This is a fundamental fact. The tyrants were one and all first-class business men. If they did not deliberately use their wealth to secure their position, there is only one other possible explanation of their history: their financial abilities must have led their fellow-countrymen to put them in the way of seizing the throne, and that is roughly the account of them that is to be found in some modern histories, where they are vaguely pictured as the more or less passive products of blind economic forces. This view seems to me untenable. It cannot be reconciled with the impression made by the early tyrants on writers like Aristotle. More fatal still, we have a series of “lawgivers” like Solon, who was a business man who gained his position precisely in the way just indicated. Some of Solon’s friends reproached him with his folly in not making himself tyrant. But the fact remains that no “lawgiver” of the period did so[1459], and that the titles of νομοθέτης and αἰσυμνήτης that were given these legally appointed dictators were never applied either by friends or enemies to any of the tyrants at any period of their careers[1460]. One fact has still to be explained. Different as are the views about tyrants and tyranny expressed by different ancient writers at different times they have this feature in common. All alike express their hatred of tyrannical government. For Plato the man who becomes a tyrant “is changed from a man into a wolf[1461].” When Herodotus digresses into a debate on the merits of the chief forms of government, he makes the critic of tyranny declare that there is nothing more unjust than it or more bloodthirsty in the whole world[1462]. There is no judgment from heaven on the man who lays low a tyrant. This doctrine of Theognis[1463] is perpetually preached all through Greek history. Harmodius and Aristogeiton the Athenian tyrannicides were celebrated in sculpture[1464] and in song[1465] and their names were constantly on the lips of orators[1466]. There are apparent exceptions to this attitude. The Aristotelian _Constitution of Athens_, chapter XVI., records that “the tyranny of Peisistratus was often praised as the life of the days of Kronos,” _i.e._ as the Golden Age, and the pseudo-Platonic _Hipparchus_, 229_b_, speaks of it in similar terms: (under the tyrants) “the Athenians lived much as in the days when Kronos was king.” But the Aristotelian version states also what it was that evoked this praise. “Peisistratus always secured peace and maintained quiet. Therefore his tyranny was often praised.” The phraseology of the two quotations shows that the praise was given not to the form of government, but to the peaceful life that it procured, a life that might be, and sometimes has been, associated with the most oppressive of governments.