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Sex, tyranny, and Hippias' incest dream (Herodotos 6.107)
Holt, Philip
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Autumn 1998; 39, 3; ProQuest
pg. 221

Sex, Tyranny, and Hippias' Incest Dream 
(Herodotos 6.107) 

Philip Holt 

In memoriam Toni Raubitschek 

I
N ONE OF SIGMUND FREUD'S favorite classical quotations, 
Iokaste tells Oidipous that "many mortals in dreams have 
slept with their mothers. ttl Perhaps she was right. Much 

later, in the second century A.D., Artemidoros collected a fair 
range of material from the dreams which his clients brought him 
for interpretation: dreams with incest shown directly, not 
deduced by psychoanalytical decoding.2 The meanings, thought 
Artemidoros, varied widely according to the dreamer's 
circumstances and the details of the dream-for example, 
whether the dreamer's mother was alive or dead at the time of 
the dream, and what position they used. Such dreams might 
bode well or ill, and they are hardly ever about sex. Symbolic 
interpretation does much to take the shock out of them. As 
White suggests, "since the forbidden impulse was not disguised 

ISoph. OT 981-982; so also PI. Resp. 9.571C-D. Freud cites the OT passage 
a number of times, usually as a proof-text for the Oedipus complex (references 
from The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund 
Freud, trans I. James Strachey et al. [London 1953-74]): The Interpretation of 
Dreams (1900) IV 263-264; The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) VI 
178 n.2; Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916-17) XVI 330-331, 
338; "Some Additional Notes on Dream-Interpretation as a Whole" (1925) XIX 
132. 

2Artem. 1.79. The difference between these dreams and ours is striking, but 
we need not doubt on that account that the dreams really happened, as does 
George Devereux, Dreams in Greek Tragedy: An Ethno-Psycho-Analytical 
Study (Berkeley 1976) xxii. 

Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 39 (1998) 221-241 
© 2000 GRBS 

221 



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222 SEX, TYRANNY, AND HIPPIAS' INCEST DREAM 

in the dream images themselves, this was subsequently and 
necessarily accomplished through an interpretation, which 
attached an innocent symbolic meaning to it."3 For Freud, 
dreams about something else prove on analysis to be really 
about incest, but for Artemidoros it is the other way around. 

Besides the generalizations in Sophokles and Plato and the 
anonymous case histories in Artemidoros, we have a few 
historic incest dreams on record, or rather, a few incest dreams 
imputed to historic figures. This paper will examine one of 
them. The story is doubtful, but the role of the dream in it is 
significant-perhaps all the more significant for being, quite 
likely, made up. Its significance, I shall argue, has less to do 
with the traditional concerns of dream interpretation-the fate 
and the inner thoughts of the dreamer-than with what those 
who told the story thought about him. Like Oidipous, our 
dreamer was also called a tyrannos; that may not be a 
coincidence. 

When the Persians landed at Marathon in 490 B.C, they had 
on board as adviser and guide Hippias, who had been deposed 
as tyrant of Athens twenty years earlier. The night before the 
landing, Herodotos tells us, Hippias 

had seen a strange vision in his sleep. He seemed to have 
intercourse with his mother, and conjectured the dream to 
mean that he would be restored to Athens, recover the power 
which he had lost, and afterwards live to a good old age in 
his native country. Such was the sense in which he interpreted 
the vision .... He brought the fleet to anchor off Marathon, and 
marshalled the bands of the barbarians as they disembarked. 
As he was thus employed it chanced that he sneezed and at 
the same time coughed with more violence than was his wont. 

3 Robert]. White, The Interpretation of Dreams: Oneirocritica by Artemido­
rus (Park Ridge 1975) 81 n.97. Artemidoros is good at finding "innocent 
symbolic meaning" in disturbing dreams. For example, eating in a dream may 
signify wealth, so a nightmare about being thrown to wild beasts is auspicious 
for a poor man, "for he will be able to feed many" (2.54); a dream of eating 
one's father, which would certainly get a psychoanalyst's attention, may bode 
coming into an inheritance (5.42). 



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PHILIP HOLT 

Now as he was a man advanced in years, and the greater 
number of his teeth were loose, it so happened that one of 
them was driven out with the force of the cough, and fell down 
into the sand. Hippias took all the pains he could to find it, 
but the tooth was nowhere to be seen; whereupon he fetched a 
deep sigh, and said to the bystanders, "After all the land is 
not ours, and we shall never be able to bring it under. All my 
share in it is the portion of which my tooth has possession." So 
Hippias believed that this fulfilled his dream. (Hdt. 6.107, 
transl. Rawlinson) 

223 

Scholarly attention given to this odd tale has focused mostly 
on two aspects of it. Some note the form of the story as a trick­
oracle tale in which a person interprets a prophetic sign (oracle, 
dream, omen) as favorable but finds it fulfilled to his hurt in an 
unexpected and devious way.4 Herodotos likes such stories: 
Kambyses was told that he would die in Agbatana, which he 
thought meant the city in Media, but he met with a freak 
accident in the town of Agbatana in Syria; Kroisos was told to 
flee when a mule became king of the Medes, so he thought he 
was safe, but he was conquered by Kyros, whose mixed 
parentage (half Mede and half Persian) made him a mule 
figuratively.5 Similarly, Hippias interpreted the dream as 
favorable: possessing his mother meant that he would possess 
his motherland. According to ancient ways of thinking about 
dreams, this was reasonable enough. That is how Artemidoros 
(1.79) interprets incest dreams experienced by politicians, and 
similar dreams with similar meanings are imputed to other 

4Roland Crahay, La litterature oraculaire chez Herodote (Paris 1956) 255-
256; Peter Frisch, Die Triiume bei Herodot (Meisenheim am Clan 1968) 25-27. 
Frisch 27 notes this dream as "der einzige triigerische Traum bei Herodot," but 
dreams in Herodotos are often misinterpreted: Edmond Levy, OLe reve chez 
Herodote," Ktema 20 (1995) 17-27. 

