Polycrates

There is much agreement from both ancient and modern sources, to pinpoint what a typical Greek tyrant was. The word ‘Tyrannos’ is not of Greek origin, but has been used by poets to convey a particular description of a dictator- like leader during the Archaic Greece era. The tyrants during this time were characteristically men whom held power in their Polis and overthrew the Aristocracy as a way of liberating the oppressed people of the city-state, and whom quenched their desire for immense power and wealth, using violence and bloodshed as a way to uphold conformity and plunder surrounding islands for riches. Armed forces are used by all tyrants as the way of creating a Tyranny, disarming the opponents and claiming the city as theirs, with the support of the people and specifically the hoplite class. Some Tyrants never ruled for very long, being overthrown by enemies, but during their tyranny they were able to supply their Polei with immense growth and advancement. The Samian Tyrant, Polykrates was able to solely rule over his city-state from 532BCE after disposing of his two brothers, and created a sea empire where he dominated many islands, parts of mainland Greece and Asia Minor, using powerful naval forces. We may conclude that Polykrates seemed to be a typical Greek Tyrant, due to the similar actions that were undertaken by many other Greek tyrants, and therefore creating fundamental characteristics of a Tyranny.

The phrase imperishable fame in the subtitle is taken from Ibycus' Ode to Polycrates (v. 47), where the poet is addressing Polycrates, predicting him imperishable fame (κλέος ἄφθιτον). Generally, the reason for Polycrates' imperishable fame is considered to be his beauty, because of the genitive form κάλλεος, and because of the beautiful youths that are mentioned in the preceding verses. Therefore, the connection κλέος ἄφθιτον ↔ κάλλεος leads critics to believe that Ibycus is not addressing Polycrates of Samos when he was adult tyrant, but either: 1) young Polycrates; or 2) Polycrates' namesake son. These conclusions are based mostly on external evidence, which is temporarily distanced from the subject. I want to present different reading of the song, which will give answer to the question: Is Ibycus singing to and about the Samian tyrant Polycrates? In order to answer this question I will examine, besides the external evidence, the ode itself.

French : Le présent article analyse la crédibilité à reconnaître aux alliances que le roi Crésus de Lydie aurait conclues avec Amasis d’Égypte d’une part et le roi de Babylone d’autre part. Par la même occasion seront étudiées les relations diplomatiques établies par Amasis avec les Cyrénéens et Polycrate de Samos ainsi que les rapports qui unissaient la Lydie à l’Égypte. De même, cette étude se penchera sur les liens diplomatiques tissés par le roi de Babylone contemporain de Crésus, afin de mieux dégager quelle était la nature des rapports unissant ce dernier au dernier roi de Lydie.

English : This article analyses the credibility given to the alliances, which were supposedly formed by the king of Lydia Croesus with Amasis of Egypt and with Nabonidus king of Babylon. At the same time, the diplomatic relations of Amasis with Cyrene and with Polycrates of Samos are studied, as well as the connection between the Lydian Kingdom and Egypt. Further, this study focuses also on the diplomatic ties built by the king of Babylon in order to determine what was the nature of the links between him and Croesus.

Turkish : Bu makale, Lydia kralı Kroisos’un Mısırlı Amasis ve Babylonlu Nabonid kralı arasında yapılan ve kabul etmek durumunda kaldığımız ittifakların güvenilirliğini araştırmaktadır. Aynı zamanda, Amasis’in Kyrene ve Samoslu Polykrates ile olan diplomatik ilişkilerinin yanı sıra Lydia Krallığı ve Mısır arasındaki bağlantıda incelenmiştir. Bu çalışma ayrıca Babil Kralı tarafından oluşturulan diplomatik bağlara da odaklanarak, Kroisos ile olan bağlantılarının doğasını tespit etmeyi amaçlamaktadır.

In his lectures on Optical Media, Friedrich Kittler sought to trace the history of image production, storage, and transmission through the lens of media technologies, from linear perspective to computer graphics. One of his opening observations is that 'we knew nothing about our own senses until media provided models and metaphors'.¹ To illustrate, he points to Plato's deployment of a wax tablet as a metaphor for 'the immortal and self-storing soul', alluding to the model of memory that Socrates presents in the Theaetetus, whereby sense perceptions are impressed into an ekmageion, or 'imprint receiving device' in the mind (191c-d). The Greek concept of mind (psychê) as a storage device for indexically recorded impressions becomes conceivable, Kittler implies, only through the medium of written philosophy itself. Platonic ontology is made possible by means of the very technology about which he expresses so much ambivalence; in Kittler's words: 'Under the guise of a metaphor that was not just a metaphor [. .. ] the new media technology that gave rise to the soul was eventually seen as the vanishing point of this newly invented soul.' But what was this 'new media technology'? Kittler refers to writing as 'the new medium of Attic democracy', and to 'the new Ionic vowel alphabet', 'the wax slate', and the tabula rasa as the media that brought...

