Plato, Aristotle and the Romans

Abstract

Most of the early Greek states were originally monarchies. It has been suggested that monarchy was not native to the Greeks, but had been acquired, in the course of their wanderings, from their observations of forms of government normal elsewhere. Homer described such a monarchy, where in the absence of a king no executive action could be taken.1 By the time of written historical evidence, however, these early monarchies were being either limited or terminated by the commercial aristocracy. This limitation or termination gave rise not only to oligarchical and even democratic forms of government, but also to the age of tyranny. The tyrant was a man who ruled on his own authority where the aristocracy had proved too weak to hold the reins of power and his methods of achieving power were often abrupt and informal.