5Hdt. 3.64; 1.55.1-56.1,91.5-6. These are examples of common patterns in 
oracle tales, called respectively (after examples in Shakespeare) the Jerusalem 
Chamber and Birnam Wood types by Joseph Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle 
(Berkeley 1978) 58-65. 



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224 SEX, TYRANNY, AND HIPPIAS' INCEST DREAM 

historic figures. 6 Hippias is doomed to disappointment, 
however, because his symbolic dream receives merely symbolic 
fulfillment: only his tooth regains a place in Attika. 

Other scholars have focused on the symbolism of Hippias' 
dream and the loss of his tooth. Thus the incest in Hippias' 
dream has been taken as a sign of his impending death, his final 
union with mother earth? The tooth has been taken variously as 
an omen of death or loss, a phallic symbol in a symbolic castra­
tion, and metaphoric semen deposited in the earth.s 

This study will look at the story from a wider angle, with 
more attention to Hippias' situation at Marathon, and inci­
dentally with more attention to the nastiness of the incest. Our 
concern will be less with Hippias' fortunes or inner thoughts 
than with what the dream is doing in Herodotos' narrative and 
with what it might mean to the historian and his audience. 

What was Hippias doing at Marathon in the first place, and 
why did he guide the Persian fleet there, of all places? Herodo­
tos gives him tactical reasons: it was close to Eretria, which the 
Persians attacked before moving against Athens, and it was a 
good place for cavalry (Hdt. 6.102). But the picture of Hippias 
at Marathon would likely raise other associations as well, for he 
was attempting to follow in his father's footsteps. Hippias' 
father Peisistratos had seized power as tyrant in Athens three 
times (Hdt. 1.59-64, Ath.Pol. 13-15). The first two times, he 
relied heavily on his Athenian partisans and allies, but his sup­
port broke down, and he was expelled. On his third attempt, he 
planned better, he took his time, and he used a different 

6Julius Caesar, either early in his career when he was quaestor in Spain 
(Suet. lui. 7.2; Dio Casso 37.52.2, 41.24.2) or shortly before he crossed the 
Rubicon (Plut. Caes. 32.6); the Messenian leader Komon (Paus. 4.26.3). 

7Crahay (supra nA); but Hippias does not die in Herodotos' narrative. 
sThe views of, respectively, Campbell Bonner, "The Omen in Herodotus VI. 

107," CP 1 (1906) 235-238 (with some folklore parallels rather distant from 
Hippias' situation); Frisch (supra nA) 26, further developed by Justin Glenn, 
"The Dream of Hippias," RSC 20 Suppl. (1972) 5-7; and R. Drew Griffith, 
"Hippias' Missing Tooth (Hdt. 6. 107)," AHB 8 (1994) 121-122. 



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PHILIP HOLT 225 

strategy. He went abroad and made money and contacts, which 
after ten years enabled him to raise an army. He then landed at 
Marathon, defeated the Athenian army at Pallene, took over the 
city, and ruled peacefully until his death. 

Hippias' situation in 490 was different from his father's 
decades earlier, but in broad outline and in a few details such 
as arriving from Eretria (Hdt. 1.62.1, 6.102), he was trying to 
repeat his father's success: return to Athens, as tyrant, by land­
ing at Marathon, with a foreign army at his back.9 This is not to 
suggest that Hippias' strategy was determined by any un­
conscious Oedipal wishes. But the parallels could well have 
been noted by Athenians at the time. Hippias' putative dream 
underlines them: Hippias was trying to take his father's place in 
one way; no wonder, then, that he should dream of taking his 
father's place in another. The parallel is prejudicial, not neutral. 
Hippias' dream involved something shameful and forbidden; 
such, by implication, were his ambitions and strategy. liThe in­
cestuous dream implies a grim verdict on tyranny, ranking it 
with the foulest crimes."10 

Not only does Hippias' dream show him acting like his 
father; it also shows him acting like a tyrant. To understand 
this, we need to examine the sex lives of Greek tyrants (at least 
as portrayed in legend, literature, and anecdote), which were 
thought to be lurid and varied. Historically, tyrants were a 

9John Hart, Herodotus and Greek History (London 1982) 92: "Hippias, now 
an old man, may well have been living in the past." 

IOReginald Walter Macan, Herodotus: The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Books II 
(London 1895) 154. Interpreting the dream as an implied criticism of Hippias 
would be in keeping with Greek dream-interpretation. Despite his fondness for 
explaining away disturbing features of dreams (supra n.3), Artemidoros 
sometimes interprets shameful, disgusting events in dreams as evidence of 
something shameful and disgusting in the dreamer's character or his impending 
fate. This colors some of his interpretations of dreams involving illicit sex 
(Artem. 1.78-80), and he lays down a principle (although he readily admits 
exceptions) that dreams involving acts contrary to nature and custom are 
generally inauspicious (4.2). For example, removing temple property is wrong 
except for priests and seers, so dreams of temple-robbing are auspicious for 
priests and seers but inauspicious for anyone else (3.3). 



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226 SEX, TYRANNY, AND HIPPIAS' INCEST DREAM 

mixed lot, many of them capable rulers. But Greek writers also 
developed a picture of the stock tyrant, who achieves excessive 
power and falls into hybris and license. Sometimes, hybris and 
license extend to the bedroom. This, in classical tyrannography, 
can take several forms, marked repeatedly by three intertwined 
themes-too tightly intertwined to be sharply distinguished in 
our discussion. Since a tyrant holds unrestricted power and is 
accountable to no one, he can have sex with anyone he pleases: 
he enjoys complete license. Since he can use his considerable 
power to compel submission, he may engage in sex with a view 
to bullying and degrading his sex objects and their families. This 
corresponds to our ideas of sexual abuse and sexual harass­
ment and is sometimes described as hybris rather than erosY 
Finally, since tyrants also disregard nomoi, they may commit 
other kinds of sexual transgressions as well, exotic or abnormal 
acts contrary to law and custom. "Perversion of sex (as it might 
be called) is in fact characteristic of tyrants."12 They would be 
well represented in a Greek version of Krafft-Ebing's Psycho­
pathia Sexualis. 

