Tyrant

In the Archaic Period, a monarch of a state where monarchy is not traditional. Tyrannies include harsh dictatorships set up by coups d’etat at one extreme, and dictatorships established for the leaders of popular revolts at the other. Tyrants tend to be more ‘hands-on’ monarchs than princes are, and less frequently appoint krites and polemarkhs than anaxoi do. They also tend to have less religious function than anaxoi. Tyrants of the popular type tend to allow many of their ministers and officers to be elected (see boule).

In the later periods, the heirs of most tyrants are kyrions, but if a tyrant was a hegemon, his descendants are kreions.

---

Copyright © 1991 by Brett Evill. All rights reserved.