Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/167

V and in many cases actually did, coincide with the interest of the State.

If an oligarchy were particularly narrow and oppressive, and affairs were rapidly drawing towards an epoch of party violence, a tyrant might for a time disarm both combatants, and by weakening the stronger might relatively strengthen the weaker. Most of the great tyrants of Greece rose to power by the help of the people, and all set themselves in self-defence to weaken the oligarchies. In a certain sense, as in our own history with the absolutism of the Tudors, the disease of tyranny had eventually in many States a healing effect; it brought out latent possibilities in the State by bringing forward a new population with new ideas and new worships, and in some cases, as in the Peloponnese, one of a different race from the oligarchies which had so long ruled it.

Again, the tyrant, if he were a man of education (and he frequently belonged to the cultured oligarchy itself), would naturally use his power to adorn his city with works of art. He wished his fame to spread through Hellas, and he knew the kind of glory that would appeal to the Hellenic mind. He would try to make his city, as it were, a university of literature and art; and in fact we find that Simonides, Pindar, Æschylus, and other