We may begin with some general statements about the things 
tyrants do. In Herodotos' debate on constitutions, Otanes' 
speech against monarchy develops an anticipation of Lord 
Acton's dictum that absolute power corrupts absolutely: a man 
who gets it into his hands forgets himself and does as he 
pleases. The most serious of his abuses are that he "upsets the 

11 For the hybris-not-eros formulation, see Pluto Mor. 251 A and 768E (quot­
ing a tragic fragment), Arist. Pol. 1311b19-20. On hybris in bed, see further N. 
R. E. Fisher, Hybris: A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient 
Greece (Warminster 1992) 28-29, 104-111. 

12 Henry R. Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus (Cleveland 1966) 
285 n.135. On sexual misconduct by tyrants, see also Brian M. Lavelle, The 
Sorrow and the Pity: A Prolegomenon to a History of Athens Under the Peisistra­
tids, c. 560-510 B.c. (Historia Einzelschr. 80 [Stuttgart 1993]) 119-121. Immer­
wahr also makes a more pointed brief adumbration of my argument on 
Hippias' dream at 254 n.51: "The motif identifying the relation of a tyrant 
with his city as incest with his mother may be a development from the topos 
that a tyrant 'rapes women' (3.80.5)." 



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PHILIP HOLT 227 

traditional laws, rapes women (~laml yuvalKa~), and puts men 
to death without trial" (Hdt. 3.80.5). The speaker of [Dem.] 
17.3 echoes Otanes on two out of three points: people under a 
tyranny are apt to be put to death without trial and have their 
wives and children outraged (U~Pl~OIl£vou~). The Theseus of 
Euripides' Suppliants makes a similar point: "Why bring up 
daughters properly in your house for a tyrant's pleasure when­
ever he wants, a grief for those who raise them? I'd rather die 
than see my children bedded by force" (Eur. Supp. 452-455). 
According to Polybios, tyranny arose in early states out of 
kingship when hereditary kings, secure in their power and 
wealth, turned to gratifying their desires "and supposed that 
rulers ought to have different clothing from their subjects, and 
different pleasures in food and the ways of serving it, and 
indulgence in sex without refusal, even with people with whom 
it was not proper" (Polyb. 6.7.6-8). Likewise, aristocrats secure 
in their position made the same mistake, "some of them turning 
to raping women and kidnapping boys" (Polyb. 6.8.5). So also 
with would-be tyrants in Plato. The possessor of the ring of 
Gyges, assured of tyrannical power, might with impunity" go 
into houses and sleep with whomever he wanted" (PI. Resp. 
1.360B-C). The tyrannical man of Republic 9 might not actually 
do such things; he is not a ruling tyrant, he merely has a tyran­
nical soul, that is, one governed by appetite rather than by 
reason. But the principle is there. In his dreams (which for Plato 
as for Freud represent hidden wishes), he "does not shrink from 
trying to sleep with his mother or with anyone else, man, god, or 
animal" (9.571c-D). In waking life, he is given to "festivals, wild 
parties, feasts, hetairai, and all that sort of thing-all the things 
of the soul which the indwelling tyrant Eros directs" (573D). 

Eros beguiles him into doing "tyrannical things" ('tilw 'tupav­

V1KWV) such as mistreating his parents (574B-C). Plato's "tyrant 
Eros," then, acts like the tyrant of Otanes' speech. So does the 
tyrant of Lucian's Kataplous (26), who went about "ruining 



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228 SEX, TYRANNY, AND HIPPIAS' INCEST DREAM 

virgins, shaming youths," and putting men to death without 
trial-among them "men who were plotted against because of 
their pretty wives, or who complained over the hybris done to 
their kidnapped sons." So also in Lucian's Tyrannicide (5, 10): a 
tyrant drags off young men, wives, and girls to satisfy his lust. 

This is the stock theme of the tyrant's lust and abuse of 
power. We also find variations. Aristotle considers how a 
tyrant can stay in power by acting less like a tyrant. Among 
other things, "it must be clear that he does not commit outrages 
(u~pisov'ta) against any of his subjects, either boy or girl, nor 
does anyone about him" (Arist. Pol. 1314b24-26; so also 
1315bI4-24, Isoc. 3.36-37. Ath. 540E expresses surprise that 
Polykrates did not similarly take advantage of his position). 
Xenophon's Hieron takes a different tack and debunks the 
common notion that tyrants enjoy immense wealth, power, and 
luxury. Travel is risky when you have to worry about plots 
behind your back, praise from courtiers is suspect, and a steady 
diet of gourmet food becomes tiresome (Xen. Hieran 1.11-25). 
As for 'tex c«PPoDiaw (1.26-38), a tyrant can only marry beneath 
himself, and affairs with women who are already under his 
control are unsatisfying. Affairs with boys are no more reward­
ing, for similar but more complex reasons: a tyrant cannot know 
the delights of longing when he can gratify his desire immedi­
ately, and he does not know whether his beloved's favors are 
granted willingly or under compulsion. "The tyrant can never be 
sure that he is loved" ('to D£ 'tupavvCfl OU1to't' ea'tl1ttat£uam, 00<; 
cpWol'tat, 1.37). Besides, disaffected mistresses and boyfriends 
sometimes join in assassination plots (we will consider some 
examples shortly). Plutarch (Mar. 253c-E) tells how the citizens 
of Elis played a different variation on the theme when they 
assassinated their tyrant Aristotimos. At first, they wanted to 
rape his daughters and then kill them (1tav't(o<; !l£V aV£A£lv, 

aiKiaaa8at D£ Kat Ka8u~piaal 1tpo't£pov), but then they 
decided against raping them because that would be "acting like 



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PHILIP HOLT 229 

tyrants" ('tOA./lW(H Kat u<J£A.yalvou<Jl totC; 'tupavvolC; O/lOla). So 
they acted like democrats and allowed the girls to commit sui­
cide with their virginity intact. (The Lokrians, according to Ath. 
541D-E, showed less restraint when they overthrew Dionysios 
the Younger. They raped his wife and children, tortured them, 
killed them, cut them up, ate them, and threw the leftover bits 
into the sea.) 

