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The Modern Heretic 20 hours ago edited The Oldest Trick in the Book: The Peisistratus Hoax. “[T]wo factions formed, one of the coastal district under the leadership of Megakles son of Alkmeon, and another of the plains district under Lykourges son of Aristoleides. Peisistratos then formed a third faction, intending to make himself the city’s tyrant. When he had collected his partisans and made himself nominal leader of the hill district, he devised the following plan. “First, he wounded himself and his mules and drove his chariot into the center of town, claiming to be in flight from enemies who had attempted to kill him as he drove into the countryside. He then asked the Athenian people to grant him protection, reminding them of his many past achievements on their behalf, particularly his service as general in the war against Megara, when he had captured Nisaia. The Athenian people, completely duped by Peisistratos, selected some of their city’s men to serve as a bodyguard for him. These men carried wooden clubs instead of spears as they followed him about, and they supported him when he revolted and took control of the acropolis. From then on, Peisistratos ruled the Athenians.” This, of course, is from Herodotus’s Histories. Herodotus is known as the father of history for good reason. As Rosalind Thomas writes in The Landmark Herodotus edition of Herodotus’ Histories, “The Histories are the first work in the Western tradition that are recognizably a work of history to our eyes, for they cover the recent human past (as opposed to a concentration on myths and legends), they search for causes, and they are critical of different accounts. Herodotus’ own description of them as an inquiry, a ‘historiē,’ has given us our word ‘history.’” I’m pretty sure his account of Peisistratus’ seizure of power is the first recorded instance of a politician employing that technique. We could therefore call it the Peisistratus Hoax, although we can assume others had before him going back to the earliest times. Either way, it certainly wasn’t the last time. Hitler justified his seizure of absolute power by grossly exaggerating the threat from Communists in early 1933. Stalin justified his own seizure of absolute power through his purges by entirely inventing the threat of a vast Trotskyite conspiracy to assassinate him and other Bolshevik leaders. Democrats have more recently entirely invented a threat from white supremacy. As they say, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” That aphorism is commonly attributed to Mark Twain, but there doesn’t appear to be a definitive account of its origin. Either way, it pithily expresses professional historians’ assertion that history is about continuity and change. Another common expression that places the emphasis on continuity is, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” The primary reason for this is simply human nature, a theme promoted by another ancient Greek historian, Thucydides, who wrote shortly after Herodotus. Thucydides sates early in his History of Peloponnesian War that, “whoever shall wish to have a clear view both of the events which have happened and of those which will some day, in all human probability, happen again in the same or a similar way — for these to adjudge my history profitable will be enough for me.” Later he focuses on basic human nature as a driving force behind history: “With all life thrown into chaos at this time of crisis for the city, human nature triumphed over law: it had always been inclined to criminal breaking of the laws, but now it reveled in showing itself the slave of passion, a stronger force than justice, and the enemy of anything higher. People would not have set revenge above piety or profit above adherence to the law if envy had not worked its corrupting influence on them. And though the commonly accepted laws in such areas underpin everyone’s hope of personal rescue if they meet with trouble, men think they have a prior right to set these laws aside when taking vengeance on others — and not leave them intact against a time when they themselves might be in danger and have need of one of them.” Peisistratus was in fact driven from Athens twice before he finally secured himself in power on his third try by riding into Athens on a chariot with a women dressed as the god Athena. He was, in fact, a popular leader, a fact that embarrassed later democratic Athenians like Herodotus. B.M. Lavelle examined this aspect in an article on Peisistratus' third and ultimately successful coup titled “The Compleat Angler: Observations on the Rise of Peisistratos in Herodotos.” He begins by quoting the verses the Acarnanian chrēsmologos Amphilytos supposedly spoke to Peisistratus before the battle of Pallene in 546 B.C: “The cast is made, the net outspread, The tunnies will rush headlong through the moonlit night.” He then goes on to explain how the “metaphorical equivalents and the meaning of the verses are as clear to us as they would have been to any Greek in Herodotos’ audience: the Athenians are the ‘tunnies’; Peisistratos and his forces are the ‘fishermen’; and Amphilytos, of course, if the ‘tunny-watcher’ or ‘hooer’ whose instructions to the ‘fishermen’ determine the success or failure of the enterprise.” As “the verses form part of Herodotos’ account of Peisistratos’ ascent to power they amount to…proof of Peisistratos’ irresistibility (and his tyranny’s inevitability), a recurrent theme in Herodotos’ logos, but one which was undoubtedly encouraged by his Athenian sources as a means of explaining how the Athenians were forced to yield the tyranny. Indeed, the theme of irresistibility helps to excuse the Athenians for being overcome; as much of the logos, which is historically quite vague, it is a reaction to fact, not factual itself.” So in addition to populism and tyranny, we also see in the world’s first history book the employment of propaganda. Populism, propaganda, and tyranny were all present at birth. The best way to mitigate our irradicable human nature and avoid the fate of the Athenian “tunnies” is to learn the lessons of history. Robert Strassler’s The Landmark Herodotus, p. 33 Lavelle's “The Compleat Angler: Observations on the Rise of Peisistratos in Herodotos" in The Classical Quarterly: https://www.jstor.org/stable/638901