In his famous funeral oration Pericles twice claims that at Athens poverty is no bar to a political career. Pericles is speaking of course for his own age. If the evidence collected in this book has any value, the state of things during the first four generations or so after the invention of a metal coinage was very different. Money for a while became the measure of a man, and wealth by itself brought political power. We must beware of expecting simplicity anywhere in history[1474]. Even from the purely commercial point of view there were doubtless powerful side-currents that have left no trace in our extant records. The power of the Medici in Florence was based on their commercial supremacy. But it did not rest entirely on their actual trading. In part it was based on their position in the Papal treasury among the mercatores Romanam curiam sequentes, and in part again on the struggle between Emperor and Pope[1475]. Similar factors must have influenced the careers of Pheidon and other early tyrants of Greece. In part again these early tyrants seem to have stood for a racial movement. This was certainly the case at Sicyon, where the tyranny marked the ascendancy of the pre-Dorian population; probably also at Corinth, where the first tyrant’s father belonged to the Aeolic pre-Dorian element of the population[1476]. This racial factor is easily reconciled with the commercial, quite apart from the possibility that the pre-Dorian element that comes to the top at this period may have been closely related to the Levantine race that plays so prominent a part in Aegean commerce of the present day. Nor must the personal element be left out of account, though so lamentably little is known about it. Cypselus and Pheidon, Peisistratus and Polycrates were certainly great personalities in their way. The leaders in any movement are generally that. On the whole they seem to have ruled well. Their government, except towards opponents and rivals, was by no means oppressive. All the more surprising therefore is their general condemnation. It is indeed scarcely possible to explain it except on the view that they ruled by right not of their personalities but of their riches. The prosperity that they brought to their cities was altogether material. The famous works of Polycrates were altogether the works of men’s hands. It is characteristic of the rule of a typical early tyrant like Periander that he encouraged the worship of Dionysus and Aphrodite at the expense of the cults of Poseidon and Apollo[1477]. No doubt his object was partly to break down the monopoly of priestly office and religious privilege that had hitherto been enjoyed by the aristocracy[1478]: but it is significant that while the tyrants’ policy meant a material advance in all directions, it meant also a materialization even of religion. That is why with a clearness of judgment that can be matched outside Greece only in Dante, the united verdict of all the Greeks utterly condemned them.