All these passages show in one way or another a reaction 
against the idea that a tyrant can gratify his lust at will. 
Aristotle finds it imprudent, Xenophon finds it overrated, and 
the Eleans rise (slightly) above it. All show, then, that the idea 
was there to be reacted against. 

So far, we have been discussing tyrants and tyranny in gen­
eral. We find the same themes in tales about particular tyrants, 
and a few (included to fill out our picture) about monarchs, 
oligarchs, and tyrants' henchmen. The tales are of doubtful 
historic value, but that is not our concern. We are dealing not 
with the facts of tyranny but with its image-not with what 
tyrants and their ilk really did, but with what people thought, 
feared, and fantasized that they did. Whatever their activities 
in real life, tyrants in legend and anecdote often act just as 
Otanes says they will, harassing and abusing their subjects 
sexually. 

Plutarch compiles edifying tales of female virtue menaced by 
lustful tyrants or their underlings. The ladies responded by 
preferring death-their own, their ravishers', or both-to 
dishonor. 13 Nisaios of Syracuse was said to be given to 
ostentation, luxury, and hybris against women and children 
(Theopomp. FGrHist 115 F 187 = Ath. 436A-B). Aristotimos of 
Elis had maidens dragged off to be outraged (ad stuprum, Just. 
26.1). Dionysios the Younger had a large room strewn with 
thyme and roses and summoned Lokrian maidens there to 

13Plut. Mor. 250F-251c, 257E-258c (the story is also in 768B-0), 2580-F; 
see also Paus. 8.47.6. 



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230 SEX, TYRANNY, AND HIPPIAS' INCEST DREAM 

gratify him (Ath. 541c-D). A group of Rhodian oligarchs 
disgraced upper-class ladies and corrupted boys and youths. 
They also played dice for freeborn women of the citizen class, 
with the loser assigned to procure the lady at stake for the 
winner (Theopomp. F 121 = Ath. 444F-445A). Hostile orators 
found it easy to impute outrages against women and children to 
tyrants and the like: so Chaireas about the Four Hundred (Thuc. 
8.74.3, 86.3), Lysias and Isokrates about the Thirty (Lys. 12.98, 
Isoc. 4.114), and for that matter Hypereides about the Make­
donians (Hypereid. 6.20, 36) and Aischines about Timarchos 
when he held a post on Andros (Aeschin. 1.107). Perhaps mak­
ing such charges was too easy, for Chaireas (says Thucydides) 
was lying, and Lysias and Hypereides speak only of thwarted 
(hence unverifiable) intentions, of what would have happened 
had not something intervened. No matter; they could expect 
people to believe that tyrants did such things. 

As with real tyrants, so with tragic ones. Aigisthos did 
outrageous things with the women of Argos (Eur. E1. 945-948). 

The Zeus of the Prometheus Bound, who is repeatedly referred to 
as a tyrant,14 goes after 10 in a tyrannical way ([Aesch.] PV 
645-672): persuasion at first, then a threat of force when 
persuasion fails. Being no ordinary human tyrant, he can use 
dreams for persuasion, oracles. as go-betweens, and the 
thunderbolt for the threat of force, but the dynamics are the 
same. lo's narrative of her family's growing alarm and help­
lessness captures the fear Greeks must have felt over how 
tyrants could use their power. For that matter, what about 
Oidipous, the incestuous tyrannos? It may be objected that 
Oidipous is a proven and respected ruler, not a tyrant in the 

14'tupavvo.; and cognates at [Aesch.] PV 10, 222, 224, 305, 310, 357, 736, 
756, 761, 909, 942, 957, 996, mostly spoken by Prometheus of Zeus and his 
regime. On Zeus as tyrant, see further George Thomson, "ZEU'; 'tupavvo.;: A 
Note on the Prometheus Vinctus," CR 43 (1929) ~-5, and Aeschylus: The 
Prometheus Bound (Cambridge 1932) 6-10; Anthony J. Podlecki, The Political 
Background of Aeschylean Tragedy (Ann Arbor 1966) 101-122. 



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PHILIP HOLT 231 

bad sense, and that his incest is committed unwittingly and 
unintentionally. But tyranny is much talked about in the play. 

'tupo:vvi~ and cognates appear repeatedly, mostly of sovereign 
power in Thebes,1s and not always in a neutral sense. The 
Chorus worries about the connection between tyranny and 
hybris (OT 873, whatever text we adopt), and Oidipous comes 
close to condemning Teiresias and Kreon to death without trial, 
which is one of the worst of tyrannical abuses according to 
Otanes' speech (Hdt. 3.80.5) Here are pieces of the tyrannical 
pattern. The incest, witting or not, shows more of the pattern: 
tyrants do strange things in bed. 

Zeus' pursuit of 10 brings us to one of the chief fears of the 
tyrant's libido, the ways a tyrant could use his power against 
the reluctant. Philip V of Makedonia was (or so ran the story) a 
shameless womanizer. If women refused him, he would take 
noisy bands of revelers (1(&1101) to their houses for a sort of ob­
noxious serenade. He also harassed their sons and husbands. 16 

Tyrants could be expected to break up lovers, or try to. 17 The 
story of Harmodios and Aristogeiton is the best-known 
example. Hipparchos, Hippias' brother, repeatedly made over­
tures to Harmodios and was rejected, or so runs Thucydides' 
version (Thuc. 6.54.1-4, 56.1-2; cf Ath.Pol. 18.2). Harmodios' 
lover Aristogeiton feared that Hipparchos would take by force 
what he could not win by persuasion, so he plotted to 
assassinate Hipparchos. The fear was not justified by the event 
(Hipparchos settled for a vindictive insult against Harmodios' 
sister), but it was reasonable given expectations about how a 
tyrant in such a situation would act. In a similar but less famous 

lSSoph. OT 128,380,408,514,535,541,588 (bis), 592, 799, 873, 925, 939, 
1043, 1095. 

16polyb. 10.26.2-6; Liv. 27.31.5-8, 32.21.24. 

