The Tyrant of Athens

Solon's reforms did not settle Athens; the factions kept fighting, and out of the deadlock came Pisistratus, who seized power three separate times — once by staging an assassination attempt on himself to be granted bodyguards, once by riding into the city with a tall woman dressed as the goddess Athena. As tyrant he was popular: he taxed the rich, lent to poor farmers, built public works, and fixed the Homeric texts. His sons were less able and more brutal, and their overthrow led directly to democracy. The Greek word tyrannos did not yet mean cruel — it meant a man who took power outside the law, often because people were sick of the alternative.