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9-03-2015, 09:10

Tyrants' Domestic Policy

Slightly less problematic than the analysis of the rise of tyranny is the description of the tyrants’ rule in their communities. First, many tyrants - as one might

Figure 7.1 Hydria from Athens, circa 520, possibly depicting the Enneakrounos. Drawing and carrying water, incidentally, was a routine, backbreaking task for women in ancient Greece, one performed each day in the early morning before it got too hot. Cf. Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 98-100. Source: Marie-Lan Nguyen, Http://commons. wikimedia. org/ wiki/File:Public_fountain_MNA_Inv10924.jpg (accessed 14 January 2013) CC BY 2.5

Expect after the descriptions of the regimes which preceded them - were genuinely popular at the outset. A salient feature of many tyrants’ domestic policy - the construction of large public buildings for their communities - surely helps to explain this initial popularity.

Often such a building’s benefit to the community was immediate as with the large fountainhouse, the Enneakrounos (see Figure 7.1), which the Peisis-tratids in Athens (circa 560s to 511 BC) built in order to secure the city’s water supply (Thuc. II 15). Greece is a hot, thirsty place; and especially in the Summer months, when most rivers dry up, access to a dependable source of water is critical for a community. The Enneakrounos - the name means “nine heads - i. e., water-spouts” - was a great boon to the Athenians.

Theagenes of Megara (early sixth century BC?) provided the Megarians with a fountainhouse as well (Paus. I 40). One of the great engineering projects of the ancient world, the tunnel of Eupalinus (see Figure 7.2) on Samos (Hdt. III 60; Arist. Pol. 1313b) served the same purpose: the tunnel, which ran approximately one mile and connected the city of Samos with a dependable spring, secured Samos’ water supply even in the case of a siege by foreign enemies.

There are other examples of investments in what one today might call “infrastructure” to the long-term social and economic benefit of the community.