Essay on Tyrants

The word ‘tyrant’, like the word ‘dictator’, originally has a respectable Ancient Greek origin, and tyranny, according to Plato, is a justifiable form of government because serving the end of self interest is better than the chaos other governments might create. Tyranny would bring a semblance of order .Also, a tyrant is someone who has established his merit by having usurped the position of the ruler in the first place, and a monarch is merely born into royalty, and his merit is not taken into consideration. However, Aristotle, whom Bartolus draws on for many of his arguments and discussions considering tyranny, disagrees. The proper end of a good government is the pursuit of the good life, and under a tyrant, this is impossible, because he would serve his own interests rather than the interests of the people. Tyranny, therefore, is an anomalous form of political association because the very purpose of a government is not served. Arguements about whether tyranny was an advisable form of rule were revived in fourteenth century Italy because, as Bartolus says towards the end of The Treatise on City Government, ‘.. Italy today is full up with tyrants’. The fourteenth century was an extremely turbulent period for much of Europe, with The Black Death, the Hundred Years’ War, and, more importantly for Italy, the Babylonian Exile of the papacy in Avignon. For Italy, the fourteenth century was a period of political instability and insecurity because the retirement of the papacy signaled the independence of a number of local powers but these were fragile, and the city of Rome fell into deep neglect and decay. This is what Bartolus refers to, when he says that the worst form of government was the one Rome was then facing. ‘where there are many tyrants in different areas, so strong that none can overcome the others. There is also a common government over the whole city, so weak that it can do nothing against any of those tyrants, nor against any of their adherents except insofar as they are willing to suffer it’. This form of government Aristotle does not mention at all, because it is too ‘monstrous’ to be thought of. This, then, was the sort of tyranny that Rome was experiencing, and we may recall that most modern dictatorships have passed through some similar phase of establishing themselves: a weak government is the bedrock of a tyranny, or a dictatorship. Bartolus dismisses Rome, ‘the head of politics’, as having no government at all. His definition of a tyrant – a one-man government inclined to pursue merely bad or personal ends- is drawn from Aristotle, whose ‘Politics’ he refers to constantly. Tyranny, however, does not always have to be a one-man oppressive, or neglectful, regime, because all forms of governments are vulnerable to perversion, and ‘every bad kingship can be called in common parlance a tyranny’. This is similar to Locke’s argument against the Divine Rights of Kingship, where he says that ‘tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right….. not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private, separate advantage.’ Bartolus mentions also, that the worst form of tyranny is the rule of one despot, because the rule of several tyrants always decays to the rule of a single tyrant.

Although Bartolus was referring to Roman tyrants, his concept has been validated again and again, when the reign of Terror gave way to Napoleon Bonaparte and when the weak governments of a post First World War Germany and Italy encouraged the growth of modern dictatorships.

A good king, according to the Deuteronomy, is ‘faithful, Christian, just, neither overweening nor one who burdens his people, no lover of luxury, neither greedy nor proud.’ This fact is used by Bartolus to strip the monarchy of any claims to any form of divinity, because these lines are proof of the fact that God was displeased with the idea of there being any form of King at all. This is also one of Aristotle’s arguments against monarchy – that it creates a Master to Slave system, and the Deuteronomy, which Bartolus quotes, says that a king ought to treat his subjects as his brothers, and not his slaves. A king, therefore, may not possess more than his needs, womanize, lead his people into slavery, or be proud. This not only clarifies the religious authority of the ruler( he is supposed to have none ) but also touches on a conventional method of despots : taxation. He may only impose taxes out of necessity, and one who ‘overburdens’ his subject may be called a tyrant. However, one could also be termed a tyrant if one indulged oneself on any account. It is for all these reasons that the Roman Senate has been traditionally revered, and Bartolus, too, thinks it advisable for a king to have with him ‘counsellors and powerful men’, because in that case, it would be difficult to corrupt the king if the entire council were not corrupt. But if the king used his head alone, he would be a tyrant.

But the three forms of tyranny there could be – the tyranny of the people, the tyranny of certain people, and the tyranny of one person- operates on a more complex level when one ruler is ruling and another is the judge, ‘such as the praesides provinciarum and the proconsuls. There are also podesta and civic rectors.’ , to quote Bartolus. The sort of tyranny fourteenth century Rome was facing was on a provincial level, when local powers were being cruel, or merely neglectful, where the government could be blamed for being too weak to resist these powers. Tyranny was an important issue for political philosophers because the conditions of Rome were likely to invite trouble from outside, and there was an absolute lack of law in the city.