The Tyrants’ Cousins. Ruling Practices and Political Concepts between Anatolia and Early Greece

Abstract

Summary This paper addresses the vexed question of the origins and nature of archaic Greek tyranny by focusing on the conceptual roots of the phenomenon, namely by investigating the political significance and implications of the Luwian notion of tarrawanni-, ‘just, justice,’ the term from which Greek tyrannos is believed to derive. Firstly, the paper shows how both Neo-Hittite and early Greek societies display a similar attitude towards justice as a key element for political legitimation. After concluding, however, that this commonality is not enough to explain why the Greeks borrowed the concept of tarrawanni- as tyrannos, the paper moves on to examining what specific way of doing politics is captured by the two concepts, arguing that they identify a type of political actor that exercises supreme powers independently of any kind of institutional arrangement. Finally, the paper discusses reasons, modalities, contexts, and timing of the transmission of Luwian tarrawanni- into Greek.