The tyrant welds together the opposing parties.
§ 37. In the shocking condition of cities like Athens before Peisistratus, or the Megara of Theognis, we may even go so far as to say that, without an interval during which both parties were taught simply to obey, no reasonable political life was possible. The haughty noble must be taught that he too had a master; he must be taught to treat his plebeian brother as another man, and not merely as a beast of burden. The poor must learn that they could be protected from every rich man's oppression, that they could follow their business in peace, and that they could appeal to a sovran who ruled by their sympathy and would listen to their voice.
Cases of an umpire voluntarily appointed.
There were even a few cases where the opposing parties voluntarily elected a single man, such as Pittacus or Solon, as umpire, and where their trust was nobly requited. But even in less exceptional cases, such as that of Peisistratus of Athens, I make bold to say that the constitution of Cleisthenes would not have succeeded, had not the people received the training in peace and obedience given them by the Peisistratid family. The despots may have murdered or exiled the leading men; they at all events welded the people into some unity, some homogeneity, if it were merely in the common burdens they inflicted, and the common antipathies they excited. And this is the most adverse view that can be urged. The picture we have of Peisistratus, especially in the Polity of the Athenians of recent fame, is that of a just and kindly man, wielding
his power of coercion for the general happiness of his subjects.
Services of the tyrants to art.
Examples.
This then was the political value of the early tyrants, and a feature in them which is generally overlooked. Their services to the artistic progress of Greece in art and literature are more manifest, and therefore less ignored. The day of great architectural works, such as the castles and tombs of Argolis, the draining of Lake Copais, had passed away with the absolute rulers of pre-historic times. Even Agamemnon and his fellows, who probably represent a later stage in Greek society, would not have dared to set their subjects to such task-work. So long as there were many masters in each city and State, all such achievements were impossible. With the tyrants began again the building of large temples, the organizing of fleets, the sending out of colonies, the patronage of clever handicrafts, the promoting of all the arts. It was the care of Peisistratus for the study of Homer, and no doubt for other old literature, which prepared the Athenian people to understand Æschylus. Nay, this tyrant is said to have specially favoured the nascent drama, and so to have led the way to the splendid results that come upon us, with apparent suddenness, in liberated Athens. The Orthagorids, the Cypselids, and single tyrants such as Polycrates of Samos and Pheidon of Argos, did similar services for Greek art: they organized fleets and promoted commerce; they had personal intercourse of a more definite and intimate kind with one another than
States as such can possibly have; they increased the knowledge and wealth of the lower classes, as well as their relative position in the State; and so out of apparent evil came real good[86:1].
