THE TYRANTS.--In the Heroic Age the preferred form of government was a patriarchal monarchy. The _Iliad_ says, "The rule of many is not a good thing: let us have one ruler only,--one king,--him to whom Zeus has given the sceptre." But by the dawn of the historic period, the patriarchal monarchies of the Achæan age had given place, in almost all the Grecian cities, to oligarchies or aristocracies. THE OLIGARCHIES GIVE WAY TO TYRANNIES.--The nobles into whose hands the ancient royal authority thus passed were often divided among themselves, and invariably opposed by the common freemen, who, as they grew in intelligence and wealth, naturally aspired to a place in the government. The issue of long contentions was the overthrow almost everywhere of oligarchical government and the establishment of the rule of a single person. Usually this person was one of the nobility, who held himself out as the champion of the people, and who with their help usurped the government. One who had thus seized the government was called a tyrant. By this term the Greeks did not mean one who rules harshly, but simply one who holds the supreme authority in the state illegally. Some of the Greek Tyrants were mild and beneficent rulers, though too often they were all that the name implies among us. But the Greeks always had an inextinguishable hatred of arbitrary rule; consequently the Tyrannies were, as a rule, short-lived, rarely lasting longer than three generations. They were usually violently overthrown, and the old oligarchies re-established, or democracies set up in their place. As a rule, the Dorian cities preferred oligarchical, and the Ionian cities democratical, government. The so-called Age of the Tyrants lasted from 650 to 500 B.C.