17Plut. Mar. 760B-o, with some anecdotes (exceptions that illustrate the 
rule) about Alexander refusing to exercise droit de tyran because a courtier of 
his was genuinely in love with the lady in question (cf Kyros' restraint with a 
beautiful captive, Xen. Cyr. 5.1.2-18, 6.1.31-49). On the opposition of tyranny 
and love affairs, see also PI. Symp. 182B-0. 



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232 SEX, TYRANNY, AND HIPPIAS' INCEST DREAM 

story from Herakleia in Italy, Antileon killed an unnamed tyrant 
who was putting pressure on his beloved, Hipparinos (Parth. 
7). 

Sometimes the victims struck back. A tyrant's hybris, 
especially sexual hybris, against his subjects was a prime motive 
for assassination. Aristotle notes that 1toAAat 0' E1tt8EcrW; 
Y£YEvllv'Wt Kat Ot(x 'to d~ 'to crrolla aicrxuv£cr8at 'trov Ilovapxrov 
'ttva~ (Pol. 1311b7-8) and devotes a section of the Politics to the 
matter (1311a23-b37). Plut. Mar. 768E-F makes the same point 
with many of the same anecdotes, Dio Chrys. 6.44 also men­
tions the idea, and there are examples from other sources as 
well. 18 The assassination of Hipparchos is only one example out 
of many. Euagoras, the ruler of Cyprus, was assassinated by an 
outraged eunuch in the upshot of a sex scandal.19 The assassins 
of Archelaos of Makedonia included two of his former male 
lovers who felt used and mistreated (Arist. Pol. 1311b8-21, 
Plut. Mar. 768F)-although in other versions, the cause was a 
coup d'etat ([Pl.] Ale. 2 141D) or a hunting accident (Diad. 
14.37.6). Periander of Ambrakia paid with his life for an insult, 
asking his boyfriend if he had gotten pregnant yet (Arist. Pol. 
1311a40-b2, Plut. Mar. 768F); for the young favorite sleeping 
with a tyrant was one thing, but being treated as a woman by 
one was another. Aristodemos of Kymai was assassinated with 
some help from a resentful mistress (Plut. Mar. 262A-D). Alex­
ander of Pherai was assassinated with some help from both a 
resentful wife and her brother, a resentful boyfriend (Plut. Pel. 
35.3-7, Mar. 768F). 

Hybris is a broad term. Once it is established that tyrants 

18Some, no doubt, in the compilation entitled "Revenge-Killing of Tyrants" 
(tupuvvrov <xvaipEcnc; EK tq.lropiac;) by Aristotle's pupil Phainias of Eresos 
(Ath. 90E-F, 438c); fragments, including Parth. 7 noted above, in Fritz Wehrli, 
Die Schule des Aristoteles IX (Basel 1957) 13. 

19The details are obscure and variously reported: Arist. Pol. 131lb5-7, 
Theopomp. FGrHist 115 F 103.12, Diod. 15.47.8 (who mistakenly makes 
Nikokles the victim). 



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PHILIP HOLT 233 

commit it against women and boys, we find tales of hybris in 
many forms, often with sexual overtones. These cases are not 
confined to rape and sexual harassment, but they are similarly 
insulting and apt to provoke similar resentment. This does much 
to explain why Sokles' denunciation of tyranny in Herodotos 
culminates in the story of what happened when Melissa, the 
dead wife of Periander of Corinth, appeared to him in a dream 
and complained that she was cold in the underworld. Periander 
provided for her by summoning the leading women of Corinth to 
a festival in their finest gowns, ordering his bodyguards to strip 
them, and burning their clothes as an offering to Melissa (Hdt. 
5.9211; Diog. Laert. 1.96 records another version). This action, 
which Sokles cites as the crowning example of tyrannical excess 
and abuse, strikes some as ludicrous and anticlimactic,2° but it 
touches a sensitive nerve in the Greek male consciousness. It is 
power turned against defenseless womanhood, a symbolic rape, 
recalling the worst of the tyrant's misdeeds in Otanes' speech. 
Hipparchos' insult against Harmodios' sister, when he declared 
her unfit to bear the basket in the Panathenaia, led to his 
assassination. This was certainly hybris against a woman, an 
assault on her honor if not on her person?1 Peisistratos com­
mitted a different sort of insult when he married Megakles' 
daughter to seal a political alliance the second time he seized 
power in Athens. He had children by a previous marriage and 
did not want to have more, so he had intercourse with her ou 
Kcna VOj.lOV (Hdt. 1.61.1)-that is, in an irregular way, but the 

20 Kenneth H. Waters, Herodotos on Tyrants and Despots: A Study in Ob­
jectivity (Historia Einzelschr. 15 [Wiesbaden 1971]) 14; Hart (supra n.9) 52. 

21 Thuc. 6.56.1. The nature of the insult is unclear, but declaring the girl 
unfit may have contained an innuendo that she was no longer a virgin-a 
public affront to her chastity which her brother was bound to avenge: so 
Brian M. Lavelle, "The Nature of Hipparchos' Insult to Harmodios," AlP 107 
(1986) 318-331. As Frank Romer has suggested to me, it might have been even 
worse. Tyrants seduce and debauch, and Hipparchos had recently tried, 
without success, to seduce Harmodios: what was Harmodios to think that the 
scorned Hipparchos had done to his sister that he would know about her 
virginity? 



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234 SEX, TYRANNY, AND HIPPIAS' INCEST DREAM 

phrasing gives us another twist on the tyrant's disregard of 
sexual (and other) nomoi. The insult here was that Peisistratos 
was using his aristocratic wife for pleasure rather than (in the 
words of the classical Athenian formula for marriage) "for the 
procreation of legitimate offspring." Her father was enraged 
and felt that he was being dishonored (htj.l.a~£creat), so he 
drove his one-time partner out of Athens. 

