Aristotle’s conception of the tyrant class as drawn mainly from that of the military demagogue was taken over by the Romans. In the chapter on Rome it will be shown how little this conception fits in with the Romans’ own early history. But the times before the great wars at Rome (Samnite, Pyrrhic, Punic) are like those before the Persian wars in Greece. They belong to a different epoch from those that follow. The later history of the Roman republic harmonizes with Aristotle’s view. The Gracchi may be represented as demagogues who failed to make themselves supreme for lack of military power[178]. Marius, Pompey, and Caesar succeeded in proportion as they realized the Aristotelian combination. The fourth century conception was therefore unchallenged by Roman writers, the more so since Dionysius appears for a while to have dominated the Roman conception of a Greek tyrant[179]. Fortunately however, owing to the careless way the Roman historians worked over their material, they have left us glimpses of the different conditions that had once existed. The view that was thus disseminated in classical Greece and Rome was naturally accepted by the scholars of the renaissance and has prevailed ever since. Chapter II. _Athens_ [Sidenote: Exceptional position of Athens.] Of all the tyrants of the seventh and sixth centuries none are so well known to us as those who reigned at Athens. No other city has left us so clear a picture of the state of things not only during the tyranny but also immediately before and after it. Solon lived to see Peisistratus make himself supreme. Herodotus, born a Persian subject about 484 B.C., must have had opportunities of questioning first-hand authorities on the later years of the Athenian tyranny, while his younger contemporary Thucydides was in a particularly favoured position for getting information on this subject through his relationship with the Philaidae, of whose rivalry with the Peisistratidae there will be occasion to speak later in this chapter[180].