Basileus, tyrannos and polis. The Dynamics of Monarchy in Early Greece

Abstract

Summary The article scrutinizes the development of the forms of leadership in the Early Iron Age and Archaic Greece, questioning the traditional view that personal leadership as described in the Homeric epics (the ‚Homeric basileia‘) was the rule during the Early Iron Age, but was replaced in the Archaic period by collective aristocracies, and by tyrannies as a principally new kind of monarchy. The article questions the strict distinction between the ‚constitutional‘ forms of government like basileia and oligarchy, and tyrannis as an illegal break of the constitutional order. The Early Iron Age archaeology supplies no evidence for institutionalised and permanent personal leadership, and the Homeric epic, presenting a controversial vision of an ostensibly distant past, cannot be accepted as a reliable guide to the socio-political order of the Early Iron Age. The terms basileus and tyrannos were used largely synonymously until ca 400, demonstrating that the Archaic Greeks did not distinguish between legitimate basileia and illegal tyrannis in their contemporary world. The evidence, including the half-legendary accounts concerning particular poleis, suggests that the more or less firmly established monarchies emerged from the eighth century onwards. On the other hand, it infers constant tensions between competing elite groups striving for power, and the consequent fluctuation of the forms of government in the Archaic. The situation could have been similar during the Early Iron Age, which suggests that Early Iron Age Greeks were familiar with both collective and personal leadership. The emergence of tyrannies and collectively governed poleis can be seen as varying, alternative, ways of polity formation resulting from the quickening development and growing tensions from the eighth century onwards; the legitimacy of both depended on local circumstances. Tyranny appears not as a break of established aristocratic order, but as the monarchic form of elite leadership; the legitimacy of both depended on local circumstances. Tyranny appears as the monarchic form of elite leadership in the early polis, which proved, however, unacceptable in the long term as personal rule became increasingly regarded as an undesirable negation of consensual order.