Tyrannicide or tyrannomachia is the killing or assassination of a tyrant or unjust ruler, purportedly for the common good,[1] and usually by one of the tyrant's subjects.[2] Tyrannicide was legally permitted and encouraged in Classical Athens. Often, the term "tyrant" was a justification for political murders by rivals, but in some exceptional cases students of Platonic philosophy risked their lives against tyrants. The killing of Clearchus of Heraclea in 353 BC by a cohort led by his own court philosopher is considered a sincere tyrannicide. A person who carries out a tyrannicide is also called a "tyrannicide".[3]
The term originally denoted the action of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who are often called the Tyrannicides, in killing Hipparchus of Athens in 514 BC.[4] In modern terms, carrying out a tyrannicide, as in taking life of another person, is a criminal act, and lawbreakers are liable to police arrest and trial by a court.
Tyrannicide can also be a political theory and, as an allegedly justified form of the crime of murder, a dilemmatic case in the philosophy of law, and as such dates from antiquity.[5]Plato describes a violent tyrant as the opposite of a good and "true king" in the Statesman,[6] and while Aristotle in the Politics sees it as opposed to all other beneficial forms of government, he also described tyrannicide mainly as an act by those wishing to gain personally from the tyrant's death, while those who act without hope of personal gain or to make a name for themselves are rare.[7]
Support for tyrannicide can be found in Cicero's De Officiis,[8]Seneca's Hercules Furens,[6] and Plutarch's Lives. Cicero argued that tyrannicide could be a moral duty in certain circumstances to protect the state.[8] Seneca, through his plays, explored the idea of resisting tyranny.[6] Plutarch, in his biographical work, presented tyrannicide as a defense of liberty and justice.
During the Middle Ages, most theologians were influenced on the subject by Augustine of Hippo's The City of God, which said that Christians should obey secular authority.[9] The scholastic philosopher John of Salisbury was the first medieval Christian scholar to defend tyrannicide,[10] under specific conditions, in the Policraticus, circa 1159.[11] His theory was derived from his idea of the state as a political organism in which all the members cooperate actively in the realization of the common utility and justice. He held that when the ruler of this body politic behaves tyrannically, failing to perform his characteristic responsibilities, the other limbs and organs are bound by their duty to the public welfare and God to correct and, ultimately, to slay the tyrant.[12]
A Shone Treatise of Politike Power, written by John Ponet in 1556, argued that the people are custodians of natural and divine law, and that if governors and kings violated their trust, then they forfeited their power, whether they relinquished their positions voluntarily or whether they had to be removed forcefully.[14] The Monarchomachs in particular developed a theory of tyrannicide, with Juan de Mariana describing their views in the 1598 work De rege et regis institutione,[15] in which he wrote, "[B]oth the philosophers and theologians agree, that the prince who seizes the state with force and arms, and with no legal right, no public, civic approval, may be killed by anyone and deprived of his life..."[8] The Jesuisticcasuistry developed a similar theory, criticized by Blaise Pascal in the Provincial Letters.[16]The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates by John Milton in 1649 also described the history of tyrannicide, and a defense of it when appropriate.[17]
Abraham Lincoln believed that assassinating a leader is morally justified when a people has suffered under a tyrant for an extended period of time and has exhausted all legal and peaceful means of ouster.[18] He saw tyrannicide as a necessary last resort to protect liberty and justice. Lincoln's views, shaped by the American Civil War, reflect the ethical debate on violent resistance against tyranny, emphasizing that removing a despot can be a moral imperative to restore democratic governance and human rights.[19][20]
Aleister Crowley, in the preface to The Book of the Law and in "Liber OZ", emphasized the right to rebel against tyranny and live by one's own will, resisting those who would thwart this right. During World War II, he highlighted the need to oppose totalitarian regimes to protect individual freedoms. His philosophy, Thelema, asserts inherent rights, including moral, bodily, mental, and sexual rights, along with the safeguard of tyrannicide.[21][22][23] Crowley's political ideas, particularly in "Liber OZ", have significantly influenced the modern neopaganism and New Age movements by promoting personal autonomy and resistance to authoritarianism.[24][25][26]
Cambridge's David George has argued that terrorism is a form of tyranny of which tyrannicide is a negation.[27] He posits that tyrannicide serves as a countermeasure to terrorism, which uses fear and violence to subjugate populations. In George's view, the assassination of tyrants can be an act of liberation, dismantling oppressive structures and restoring autonomy. This situates tyrannicide within a broader discourse on the ethics of political violence, suggesting it aims to eliminate tyranny and restore justice.[28][29]
Throughout history, many leaders have died under the pretext of tyrannicide. Hipparchus, one of the last Greek leaders to use the title of "tyrant", was assassinated in 514 BC by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the original tyrannicides.[30][4] Since then "tyrant" has been a pejorative term, lacking objective criteria. Many rulers and heads of state have been considered tyrannical by their enemies but they have not been considered tyrannical by their supporters. For example, when John Wilkes Boothassassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865, he wrote that he considered Lincoln a tyrant and he compared himself to Marcus Junius Brutus,[31] who stabbed the Roman dictatorJulius Caesar in 44 BC.[32] Booth famously shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" during the assassination.
