TYRANT (Gr. r6pavvos, master, ruler)

This article appears in Volume V27, Page 548 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: TUM-VAN

TYRANT (Gr. r6pavvos, master, ruler) , a

term

TERM

applied in

modern

MODERN

times to a ruler of a cruel and oppressive

character

CHARACTER (Gr. xapareri7p, from xap&crew, to scratch)

. This use is, however, based on a complete misapprehension of the application of the

Greek

GREEK
GREEK, ETRUSCAN AND

word, which implied nothing more than unconditional

sovereignty

SOVEREIGNTY

. Such rulers are not, as is often supposed, confined to a single period, the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. (the so-called " Age of the Tyrants ") of

Greek

GREEK
GREEK, ETRUSCAN AND

history, but appear sporadically at all times, and are frequent in the later city-states of the Greek world. The use of the

term

TERM

tyrant

TYRANT (Gr. r6pavvos, master, ruler)

" in the bad sense is due largely to the ultra-constitutionalists of the 4th

century

CENTURY (from Lat. centuria, a division of a hundred men)

in Athens, to whom the

democracy

DEMOCRACY (Gr. 3np.oKparia, from S)ľos, the people, i.e. the commons, and Kparos, rule)

of Pericles was the ideal of government. Thus the government which Lysander set up in Athens at the close of the Peloponnesian War is called that of the " Thirty Tyrants " (see

CRITIAS

CRITIAS

). The same term is applied to those Roman generals (really 18) who usurped authority locally under Gallienus.

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