; those excluded from citizenship—if not executed—were disarmed and scattered. Athens thus became an oligarchic, Spartan client state.

That democratic rule in Athens did not permanently end in 404 must be attributed in large part to the fact that individuals opposed to the rule of the Thirty Tyrants successfully mobilized to reinstate the recently overthrown democracy. The pro-democracy movement began in the winter of 404/3 when Thrasyboulos and perhaps as few as thirty men set out from Thebes and secured Phyle, a hill approximately twenty kilometers north of the Athenian acropolis.
³
Within a month or so, the rebels' numbers swelled to seven
hundred, then to a thousand, then to well over twelve hundred.
⁴
Eventually, Thrasyboulos had a sufficient number of men and the necessary confidence to march to the Piraeus, where he was joined by the “whole
dēmos
” (
Ath
.
Pol
. 38.3). The rebels fought two pitched battles in the Piraeus. In the first, the battle of Mounichia, they defeated the Thirty's forces, killing over seventy of their men, including Kritias, that regime's most prominent member (Xen.
Hell
. 2.4.11–22). They fought their second battle against a force led by Pausanias, a Spartan king. The fighting in that battle was particularly fierce, with Thrasyboulos's forces taking most of the casualties: 150 were killed (Xen.
Hell
. 2.4.30–35). Nevertheless, the rebel force's performance convinced the Spartans to withdraw their support from the Thirty and accept democratic rule in Athens: it simply would have been too costly to prop up an oligarchy in the face of an obviously coordinated and motivated majority who opposed it.

The successful mobilization in defense of Athens's democracy is so familiar to students of the city's history that it is easy to overlook just how surprising an accomplishment it actually was. Why, for example, did Thrasyboulos and his thirty-odd supporters think that it was worth taking the risk to launch a direct and conspicuous attack against the Thirty? And why did so many other individuals subsequently follow them? Everybody must have known that the Thirty and their allies would easily crush the rebellion, if the democratic forces remained small. What, then, convinced individuals that, should they join in the movement, a sufficient number of other individuals would follow them and that the rebellion might thus actually succeed? That is a very important question, the answer to which may provide insight into the sociopolitical basis of the remarkable refoundation of the Athenian democracy.

This chapter accounts for the successful mobilization in defense of Athens's democracy. I begin by exploring the collective response by citizens in Athens to the coup of the Four Hundred (411), an experience that taught the Athenians important lessons about mobilization in defense of their democracy. Two significant points emerge from that discussion. First, individuals in
Athens did not respond to the coup initially because they had what I call a “revolutionary coordination problem”: many wanted to oppose the coup, but, because of the great risk that that involved, each individual waited for others to act before he did. Thus nobody acted. Second, the conspicuous assassination of Phrynichos, a prominent figure in the regime of the Four Hundred, set in motion a “revolutionary bandwagon”: that public act of defiance encouraged others to oppose the regime, which, in turn, encouraged yet others to act.
⁵
As a result, the previously quiescent individuals were able to mobilize en masse against the regime of the Four Hundred.

The second part of this chapter examines the consequence of the fact that all Athenians swore the oath of Demophantos—an oath mandated by the very first decree promulgated by the
dēmos
after they regained control of the city in (probably) June 410. I argue that, by swearing the oath of Demophantos, the Athenians greatly increased the likelihood that, should the Athenian democracy be overthrown once again, pro-democrats would not be paralyzed by a revolutionary coordination problem; instead, somebody would commit a conspicuous act of defiance that would set in motion a revolutionary bandwagon and thus enable a large-scale mobilization in defense of the democracy. This interpretation thus strongly suggests that the Athenians did, in fact, learn about the dynamic of revolutionary action from their experience with the coup of the Four Hundred and thus prepared themselves for similar events in the future. And that leads to the chapter's third and final section wherein I demonstrate that the successful mobilization against the Thirty Tyrants should be attributed, in part, to the fact that all Athenians swore the oath of Demophantos.

The Coup of the Four Hundred

I begin with two questions about the collective response of individuals in Athens to the coup of the Four Hundred. First, why were the citizens then in Athens initially unable to work together in order to oppose the coup? Subsequent events demonstrate that the vast majority of those individuals wanted to do so. And if they all just did what they all wanted to do, they easily would have overwhelmed the Four Hundred. Yet they did nothing, and the oligarchs dominated Athens for four months (roughly June 411–September 411). Second, why were those formerly quiescent individuals eventually able to work together to overthrow the Four Hundred? Something must have radically altered the calculus of decision for each individual and thus the underlying operative macro-dynamic, for when the people rose up, they did so remarkably quickly and the Four Hundred surrendered immediately.

In order to answer those two questions, I analyze Thucydides's account of the coup of the Four Hundred in light of a theory of revolutionary action developed by the social scientist Timur Kuran.
⁶
Thucydides himself offered important sociological analysis to account for the events he described: his emphasis on the paralyzing effect of fear compounded with ignorance, for example, is an important case in point. Kuran's theoretical insights, however, provide the historian even better insight into the underlying causes of significant group action and inaction during that coup. In particular, the theory explains how the behavior of one individual affects the behavior of other individuals and thus the behavior of an entire group. And that, in turn, will help account for the paradoxical acquiescence and sudden resistance to the Four Hundred by the citizens in Athens.
⁷

COORDINATION PROBLEM

The movement that eventually overthrew the Athenian democracy originated in the late fall of 412 among influential Athenians stationed with the Athenian fleet on the island of Samos.
⁸
Thucydides, a primary source for the coup and its accompanying intrigue, wrote that those influential men received a message from Alcibiades, the infamous Athenian then in exile and likely residing with Tissaphernes (the Persian satrap of Sardeis): He desired to return to Athens, he apparently told them, but only if that city were governed by an oligarchy and not the “base democracy” that had exiled him three years earlier. He also hinted at the possibility of securing for Athens the friendship—and thus financial support—of Tissaphernes. The Athenian aristocrats at Samos, who were
already
set on overthrowing the Athenian democracy, then secretly traveled to meet with Alcibiades in person. In that meeting, Alcibiades apparently promised to secure Persian assistance (even that of the king himself) for the Athenian war against the Spartans, but, again, only if Athens was no longer governed democratically. The men, no doubt delighted with the news, then returned (without Alcibiades) to Samos
and formed a conspiracy to overthrow the Athenian democracy (Thuc. 8.47.2–48.2).

The members of the newly formed conspiracy, after successfully manipulating the Athenian naval rank and file stationed at Samos, sent Peisandros along with some other men to Athens to work for the recall of Alcibiades and the “overthrow of the
dēmos
” (Thuc. 8.49). After he arrived in the city, Peisandros addressed the Athenian assembly, presenting a logical, yet ultimately disingenuous argument. According to Thucydides (8.53), he asserted that the war against the Spartans threatened the very existence of the Athenian state, that the Athenians currently did not have enough resources to defend themselves, and that the Persian king would provide such resources, but only if the Athenians recalled Alcibiades and instituted a “different type of democracy.” The logical consequence of the argument, of course, is that the Athenians should choose not to govern themselves democratically at all: the survival of the polis is prior to the form of its
politeia
. There were vocal skeptics, but Peisandros managed to persuade the assembly as a whole—at least to the extent that the
dēmos
decided to send him and ten other men to meet with Alcibiades and Tissaphernes in order to learn the details (Thuc. 8.54.2).
⁹