Assassination is the willful killing, by a sudden, secret, or planned attack, of a person—especially if prominent or important. It may be prompted by grievances, notoriety, financial, military, political or other motives. Many times governments and criminal groups order assassinations to be committed by their accomplices. Acts of assassination have been performed since ancient times. A person who carries out an assassination is called an assassin or hitman.
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and subsequently became dictator from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC. He played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.
Marcus Junius Brutus was a Roman politician, orator, and the most famous of the assassins of Julius Caesar. After being adopted by a relative, he used the name Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus, which was retained as his legal name. He is often referred to simply as Brutus.
Gaius Cassius Longinus was a Roman senator and general best known as a leading instigator of the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar on 15 March 44 BC. He was the brother-in-law of Brutus, another leader of the conspiracy. He commanded troops with Brutus during the Battle of Philippi against the combined forces of Mark Antony and Octavian, Caesar's former supporters, and committed suicide after being defeated by Mark Antony.
The year 514 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. In the Roman Empire, it was known as year 240 Ab urbe condita. The denomination 514 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
A tyrant, in the modern English usage of the word, is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defend their positions by resorting to repressive means. The original Greek term meant an absolute sovereign who came to power without constitutional right, yet the word had a neutral connotation during the Archaic and early Classical periods. However, Greek philosopher Plato saw tyrannos as a negative form of government, and on account of the decisive influence of philosophy on politics, deemed tyranny the "fourth and worst disorder of a state."
Tyrants lack "the very faculty that is the instrument of judgment"—reason. The tyrannical man is enslaved because the best part of him (reason) is enslaved, and likewise, the tyrannical state is enslaved, because it too lacks reason and order.
Sic semper tyrannis is a Latin phrase meaning "thus always to tyrants". In contemporary parlance, it means tyrannical leaders will inevitably be overthrown. The phrase also suggests that bad but justified outcomes should, or eventually will, befall tyrants. It is the state motto of Virginia.
Cleisthenes, or Clisthenes, was an ancient Athenian lawgiver credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens and setting it on a democratic footing in 508 BC. For these accomplishments, historians refer to him as "the father of Athenian democracy". He was a member of the aristocratic Alcmaeonid clan. He was the younger son of Megacles and Agariste making him the maternal grandson of the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon. He was also credited with increasing the power of the Athenian citizens' assembly and for reducing the power of the nobility over Athenian politics.
Hippias was the last tyrant of Athens, ruling from 527 to 510 BC. He was one of the Peisistratids, a group of three tyrants in Ancient Greece. Pisistratus first, and then his son, Hippias, followed after him by Hippias' illegitimate son, Hegesistratos. He was deposed when Cleomenes I of Sparta successfully invaded Athens and forced him to flee to Persia.
Hipparchus was a member of the ruling class of Athens and one of the sons of Pisistratus. He was a tyrant of the city of Athens from 528/527 BC until his assassination by the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton in 514 BC.
Harmodius and Aristogeiton were two lovers in Classical Athens who became known as the Tyrannicides for their assassination of Hipparchus, the brother of the tyrant Hippias, for which they were executed. A few years later, in 510 BC, the Spartan king Cleomenes I forced Hippias to go into exile, thereby opening the way to the subsequent democratic reforms of Cleisthenes. The Athenian democrats later celebrated Harmodius and Aristogeiton as national heroes, partially to conceal the role played by Sparta in the removal of the Athenian tyranny. Cleisthenes notably commissioned the famous statues of the Tyrannicides.
The Praise Singer is a historical novel by Mary Renault first published in 1978. Its narrator and main character is the real-life lyric poet Simonides of Ceos, whose life spanned the transition from an oral to a written culture in Ancient Greece. Renault's fiction argues that this transition was in part responsible for the cultural flowering known as the Golden Age of Athens—though she also gives credit to Hipparchus, Tyrant of Athens, who attracted talented artists like Simonides to live in his city. Renault depicts him as having the works of Homer set down in writing for the first time.
Kritios was an Athenian sculptor, probably a pupil of Antenor, working in the early 5th century BCE, whose manner is on the cusp of the Late Archaic and the Severe style of Early Classicism in Attica. He was the teacher of Myron. With Nesiotes (Νησιώτης,) Kritios made the replacement of the Tyrannicides ("Tyrant-killers") group by Antenor, which had been carried off by the Persians in the first stage of the Greco-Persian Wars. The new group stood in the Agora of Athens and its composition is known from Roman copies.
