The first state in which the old aristocratic order began to break up was Corinth. The Bacchiadae had exploited Corinth’s geographic position, which was favourable in ways rivaled only by that of the two Euboean cities already discussed. Like Chalcis, which supervised sea traffic between southern Greece and Macedonia but also had close links with Boeotia and Attica, Corinth controlled both a north-south route (the Isthmus of Corinth, in modern times pierced by the Corinth Canal) and an east-west route. This second route was exploited in a special way. Corinth had two ports, Lechaeum to the west on the Gulf of Corinth and Cenchreae to the east on the Saronic Gulf. Between the two seas there was a haulage system, involving a rightly famous engineering feat, the so-called diolkos (“portage way”). The diolkos, which was excavated in the 1950s, was a line of grooved paving-stones across which goods could be dragged for transshipment (probably not the merchant ships themselves, though there is some evidence that warships, which were lighter, were so moved in emergencies). There is explicit information that the Bacchiadae had profited hugely from the harbour dues. As the Greek world expanded its mental and financial horizons, other Corinthian families grew envious. The result was the first firmly datable and well-authenticated Greek tyranny, or one-man rule by a usurper. This was the tyranny of Cypselus, who was only a partial Bacchiad.
Aristotle, in the 4th century, was to say that tyrannies arise when oligarchies disagree internally, and that analysis makes good sense in the Corinthian context. The evidence of an inscribed Athenian archon list, found in the 1930s and attesting a grandson of Cypselus in the 590s, settled an old debate about the date of Cypselus’s coup: it must have happened about 650 (a conclusion for which there is other evidence) rather than at the much later date indicated by an alternative tradition. Cypselus and his son Periander ruled until about 587 bce; Periander’s nephew and successor did not last long. Precisely what factor in 650 made possible the success of the partial outsider Cypselus is obscure; no Bacchiad foreign policy failure can be dated earlier than 650. General detestation for the Bacchiadae, however, is clear from an oracle preserved by Herodotus that “predicts” that Cypselus will bring dikē, or justice, to Corinth after the rule of the power-monopolizing Bacchiadae. No doubt this oracle was fabricated after the event, but it is interesting as showing that nobody regretted the passing of the Bacchiadae. Changes in warfare
Modern scholars have tried to look for more general factors behind Cypselus’s success than a desire in a new world of wealth and opportunity to put an end to Bacchiad oppressiveness and exclusivity. One much-favoured explanation is military, but it must be said straightaway that the specific evidence for support of Cypselus by a newly emergent military class is virtually nonexistent. The background to military change, a change whose reality is undoubted, needs a word.
Aristocratic warfare, as described in the Homeric epics, puts much emphasis on individual prowess. Great warriors used chariots almost as a kind of taxi service to transport themselves to and from the battlefield, where they fought on foot with their social peers. The winner gained absolute power over the person and possessions of the vanquished, including the right to carry out ritual acts of corpse mutilation. That general picture is surely right, though it can be protested that Homer’s singling out of individuals may be just literary spotlighting and that the masses played a respectably large part in the fighting described in the epics. There is some force in that objection and in the converse and related objection that in Archaic and Classical hoplite fighting individual duels were more prevalent than is allowed by scholars anxious to stress the collective character of hoplite combat. Still, a change in methods of fighting undoubtedly occurred in the course of the 7th century.
The change was to a block system of fighting, in which infantry soldiers equipped with heavy armour, or hopla (including helmet, breastplate, greaves, sword, spear, and a round shield attached to the left arm by a strap), fought, at least during part of an engagement, in something like coherent formation, each man’s sword arm being guarded by the shield of the man on his right. This last feature produced a consequence commented on by Thucydides—namely, a tendency of the sword bearer to drift to the right in the direction of the protection offered by his neighbour. For this reason the best troops were posted on the far right to act as anchor-men. The system, whose introduction is not commented on by any literary source, is depicted on vases in the course of the 7th century, though it is not possible to say whether it was a sudden technological revolution or something that evolved over decades. The second view seems preferable since the discovery in the 1950s of a fine bronze suit of heavy armour at Argos in a late 8th-century context.
Clearly, the change has social and political implications. Even when one acknowledges some continuation of individual skirmishing, much nonetheless depended on neighbours in the battle line standing their ground. An oath sworn by Athenian military recruits (ephēboi) in the 4th century includes clauses about not disgracing the sacred weapons, not deserting comrades, and not handing down a diminished fatherland (to posterity); the oath and the word ephēbe are 4th-century, but the institutionalizing of hoplite obligations and expectations is surely much older. Early land warfare can, in fact, be thought of as a symbolic expression of the Greek city’s identity. This helps to explain the strong ritual elements in a hoplite battle, which typically began with a sacrifice and taking of omens and ended with victory dedications, often of bronze suits of armour, in some appropriate sanctuary. It is above all the heavily armed troops, not the lightly armed or the sailors in the fleet (nor even the cavalry), who were thought of as in a special sense representing the Classical polis. Thus at Classical Athens the 10-tribe citizen system determined the organization of the hoplite army but is much less important in the manning of the fleet.
The influential “hoplite theory” of the origin of tyranny seeks to explain one general phenomenon of the 7th century—namely, the beginning of tyranny—by reference to another, the introduction of hoplite weapons and tactics with their greater emphasis on a collective, corporatist ethos. Insofar as both phenomena represent reactions against aristocratic rule, it is reasonable loosely to associate the two, but it is important to realize that the theory, however seductive, is in its strict form a modern construction.
In the first place, the connection is never made by intelligent ancient writers interested both in the mechanics and psychology of hoplite warfare on the one hand and in tyranny on the other. Thucydides, for instance, a military historian if ever there was one, saw tyranny primarily in economic terms. Aristotle does indeed say that the extension of the military base of a state is liable to produce a widening of the political franchise, but this comment has nothing specifically to do with tyranny. He explains tyranny elsewhere either as resulting from splits within oligarchies or by an anachronistic 4th-century reference to demagogic leadership, which, when combined with generalship, is liable to turn into tyranny (there he is surely thinking above all of Dionysius I of Syracuse).
In the second place, it is discouraging for the hoplite theory that there is so little support for it in the best-attested case, that of Cypselid Corinth. Attempts have indeed been made to get around the natural implication of the evidence, but they are not convincing. For instance, the ancient statement that Cypselus had no bodyguard ought to be given its natural meaning, which is a denial of the military factor; it ought not to be ingeniously twisted so as to imply that he did not need a bodyguard because (it is argued) he had the support of identifiable army groups. Furthermore, although it is true that Cypselus is called polemarch (which ought to mean a “leader in war”), it is suspicious that his activities in this capacity were entirely civil and judicial. Suspicion increases when one notes that polemarch was indeed the title of a magistrate in Classical Athens. The early tyrannies