Plato’s Tyrant and the Crisis of Athenian Democracy

Abstract

This chapter addresses the question of the identity of the historical figure depicted by Plato’s tyrant, and rules out that Plato’s main inspiration and referent was an actual tyrant. Contra such suppositions, the chapter emphasizes the conventional elements of Plato’s description and shows its appropriation of preexisting characterizations of tyrannies and tyrants in Greek literature. Plato’s adoption of these literary tropes reflects an argumentative strategy best understood by referring to their function in democratic self-understanding. Plato adopts these tropes to subvert democratic discourse, arguing that tyranny is democracy’s natural derivation rather than its polar opposite. Thus, Plato’s diagnosis of tyranny can be better understood as an intervention in a debate concerning the transformation of the relation between political leaders and the demos in Athenian democracy and the crisis of democracy in the last years of the fifth century, foreshadowed by the dramatic setting of the dialogue.