A sculptural pairing of the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton was well known in the ancient world in two major versions but survives only in Roman marble copies. The lovers Harmodius and Aristogeiton were Athenian heroes whose act of daring in 514 BC opened the way for Athenian democracy.
Pisistratus was a politician in ancient Athens, ruling as tyrant in the late 560s, the early 550s and from 546 BC until his death. His unification of Attica, the triangular peninsula of Greece containing Athens, along with economic and cultural improvements laid the groundwork for the later pre-eminence of Athens in ancient Greece. His legacy lies primarily in his institution of the Panathenaic Games, historically assigned the date of 566 BC, and the consequent first attempt at producing a definitive version of the Homeric epics. Pisistratus' championing of the lower class of Athens is an early example of populism. While in power, he did not hesitate to confront the aristocracy and greatly reduce their privileges, confiscating their lands and giving them to the poor. Pisistratus funded many religious and artistic programs, in order to improve the economy and spread the wealth more equally among the Athenian people.
Lucius Cornelius Cinna was a politician in the Roman Republic. He came from a noble family which had gained prominence during the civil wars of the 80s BC, but lost their political rights for opposing the dictator Sulla. Cinna sought better fortune for himself by joining the failed rebellions of Lepidus and Sertorius in the 70s BC, but was recalled to Rome and granted amnesty with the support of his brother-in-law, Julius Caesar. Cinna remained debarred from public office, however, an impediment only rescinded by Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon and took control of Rome in 49 BC.
Leaena is a pseudo-historical figure, supposedly a hetaera and, according to a later tradition, the mistress of Aristogeiton the Tyrannicide.
Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of senators on the Ides of March of 44 BC during a meeting of the Senate at the Curia of Pompey of the Theatre of Pompey in Rome where the senators stabbed Caesar 23 times. They claimed to be acting over fears that Caesar's unprecedented concentration of power during his dictatorship was undermining the Roman Republic. At least 60 to 70 senators were party to the conspiracy, led by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus. Despite the death of Caesar, the conspirators were unable to restore the institutions of the Republic. The ramifications of the assassination led to his martyrdom, the Liberators' civil war and ultimately to the Principate period of the Roman Empire.
Cerameis or Kerameis was a deme of ancient Attica, located in the center of Athens, northeast of the Dipylon Gate, which extended both inside and outside the city walls. In its territory lay an important necropolis.
The Athenian Revolution was a revolt by the people of Athens that overthrew the ruling aristocratic oligarchy, establishing the almost century-long self-governance of Athens in the form of a participatory democracy – open to all free male citizens. It was a reaction to a broader trend of tyranny that had swept through Athens and the rest of Greece.
References
↑ Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Tyrannicide." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Thomas Zemanek. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0001.682. Originally published as "Tyrannicide" in the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 16:785 (Paris, 1765).
↑ Fine, Jonathan (2010). "Political and Philological Origins of the Term 'Terrorism' from the Ancient Near East to Our Times". Middle Eastern Studies. 46 (2): 271–288. doi:10.1080/00263201003619927. JSTOR20720662. S2CID143268246.
↑ Nederman, Cary J. (1988), "A Duty to Kill: John of Salisbury's Theory of Tyrannicide", The Review of Politics, 50 (3), Cambridge University Press: 365–389, doi:10.1017/S0034670500036305, S2CID145277381
↑ For Aquinas, "when what is ordered by an authority is opposed to the object for which that authority was constituted ... not only is there no obligation to obey the authority, but one is obliged to disobey it, as did the holy martyrs who suffered death rather than obey the impious commands of tyrants." One may even be "praised and rewarded" for being the "one who liberates his country by killing a tyrant." Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, trans. J.G. Dawson (Oxford, 1959), 44, 2 in O’Donovan, pp. 329–330.
↑ White, Ronald C. A. (2009). Lincoln: A Biography. Random House.
↑ Dirck, Brian R. (2012). Lincoln and the Constitution. Southern Illinois University Press.
↑ Sutin, Lawrence (2000). Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley. St. Martin's Press.
↑ Pasi, Marco (2014). Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics. Routledge.
↑ Bolton, K. R.; etal. (2010). Aleister Crowley As Political Theorist. New Zealand: Renaissance Press.
↑ Adler, Margot (1979). Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN978-0143038191.
↑ Hutton, Ronald (1999). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0198207443.
↑ George, David (1988), "Distinguishing Classical Tyrannicide from Modern Terrorism", The Review of Politics, 50 (3), Cambridge University Press: 390–419, doi:10.1017/S0034670500036317, S2CID146523905
↑ George, David (1995). The Ethics of Political Violence. Cambridge University Press.
↑ Coady, C. A. J. (2008). Morality and Political Violence. Cambridge University Press.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