Most of these tyrant tales involve hybristic sex, sex under 
pressure or compulsion. The stories prey on fears of what a 
tyrant might do with unlimited power. Peisistratos' "unlawful" 
relations with Megakles' daughter, however, bring us to another 
theme in the picture of tyranny. Tyrants practice outlandish and 
perverted forms of sex. Periander of Corinth is said to have com­
mitted incest with his mother.22 He sent 300 Kerkyraian youths 
from good families to Sardis to be castrated (Hdt. 3.48). He 
also killed his wife Melissa (Hdt. 3.50.1), "persuaded by the 
slanders of his concubines, whom he later burned" (Diog. Laert. 
1.94), and committed necrophilia with her corpse (Hdt. 
5.92113). Periander was a magnet for tales of tyrannical 
outrages, and this selection covers a wide range of nomoi 
violated. Harder to assess is the outrage perpetrated by 
Aristodemos of Kymai, who, according to Plutarch, "outdid 
himself in baseness by his unjust conduct towards women and 
free-born boys" (~v j.l.£V fV 'tal~ 1t£pt yuvalKa~ Kat 1tal()a~ 

fAcUefpOU~ a()tK{at~ au'to~ eau'tou j.l.oXe11p6'tcpo~, Mor. 261F). 

What did he do that was so terrible? He made the boys grow 
their hair long and wear jewelry like girls, and he made the girls 
dress like boys. Whatever Aristodemos' purposes (which 
Plutarch does not explain), this enforced cross-dressing was a 
violation of sexual nomoi in another sense, the customs and 
practice in dressing for the two sexes. Dionysios of Syracuse 
married two wives in one day (Diod. 14.44.5-45.1, Plut. Dion 

22Diog. Laert. 1.96 (1.94-96 gives most of the anecdotes on Periander cited 
below); Parth. 17. 



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PHILIP HOLT 235 

3.2). Gernet has argued that tyrants' political marriages had 
their roots in archaic marriage patterns.23 This is an important 
study, but not equally strong in all its parts, and Gernet's 
evidence that these archaic marriage patterns included bigamy 
(as distinguished from having a wife and a concubine) is scanty, 
uncertain, and rather dependent on myth for evidence. By 
prevailing community standards in the fourth century, 
Dionysios' double wedding was extraordinary enough to cause 
comment, including reports (preserved by Plutarch) that he 
shared his nights equally between his wives and kept it a secret 
which marriage he consummated first. As a tyrant, he was living 
on a different plane from ordinary men. 

Sexual transgressions also show up in Herodotos' stories of 
eastern monarchs, who often show tyrannical traits. In Herodo­
tos' telling, Kambyses married two of his sisters and killed one 
of them (Hdt. 3.31-32). Mykerinos raped his daughter (2.131); 
two other kings of Egypt, Rhampsinitos and Cheops, were said 
to have prostituted theirs (2.12h:2, 126). Indeed, Herodotos 
frames his work with two stories of sexual transgressions by 
autocrats. In the beginning, Kandaules contrived to have his 
minister Gyges see his wife naked (1.8-12). Near the end, 
Xerxes fell in love with his sister-in-law and had an affair with 
her daughter, his niece, who was also married to Xerxes' son 
(9.108-113). In both cases, the monarch's illicit desires had 
explosive consequences. The parallels, and the significance of 
framing the Histories with these stories, have been well dis­
cussed by Wolff,24 At the subregallevel, Artayktes, who ruled 
Sestos like a tyrant (E-tUpavv£uE) for Xerxes, desecrated the 
shrine of Protesilaos. Among other enormities, "he copulated 
with women in the sanctuary" (9.116.3), "brought women into 

23Louis Gernet, "Marriages of Tyrants," in The Anthropology of Ancient 
Greece (Baltimore 1981) 289-302 (originally published 1954). 

24Erwin Wolff, "Das Weib des Masistes," Hermes 92 (1964) 51-58 = 
Walter Marg, ed., Herodot: Eine Auswahl aus der neueren Forschung (Wege der 
Forschung 263 [Darmstadt 1982]) 668-678. 



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236 SEX, TYRANNY, AND HIPPIAS' INCEST DREAM 

the temple and committed lawless acts (a8£JltCJm) with them" 
(7.33). For this the Greeks put him to death. 

Sexual transgression is not the stock tyrant's main vice. 
Aristotle has little to say about it, considering how much he has 
to say about tyranny. It does not much interest Plato's aspiring 
tyrant, Thrasymachos in the Republic, or his soulmate, Kallikles 
in the Gorgias. Kallikles advocates using power to gratify desire 
and pursue pleasure (Grg. 491D-500A; the usual words are 
E1tt8Ullta and Tj8ov~), and lust plays an important part in 
Sokrates' discussion of the tyrannical soul in Republic 9. But 
neither Kallikles nor Thrasymachos is much focused on sex. 
They both have more sober and sinister things on their minds. 
Writers of the archaic period stress the tyrant's wealth more 
than his sexual opportunities.25 The tyrant's sexual trans­
gressions get more attention from writers with a flair for drama, 
such as Herodotos, Plutarch, and Lucian. Still, illicit sex is a 
part of a nexus of power, corruption, and abuse which appears 
in much Greek thinking on tyranny and does much to explain 
Herodotos' tale of Hippias' dream.26 

Illicit sex expresses and dramatizes some of the leading 
ideas about tyranny, ideas which we have found illustrated 
both in and out of Herodotos. A tyrant can live as he pleases, 
and that includes having sex with anyone he pleases; lack of 

25 Archil. fr.19, Solon fr.33.5-7 West. On wealth and the attractions of 
tyranny, see W. R. Connor, "Tyrannis Polis," in J. D' Arms and J. Eadie, edd., 
Ancient and Modern: Essays in Honor of Gerald F. Else (Ann Arbor 1977) 
95-109, esp. 98-101; J. L. O'Neil, "The Semantic Usage of Tyrannos and 
Related Words," Antichthon 20 (1986) 26-40, esp. 28-30. 

26The nexus of abnormalities and perversions associated with tyrants 
extends a good deal further: see T.-P. Vernant, "From Oedipus to Periander: 
Lameness, Tyranny, Incest in Legend and History," Arethusa 15 (1982) 19-38; 
Michael H. Jameson, "Labda, Lambda, Labdakos," in Mario A. Del Chiaro, 
ed., Corinthiaca: Studies in Honor of Darrell A. Amyx (Columbia 1986) 3-11; 
and (ranging most widely) Daniel Ogden, The Crooked Kings of Ancient Greece 
(London 1997). 



