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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 4571336, member: 93416&quot;]Thanks Kevin – two huge topics – I will try sketch roughly how I differ</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>As I understand it “tyrant” was not a pejorative term in early Greek times – with folk like Peisistratos - (like Solon) - standing up for ordinary folk against hereditary oligarchy. I think this gets especially interesting for coin people if we look at the structure of Heroditus’ “Histories”. If he was really giving us a history of the Greeks – why did he start with the rise to power of a non-Greek Lydian tyrant Gyges? Against that backdrop – if - as Herodotus suggested – Gyges &amp; co also created coinage and retailing - it gets even stranger. Coinage spread like wildfire for about 150 years before anyone mentioned in text that coins even existed – really - till Herodotus himself! Why the silence about coins???</p><p><br /></p><p>In short then - I think surviving texts give a a biased version of events. Some Greeks loved tyrants and some hated them, but the (silent) spread of coin use itself was tied up with popularly driven spread of tyranny.</p><p><br /></p><p>My impression is that the modern pejorative use of the word &quot;tyrant&quot; specifically goes back to Xenophon (especially in his psychologically unconvincing picture of Hiero) and Plato. They both seem to me propagandists in favour of hereditary oligarchy and against coin use. I suspect there is another side to the debate that did not get much preserved. Why the silence about coin use?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Popper disagreed and argued that the arguments in favour of slavery by both Plato and Aristotle have to be read as being in opposition to an anti-slavery movement thriving at the time - which was subsequently written out of history. I am not taking sides on that, just mentioning it.</p><p><br /></p><p>If we move forward to Tiberius Gracchus – he definitely was against the systematic mass use of slave labour by the rich (which sounds quite a lot like what Xenophon promoted). It seems pretty clear too that his best friend Blossius escaped the slaughter and fled to the “city of freed slaves” in Turkey (alongside Eumenes III).</p><p><br /></p><p>The kicker is we know Blossius wrote books - and - we know nothing of their contents survived. Kind of interesting to wonder about what was in them……..</p><p><br /></p><p>Seems to me whether we call then &quot;tyrants&quot; or not - Solon, Peisistratos, Pericles, Caesar and Octavian were all operating in roughly the same ball park (or at least - claimed to do so). Xenophon and Plato were at the top of the list taking an opposite view.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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