In his text, the Politics, Aristotle (c. 384-322 BCE) claimed that long before his time—“among the ancient Greeks of long ago…” (Bekker number 1295a), as he phrased it—there was a special kind of constitutional king-like tyrant system that could be found in parts of Greece. These ancient rulers were in some way given tyrannical power with the willing cooperation of the populace that they ruled. Aristotle labeled them with the name, aisumnetai, and he likened them to foreign kings who gained power through an election process. On these mysterious aisumnetai, Aristotle wrote, “they were king-like because they were according to law, and because the sole rule was over willing subjects; yet they were tyrannical, because rule was exercised as by a master, according to the personal decisions of the tyrants” (Aristotle, Politics, Bekker number 1295a). Although foreign elected kings were the best comparison that Aristotle could think of when he wrote his Politics text, he also seemed to admit that it was not a perfect analogy. He wrote, “(For example, among certain non-Greeks, sole rulers with absolute personal power are elected to that office; and among ancient Greeks of long ago there arose sole rulers of this type, called aisumnetai.) In certain respects these two forms of tyranny differ from each other” (Aristotle, Politics, Bekker number 1295a). Unfortunately, it is difficult to glean more information about the similarities or differences between foreign elected kings and the Greek aisumnetai, at least based on Aristotle’s description, because he said little else about the aisumnetai in his Politics.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (The Blind Oedipus Commending his Children to the Gods, by Bénigne Gagneraux (c. 1756-1795), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the National Museum of Stockholm Sweden).
Sources:
- The Politics by Aristotle, translated by T. A. Sinclair and revised by T. J. Saunders. London: Penguin Classics, 1962, 1992.
