1. The subject of this chapter may be best expressed in the words of Thucydides:(683) “The tyrants of Athens, and of the rest of Greece, of which many states had been governed by tyrants before the Athenians, were, with the exception of those in Sicily, in most instances, and especially in later times, overthrown by the Lacedæmonians, whose state was never under a despotic government, and who, having become powerful through the early establishment of their own constitution, were enabled to arrange to their own liking the governments of other states.” It is a remarkable circumstance in the history of Greece, that at the same period of time tyrants everywhere obtained the supreme authority in Doric, Ionic, and Æolic cities; a proof that, although these nations were derived from different races, the same stage in the progress of social life was every where attended with the same phenomena. Those states alone in which the features of the Doric character were most strongly marked, viz., Sparta and Argos, resisted this influence; and we shall in general find that it was by a subversion of the Doric principles that the tyrants obtained their power. This will be made evident by a consideration of the absolute monarchies in the Doric states of Peloponnesus.