The inscription The image of the fisher is surrounded by a Greek inscription whose reading is far from simple and the broken and missing part at 11 o'clock does not help our understanding. The text 1 is the following one: ΧΡΙϹΤΕϹΩΤΛΥΡ̣ Α̣ Ϲ̣ Ι̣ ΧΘΥϹΜΑ It can be read in the following way by expanding the abbreviated words: Χριϲτὲ ϲῶτ(ερ) λύρα̣ ϲ̣ ἰ̣ χθὺϲ μα(κρόϲ) Christ saviour! The big fish of the lyre. After ΛΥΡ only the lower part of three letters can be seen and this makes difficult guess what word preceded ]χθὺϲ, even thought the sequence χθὺς cannot be but the final part of the Greek word ἰχθὺς, "fish", especially in a Christian context. The most suitable reconstruction is the above mentioned one even if it were also possible to propose λύρα ὁ̣ ἰ̣ χθὺϲ, "Lyre. The fish", as a sort of sequence of two allegoric images. In any case we have a letter with a rounded lower part: either o or ϲ. The engraver had few room at his disposal and wanted to write many words: for this reason he abbreviated ϲῶτ(ερ) and μα(κρόϲ) and for the same reason I do not think he wrote an article where he could omit it. The genitive case λύρας is acceptable because the engraver wanted to clarify what kind of fish was alluded to, and we know of this kind of genitive thanks to the proverbial expression ὄνος λύρας ("the donkey of the lyre", i.e. the donkey with a lyre, as in the title of a Menippean satyre of Varro), and also βοῦς λύρας could be said 2. The abbreviation ϲῶτ(ερ), in vocative case, can be taken for granted whereas the word λύρα deserves a longer discussion because it appears to be the only occurrence of such a word in a Christian context. Thanks to Clement of Alexandria we know what the religious value of the lyre was in Christianity and we can be confident in recognizing the word λύρα̣ ϲ̣. The director of the theological school in Alexandria, in the second half of the 2nd century AD, wrote in his Paedagogus (III.11.59): Αἱ δὲ σφραγῖδες ἡμῖν ἔστων πελειὰς ἢ ἰχθὺς ἢ ναῦς οὐριοδρομοῦσα ἢ λύρα μουσική, ᾗ κέχρηται Πολυκράτης, ἢ ἄγκυρα ναυτική, ἣν Σέλευκος ἐνεχαράττετο τῇ γλυφῇ, κἂν ἁλιεύων τις ᾖ, ἀποστόλου μεμνήσεται καὶ τῶν ἐξ ὕδατος ἀνασπωμένων παιδίων… Clement, in his Stromata, 3 explains that the lyre symbolizes both Jesus himself and the devout Christian who lets Christ play his souls as though it was a lyre. 4 Our seals should be either a dove, or a fish, or a ship going fast with the wind, or the musical lyre that Polycrates used, or the anchor that Seleucus had engraved on stone, or a fisher who will recall the Apostle and the young people dragged out of water… Clement was worried about the possible use of images of pagan gods engraved in seals to be worn in rings and for that reason he proposed a Christian alternative including two illustrious symbols, that of Seleucus and the ring of Polycrates which, according to Herodotus 5 , had an emerald cut by the famous artist Theodorus. The tyrant loved deeply this ring but was induced by his friend Amasis, pharaoh of Egypt, to toss it into the sea in order to avoid the envy of gods because he seemed to be too fortunate in everything. He wanted to appear, almost partially, unlucky. But a fish swallowed the ring, a fisher caught the fish and offered it to Polycrates who realized that it was impossible to avoid his own destiny, i.e. to be always fortunate, cause the wrath of gods, and his consequent doom. In the Hellenistic age, the poet Posidippus (9 Gallazzi) said that the lyre was represented on the gem of Polycrates:

University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. Lampeter, Wales. 5th-7th may 2014.
Sacred Landscapes: Creation, Transformation, Manipulation. An International conference exploring sacred landscapes in a diachronic perspective.

