concede to him this permanent ascendency, he was often strong enough to keep it against their will. [20] The definition of a despot is given in Cornelius Nepos, Vit. Miltiadis, c. 8: “Omnes habentur et dicuntur tyranni, qui potestate sunt perpetuâ in eâ civitate, quæ libertate usa est:” compare Cicero de Republicâ, ii, 26, 27; iii, 14. The word τύραννος was said by Hippias the sophist to have first found its way into the Greek language about the time of Archilochus (B. C. 660): Boeckh thinks that it came from the Lydians or Phyrgians (Comment. ad Corp. Inscrip. No. 3439). [21] Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 2, 3, 4. Τύραννος—ἐκ προστατικῆς ῥίζης καὶ οὐκ ἄλλοθεν ἐκβλαστάνει (Plato, Repub. viii, c. 17, p. 565). Οὐδενὶ γὰρ δὴ ἄδηλον, ὅτι ~πᾶς~ τύραννος ἐκ δημοκόλακος φύεται (Dionys. Halic. vi, 60): a proposition decidedly too general. [22] Aristot. iii, 9, 5; iii, 10, 1-10; iv, 8, 2. Αἰσυμνῆται—αὐτοκράτορες μόναρχοι ἐν τοῖς ἀρχαίοις Ἕλλησι—αἱρετὴ τυραννίς: compare Theophrastus, fragment. περὶ Βασιλείας, and Dionys. Hal. A. R. v, 73-74; Strabo, xiii, p. 617; and Aristot. Fragment. Rerum Publicarum, ed. Neumann, p. 122, Κυμαίων Πολιτεία. Such were the different modes in which the numerous Greek despots of the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. acquired their power. Though we know thus much in general terms from the brief statements of Aristotle, yet, unhappily, we have no contemporary picture of any one of these communities, so as to give us the means of appreciating the change in detail. Of those persons who, possessing inherited kingly dignity, stretched their paternal power so far as to become despots, Aristotle gives us Pheidôn of Argos as an example, whose reign has been already narrated in the preceding volume: of those who made themselves despots by means of official power previously held under an oligarchy, he names Phalaris, at Agrigentum, and the despots at Miletus and other cities of the Ionic Greeks: of those who raised themselves by becoming demagogues, he specifies Panætius in the Sicilian town of Leontini, Kypselus at Corinth, and Peisistratus at Athens;[23] of Æsymnêtes, or chosen despots, Pittakus of Mitylênê is the prominent instance. The military and aggressive demagogue, subverting an oligarchy which had degraded and ill-used him, governing as a cruel despot for several years, and at last dethroned and slain, is farther depicted by Dionysius of Halikarnassus, in the history of Aristodêmus of the Italian Cumæ.[24] [23] Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 2, 3, 4; v, 4, 5. Aristotle refers to one of the songs of Alkæus as his evidence respecting the elevation of Pittakus: a very sufficient proof doubtless,—but we may see that he had no other informants, except the poets, about these early times. [24] Dionys. Hal. A. R. vii, 2, 12. The reign of Aristodemus falls about 510 B. C.