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PHILIP HOLT 237 

restraint lets lust run rampant. 27 A tyrant commits hybris, 
including rape and sexual harassment. A tyrant disregards 
nomoi: as a piece of political theory, this means that he dis­
regards juridical nomoi, governing arbitrarily and not respecting 
the rule of law.28 In a more melodramatic or rhetorical mode, it 
can mean that he disregards sexual nomoi, the proper standards 
of behavior. The tyrant stands apart from the rest of humanity, 
enviable for the power and freedom he enjoys but terrifying 
because he breaks all the rules and might break them against us. 
Hippias' dream associates him with one element in the nexus of 
power, abuse, and sexual transgression; hence it implicates him 
in the others. 

Fuller consideration of what Hippias' dream does in 
Herodotos' text brings us to the question of Herodotos' politics. 
Herodotos exhibits a fairly low opinion of Peisistratos and his 
sons.29 He begins his story of Peisistratos with an omen warning 
Peisistratos' father not to have a son at all (1.59.1-3), and his 
account of the tyrant's rise to power (1.59-64) focuses heavily 
on the dramatic and sensational: Peisistratos' various tricks to 
seize power; his mistreatment of Megakles' daughter; his 
reliance on mercenaries, money, foreign support, and hostages 
to secure his position. Hippias, at least after his brother's 
assassination, ruled harshly (5.55, 6.123.2). Herodotos has little 
to say about the tyranny's accomplishments. The only specific 

270n the tyrant's power and license more generally, see James F. McGlew, 
Tyranny and Political Culture in Ancient Greece (Ithaca 1993) 24-35. 

28Thus Otanes notes that the tyrant is "not held accountable" (uVEu9uvcp 
Hdt. 3.S0.3; a magistrate in a democracy, on the other hand, is "accountable," 
\lltEu9uvov SO.6). In his triad of the worst abuses (SO.5), two-upsetting the 
vOllatU 1ta:tptu and putting men to death without trial-involve disregarding 
the rule of law; is the third, raping women, so different? 

29The following discussion will, I hope, make it clear why I cannot agree 
with Stewart Flory, The Archaic Smile of Herodotus (Detroit 19S7) 127-12S, 
that Peisistratos is an example of the "Herodotean philosopher king" (121), 
whose tricks in rising to power are vindicated by his good rule. Philosopher 
king is too grand a name for what Flory finds in the text, and the "class" has 
only one other full-fledged member, Deiokes. 



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238 SEX, TYRANNY, AND HIPPIAS' INCEST DREAM 

achievements he records to Peisistratos' credit are two minor 
ones, the purification of Delos (1.64.2) and the conquest of 
Sigeion (5.94.1). Our other sources are more detailed and 
generous (Thuc. 6.54.5-6, Ath.Pol. 16). 

When it comes to passing judgment on the regime, Herodotos 
credits Peisistratos with good government within a constitu­
tional framework: "Not upsetting the existing public offices or 
changing the laws, he governed the city according to established 
arrangements, managing things fine and well" (1.59.6); he was 
not, then, a stereotypical law-defying tyrant. 30 Nevertheless, 
Herodotos repeatedly contrasts his regime unfavorably with 
freedom: to Peisistratos' supporters "tyranny was more 
welcome than freedom" (1.62.1), the Delphic oracle told the 
Spartans to "free Athens" (5.63.1), Hippias' opponents 
"wished to be free" (5.64.2), Hippias' overthrow made Athens 
"free from tyrants" (5.55; cf 5.65.5, 6.123.2).31 More important, 
Herodotos believes that Peisistratos' rule "held the Athenians 
down" (his usual word for it is Ka't€Xw) and prevented their 
becoming a real power in Greek affairs. He begins his digression 
on the rise of Peisistratos by saying that Kroisos found Athens 
"held down and torn apart" (Ka't£XOIl£YOY 't£ Kat <h£O"ltaO"Il£­
YOY) by the regime (1.59.1), hence not an attractive ally.32 The 
digression closes with the same word in ring composition: 

30This agrees with other judgments on the regime: Peisistratos followed the 
established laws but saw to it that his own supporters held office (Thuc. 
6.54.6); he ruled "more like a citizen than like a tyrant," 1tOAt1:lI(W~ llaAAOV i1 
't1JpClVVlI(W~ (Ath.Pol. 14.3; so also 16.2). 

31Similariy, the Milesians were not eager to receive another tyrant after 
Aristagoras since they had tasted freedom (Hdt. 6.5.1); Maiandrios tried to end 
tyranny on Samos but failed because the Samians "did not wish to be free" 
(3.143.2). For the antithesis generally, see O'Neil (supra n.25) 30-31. Herodo­
tos is capable of more nuanced views on one-man rule versus democracy (see 
infra nn.36-37), but his way of formulating the difference in these passages is 
highly tendentious. 

32Flory (supra n.29) 128 interprets this phrase to mean '''torn by faction­
alism,' but ... 'held in check,' by Pisistratus." But this twists Herodotos' Greek 
and ignores his use of KCl'tEXW elsewhere. 



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PHILIP HOLT 239 

"Kroisos learned that these things were holding down 
(KU'tEXOV't(X) the Athenians" (1.65.1). Athenian power did not 
grow until after the tyranny: "When they were under the 
tyrants, the Athenians were no better in war than any of their 
neighbors, but once they were rid of tyrants they were first by 
far. This shows that when they were held down they were 
slackers and cowards (Kun:X0!l£vOl !lEV EOEAoKanov) since 
they were working for a master, but when they were set free, 
each of them was eager to work for himself" (5.78).33 This 
growth of their power worried the Spartans, who "saw that the 
Athenians were growing and were not at all ready to obey them, 
and considered that the people of Attika might become equal to 
themselves, whereas they had been weak and ready to obey 
when they were held down by tyranny" (KU't£X0!lEVOV OE uno 
'tupuvvioos, 5.91.1). Accordingly, they took steps to put Hip­
pias back in power but were thwarted when their allies refused 
to support them. 

