25. Ancient Athens’ Poor Invited a Tyrant to Govern Them
The process of one-man rule by a dictator, or tyrant, paving the way for democracy played out in Ancient Athens with Peisistratos (died circa 527 BC). Athens’ hill district was its most populous – and also most impoverished – region. Earlier, a reformer named Solon (630 – 560 BC) had enacted reforms that ended the aristocracy’s monopoly on power. He gave the people of the hill district, known as The Men of the Hill, the right to vote for the first time.
However, a vote was all that the hill district people got, and it was a meaningless vote at that: the system still left the aristocrats with a lock on actual power. So The Men of the Hill invited Peisistratos, a popular general and distant relative of Solon, to make himself tyrant. With their support, Peisistratos marched on the city in a procession headed by a tall girl dressed up as the goddess Athena. The “goddess” blessed Peisistratos and declared that it was her divine will that he be made a tyrant. However, the other Athenians saw through the mummery, and chased Peisistratos and his followers out of town.
