[Sidenote: _Reductio ad absurdum_ of the popular view.]
But if the _tyrannis_ was so unmixed an evil, how comes it to have been a constant and permanent phenomenon in Greek politics? Man may indeed, as Polybius says, be the most gullible of all animals, though professing to be the most sagacious, and may ever be ready to fall into the same snares that he has seen successful in entrapping others[82:2]. But surely it exceeds all the bounds of human, not to say Greek, stupidity that men should perpetually set a villain over them to plunder, violate, and exile men and women.
[Sidenote: The real uses to politics of temporary despots.]
The fact is that the tyrant was at one time a necessity, and even a valuable _moment_, in the march of Greek culture. The aristocratic governments had only substituted a many-headed sovranty over the poor for the rule of a single king, who might be touched by compassion or reached by persuasion. But who could argue with the clubs of young patricians, who thought the poor no better than their slaves, and swore the solemn oath which Aristotle has preserved: 'I will be at enmity with the Demos, and will do it all the harm I can.' To these gentlemen the political differences with the people had gone quite beyond argument; whatever they urged was true, whatever was against them false: each side regarded its opponents as morally infamous. Whenever politics reach this condition, it is time to abandon discussion and appeal to an umpire who can enforce his decision with arms.
[Sidenote: Questionable statement of Thucydides.]
When the commons had gained wealth and acquired some cohesion, there were consequently violent revolutions and counter-revolutions, massacres and confiscations, so that 'peace at any price' was often the cry of the State. Thucydides has drawn a famous picture of the political factions of his day, in which he declares their violence, fraud, and disregard of every obligation but that of party interests to be novel features of his times. That clever rhetorician knew well enough that these frauds and violences were no new thing in Greek politics. The poems of Alcæus, still more those of Theognis, and many more that were known to him, must have taught him that this war of factions was as old as real Greek history, and that the earliest solution of this terrible problem was the tyrant, who made peace by coercing both sides to his will and punishing with death or exile those that were refractory.