All this is of a piece with Herodotos' view of tyranny 
generally. On the whole, Herodotos presents tyranny as a bad 
thing.34 We may qualify this view if we like: he is no single­
minded foe of tyranny, for he can find both good and bad in 
most leaders and constitutions;35 he allows for the possibility of 

33This judgment shows remarkably little attention to Peisistratos' wide­
ranging foreign policy, which would have little point or effect if Athens under 
Peisistratos had been all that weak. Indeed, Herodotos qualifies this of ten­
quoted judgment in another passage, less widely quoted: "Athens, although 
great before, became greater when it was rid of tyrants" (5.66.1). 

34 Recent champions of this old view include Donald Lateiner, "Herodotean 
Historiographical Patterning: 'The Constitutional Debate,'" QS 15 (1984) 
257-284, revised as chapter 8 of his The Historical Method of Herodotus 
(Toronto 1989) (strongly supportive); and Filippo Cassola, "Erodoto e la 
tirannide," in F. Broilo, ed., Xenia: Scritti in onore di P. Treves (Rome 1985) 
25-35 (with some valuable and judiCious qualifications). 

35Well argued by Hermann Strasburger, "Herodot und das perikleische 
Athen," Historia 4 (1955) 1-25 = Marg (supra n.24) 574-608; partial rebuttal 
in F. D. Harvey, "The Political Sympathies of Herodotus," Historia 15 (1966) 
254-255. 



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240 SEX, TYRANNY, AND HIPPIAS' INCEST DREAM 

good one-man rule;36 he does not cut all his tyrants out with the 
same cookie-cutter or engage in unremitting tyrant-bashing.37 

Still, despite these qualifications, an anti-tyrant point of view 
emerges. Herodotos' narrative is colored by stock ideas of the 
tyrant's license and hybris, and tyrants in Herodotos often act 
pretty much as Otanes says they wilp8 Indeed, many of our 
examples of the stock ideas have been drawn from Herodotos. 
Herodotos often, although not always, uses 'tupavvl<; and 
cognates in the bad sense, implying arbitrary rule and 
despotism.39 He is said to have been involved in antityrannical 
activities himself: the Souda's entries on Herodotos and his 
kinsman Panyassis report a tradition that Lygdamis, the tyrant 
of Halikarnassos, exiled the former and killed the latter, and 
that Herodotos later joined in overthrowing Lygdamis. 

In Herodotos' text, then, tyranny in general is bad, and the 
Peisistratids are not particularly good. This is not to say that 
Herodotos came to his task determined to vilify them. He was 
not so single-minded or one-sided a writer, and the result is not 
altogether a vilification. Much of the vilifying may have been 
done before he arrived on the scene, by a tradition colored by 

36John N. Davie, "Herodotus and Aristophanes on Monarchy," G&R 26 
(1979) 160-168; Flory (supra n.29) 119-149 is often telling but puts the 
historian too far over on the monarchist side. 

37Waters (supra n.20); Vivienne J. Gray, "Herodotus and Images of 
Tyranny: The Tyrants of Corinth," AJP 117 (1996) 361-389; Hart (supra n.9) 
50-65. 

38Lateiner (supra n.34); John G. Gammie, "Herodotus on Kings and Tyrants: 
Objective Historiography or Conventional Portraiture?" JNES 45 (1986) 171-
195. I use "colored by" rather than a stronger expression; Gammie notes that 
tyrants in Herodotos' narrative often deviate from the stereotype, and Gray 
(supra n.37) stresses the variety of uses to which the stock motifs are put. Flory 
(supra n.29) 131-132 finds Otanes' speech falsified by the narrative, but the 
argument needs to consider a wider range of material. 

39Herodotos' use of the word in the negative sense is stressed by Arther 
Ferrill, "Herodotus on Tyranny," Historia 27 (1978) 385-398. But Herodotos 
is not consistent here: see Cassola (supra n.34) 25-27 and Victor Parker, "Tu­
pavvo;. The Semantics of a Political Concept from Archilochus to Aristotle," 
Hermes 126 (1998) 145-172 at 161-164. For a different view, see Edmond 
Levy, "Basileus et turannos chez Herodote," Ktema 18 (1993) 7-18. 



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PHILIP HOLT 241 

stock views of tyrants and by self-serving efforts by the 
Athenians to cover up their complicity with the Peisistratids.4o 

Still, we can see what Herodotos' larger picture of tyranny is 
and how the tale of Hippias' dream fits into it. The dream story 
shows Hippias acting like his father and acting like a tyrant, 
and it reflects badly on him in both capacities. 

To conclude, Hippias' dream is a would-be tyrant's dream­
what Plato's tyrannical man dreams about, an extreme case of 
what tyrants (at least in legend and anecdote) do. The equation 
of sleeping with one's mother and regaining possession of one's 
motherland is not simply a neutral piece of natural symbolism. 
It is a comment, a suggestion in Herodotos' narrative that in Hip­
pias' case one is just as bad as the other. Herodotos' Hippias is 
trying to seize his country by force and return to a position of 
power where he can do as he pleases without restraint, just as 
he could before. There is an obscene name for people like that. 
Herodotos does not utter it, but the tale of Hippias' dream 
makes the point.41 

April, 2000 Modern and Classical Languages 
University of Wyoming 
Laramie, Wyo. 82071-3603 
pholt@uwyo.edu 

40The views of, respectively, Lionel Pearson, "Real and Conventional 
Personalities in Greek History," JHI 15 (1954) 136-145 = Selected Papers 
(Chico 1983) 110-119; and Lavelle (supra n.12). 

41 Part of the work on this paper was done on a sabbatical granted by the 
University of Wyoming and spent at the University of Leeds. I am deeply 
grateful to both institutions. Earlier versions were read before the Rocky 
Mountain Modern Language Association and the Leeds International Latin 
Seminar, with helpful discussion. Without wishing to implicate them in my 
judgments or errors, I thank Roger Brock and Frank Romer for reading and 
commenting on earlier drafts; R. Drew Griffith and Brian Lavelle for helpful e­
mail discussions on particular points; and the senior editor and anonymous 
referee for GRBS.