Tyranny
In Greece
and Western Asia, mainly in Turkey, there was a period of time around
650-400 BC when many city-states were ruled
by tyrants. "Tyrant" is probably a Lydian word, from Western Asia. Tyrannies
usually grew out of oligarchies like this:
in an oligarchy, each of the aristocrats is always trying to get more
power than the others. But the other aristocrats keep them from doing
it.
But if one of the aristocrats thinks of asking for help from the poor
people, he can get ahead that way, and may make himself tyrant. So a
tyrant is like a king, but a king who does
not have the law or religion behind
him, and only rules because the poor people support him. Tyrants
are something like Mafia bosses like the Godfather.
Naturally the other aristocrats hated tyrants, and tried to stop them and go back to an oligarchy again. In order to stay in power, the tyrant has to promise the poor people that he will do good things for them, so they will support him. Usually the tyrant promises one or two of these things:
1) cancellation of debts
2) abolition of debt-bondage
3) redistribution of land.
You can see that tyrants are usually really good for the poor people, and only bad for the other aristocrats. In English today, tyrant means a bad king, but that is because the aristocrats hated tyrants, and in ancient Greece only the aristocrats could write.
One of the most famous tyrants was Pisistratus in Athens. Another was the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysos, whom Plato went to teach.
