The tyranny at Sicyon lasted longer than in any other Greek state[1296]. It started about the same time as that of Cypselus at Corinth and continued in the same family for about a century. The tyrants rested their power on the support of the pre-Dorian population of their city, and the establishment of the tyranny was probably to a large extent a racial movement representing a rising of the pre-Dorian stratum of the population against their Dorian conquerors. How the tyrant family secured its power is another question. Until the other day our only information on the subject was to the effect that the founder of the dynasty was a cook or butcher (μάγειρος)[1297], who was helped to power by the Delphic oracle[1298]. Thanks however to a papyrus recently unearthed by the Oxford scholars Grenfell and Hunt and published by them in 1915 we have now considerable fragments of a detailed account of the founder of the dynasty[1299]. The fragment confirms the statement that the tyrants of Sicyon were sprung from a butcher and settles the vexed question of the relationship of Andreas and Orthagoras (the two earliest known members of the family) by showing that Orthagoras was the first tyrant and Andreas was father of Orthagoras. It also shows that Orthagoras himself was bred as a butcher. But it is devoted mainly to the military exploits of the youthful Orthagoras, and though it does not take us down to the day when he made himself tyrant it plainly brings us very near it, and as it leaves him in the position of polemarch on active service it seems to illustrate and support the statement of Aristotle that the early tyrants often owed their power to some high magistracy or military position that they had previously secured in the state. But there are several reasons why this military aspect should not be overrated. The account of how Orthagoras actually seized the tyranny is after all wanting. The extant fragment says that he secured the position of polemarch “partly also by reason of the goodwill of the mass of the citizens towards him,” and gives this as a separate reason[1300] from that of his military successes. Moreover the author of the fragment was possibly Aristotle himself, who is known to have written a lost _Constitution of the Sicyonians_; and although Grenfell and Hunt regard Ephorus as more probably the author, Ephorus lived at the same time and wrote under the same historical influences as Aristotle and was probably misled in the same way concerning the character of the early tyranny[1301]. The outstanding fact in the early career of Orthagoras is still his tradesman origin.