The view here set forth as to the basis of the tyrant’s power finds nothing to contradict it in the fifth century references to the early tyranny. On the contrary such few references as are explicitly made to the origin of the tyranny by writers of the fifth century bear it out. “Is it not folly,” says Oedipus to Kreon in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ of Sophocles, “this attempt of yours, without a host of followers and friends to seek a tyranny, a thing that’s gained only with hosts of followers and money[47]?” “When Greece,” says Thucydides, in his introductory sketch of early Greek history, “had grown more powerful, and was still more than before engaged in the acquisition of wealth, tyrannies were established in the cities[48].” Herodotus gives no account of the rise of tyranny, but a large proportion of the evidence as to the careers of individual tyrants is derived from his work. Perhaps the fifth century writer who might be expected to throw most light on the question is Pindar, who visited the courts of the Sicilian tyrants and wrote odes in their honour. His poems contain many references to the supreme importance of wealth: Wealth adorned with virtues Brings opportunity for this and that[49]. Ever in the quest of noble achievements Toil and outlay strive after the issue[50]. So elsewhere[51] in a similar spirit he describes Hiero’s great victory over the Etruscans as “the crown of his lordly wealth.” The Syracusan monarchs of the early fifth century seem to have had fewer affinities with the commercial tyrants of the two preceding centuries than with the military despots of a later age. It is therefore all the more significant that wealth is so frequently regarded by Pindar, who more than any other writer represents the transition from the sixth century to the fifth, rather as a means to power than as one of its rewards. Later documents, as has been said already, give a different account of the early tyrants’ antecedents. But here and there statements are to be found in them that, though perhaps reconcilable with other views, only become fully significant on the commercial theory. Isocrates for instance speaks of the “huge wage bills and expenditures of money by which all modern dynasts maintain their power[52].” He wrote these words between 342 and 339 B.C.[53], but as his modern times are contrasted with those of Agamemnon and he himself was nearly thirty years old at the close of the fifth century, his modern dynasts may well include sixth century tyrants like Peisistratus and Polycrates, the more so as “dynasts” arose so seldom in fifth century Greece. [Sidenote: (_c_) some statements of fourth century writers,]