Encyclopedia of Political Theory

Tyrannicide

Contributors: Sian Lewis

Editors: Mark Bevir
Book Title: Encyclopedia of Political Theory
Chapter Title: "Tyrannicide"
Pub. Date: 2010
Access Date: October 28, 2013
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9781412958653
Online ISBN: 9781412958660
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412958660.n457
Print pages: 1387-1388
This PDF has been generated from SAGE knowledge. Please note that the pagination
of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412958660.n457
Tyrannicide, the act of killing a tyrant (also, the killer of a tyrant), was not an abstract
concept in antiquity. Some classical states legislated to exempt those who killed a
tyrant or would-be tyrant from prosecution, and some tyrants met violent ends at the
hands of self-styled liberators. But as in all areas of political life, definitions proved more
difficult in practice than in theory, and ancient philosophers devoted much thought to
the question of precisely what constituted tyranny and under what circumstances it was
justifiable to kill a tyrant.
The archetypal tyrannicides were Harmodius and Aristogeiton of Athens, who in
514 BCE planned to murder the tyrant Hippias, son of Pisistratus. They succeeded
only in killing the tyrant's brother Hipparchus before being killed themselves, but
they nevertheless received great posthumous honors from the Athenian populace.
Harmodius and Aristogeiton's deed did not end the Pisistratid tyrannyHippias ruled
for 3 more years, and their act was, furthermore, personally motivated, a response to an
insult by Hippias (according to Herodotus) rather than the product of political conviction.
But they became known in popular tradition as a symbol of resistance to tyranny.
The laws on tyrannicide passed in the classical period make the idea appear
uncomplicated: If anyone aims at tyranny or succeeds in becoming a tyrant, he or
she can be killed with impunity. In practice, however, the motives of tyrannicides were
rarely politically pure. In many cases the term was used to justify an unedifying cycle
of political murders, as would-be rulers declared their rival to be a tyrant and murdered
him. Only among philosophers do we find disinterested motives: Under the influence of
Plato's condemnation of tyranny, some students of philosophy chose to risk their lives
against tyrants. Clearchus, tyrant of Heracleia on the Black Sea, for instance, was killed
in 352 BCE by a group led by his court philosopher Chion. The tyranny did not fall
Clearchus was succeeded by his brotherbut the tyrannicides appear to have acted
from political conviction.
The image of the paranoid tyrant who fears assassination at every moment derives
principally from the works of Cicero. In De Officiis Cicero suggests that all tyrants
inevitably meet death at an assassin's hand and that killing a tyrant is not morally
wrong. Cicero emphasized these ideas as a means of justifying the act of tyrannicide
in his own time, and the conspirators against Julius Caesar in 44 BCE presented their
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Encyclopedia of Political Theory: Tyrannicide

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deed as both the overthrow of a tyrant and the restoration of the republic, reaching back
into history for precedent to Brutus who drove out the last of the Roman kings, and
to Harmodius and Aristogeiton themselves. In the early Roman Empire conspiracies
against the emperor were common, but although the conspirators usually claimed to be
removing a tyrant and restoring the republic, in general they aimed simply at replacing
the ruler. From this point on, arguments about tyrannicide came to center on the ethical
nature of rulershipthe point at which constitutional rule became tyrannicaland
the legitimacy of opposition to it. Yet antiquity continued to provide a fertile source of
inspiration for would-be tyrannicides of all kinds.
Sian Lewis
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412958660.n457
See also
Further Readings
Ford, F. L. (1985). Political murder: From tyrannicide to terrorism . Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Rudich, V. (1993). Political dissidence under Nero: The price of dissimulation . London:
Routledge.
Taylor, M. W. (1981). The tyrant slayers: The heroic image in fifth-century art and
politics . New York: Arno Press.
Turchetti, M. (2001). Tyrannie et tyrannicide de l'antiquit nos jours [Tyranny and
tyrannicide from antiquity to the present day] . Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

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Encyclopedia of Political Theory: Tyrannicide