"Archaic Tyrants and the Sanctuary of Apollo of Delos: Geopolitics in the Cyclades and the Appeal to Ionian Ethnicity"

In the second half of the VI B.C. the sanctuary of Apollo of Delos played a role in the strategies of power of both Peisistratus, tyrant of Athens, and of Polycrates, tyrant of  Samos: from opposite shores of the Aegean, both tyrants aimed at establishing authority in the Cyclades. The affinities between the two are significant: both established a personal alliance with Lygdamis the tyrant of Naxos; both conducted military naval expeditions in the Cyclades; both influenced the sanctuary and landscape of Delos. The sanctuary of Apollo of Delos should thus be considered as a structural component in the regional geopolitics of the Cyclades.
As a geographical centre of the archipelago and mid-point in the navigation across the Aegean, Delos stood as a physical and psychological watershed between Greece and Asia Minor. The initiatives of Peisistratus and Polycrates in favour of the sanctuary of Apollo aimed at securing –forcing – its approval: guarantee a moral justification to their military and political presence in the Cyclades.
I argue the tyrants’ religious initiatives are better understood analysing not only the religious referent – the sanctuary and priesthood – but moreover the audience they were addressing, i.e. the social group to which they were meant to be visible and renowned. The sanctuary and its festivals were in fact the fulcrum of the religious and cultural communion of the Greeks of Ionian ethnos since the archaic age. The tyrants’ actions in Delos were actually public demonstrations, addressed to the pan-Ionian society that frequented and communed at the sanctuary: they must be understood as messages of cultural and ethnic value, aimed at strengthening the consent to the tyrant’s power among the Ionian Greeks who inhabited the Aegean islands and coast of Asia Minor.
Affinities and differences among the two tyrants relate to their specific backgrounds, motives and objectives. Peisistratus’s claims could rest on the tradition that had Athens as the motherland of the Ionians. Polycrates’s decision marks a shift towards the maritime region, overlooking the other Microasiatic Ionian cultural hub of the Panionion at Mycale. Contemporary developments in the interstate system of the Near East should also be considered among their motives.
Peisistratus and Polycrates manipulated the sanctuary of Apollo and the landscape of Delos not by undertaking construction works, monumentalisation, or disproportionate dedications: Peisistratus purified the sanctuary by removing all tombs visible from the temple; Polycrates bound nearby Rheneia to Delos by a chain, as a dedication to the sanctuary, and attempted to re-institute the panegyris of the Ionians. These interventions only in a small part regard the visible and practical features of the landscape, and they rely on symbolic items and on regulations: they are modifications of the religious, psychological and social meaning of the land. The tyrants modify the socially attributed value of the land in, and into, the sacred sphere; they re-define the use, or the non-use, of the sacred site.

The Ode to Polycrates (fr. 282a Page = S151 = P.Oxy. XV 1790) is the
longest fragment in Ibycusʹ oeuvre, found on papyrus scroll at the end of
the 19th century at Oxyrrhynchus in Egypt. What makes this poem
unique is the fact that it is probably a choral song, but its contents are
profane praise. It is common for choral songs in archaic period to be
performed at a public festival and to address the gods; this poem,
however, is addressed to a historical person, the famous tyrant
Polycrates, who is celebrated for his beauty, and there is no hint that the
performance context was a public festival.
This translation of the Ibycusʹ poem is accompanied with elaborate
critical apparatus. First I examined the generic identification of the song,
and secondly I analyzed the text in order to recognize the poemʹs context more precisely. What seems like logical and obvious explanation is that
Ibycus was archaic lyric poet, composing songs for love, often paralleled
with mythical example, using Homeric, i.e. traditional poetic
vocabulary, with Ionic, Aeolic and Doric forms of the words. This not an
unusual phenomenon, since his native language was Doric, but he was
composing for Ionic public, influenced by the epic tradition and
language.

1) Corinto: la polis sull’istmo e l’attività dei Cipselidi (704, 657-583).
2) Atene e Megara: il conflitto per l’isola di Salamina e la navigazione.
3) Pisistrato, tiranno di Atene (546-528): la politica marittima nell’Egeo e nell’Ellesponto.
4) La talassocrazia di Policrate di Samo.
5) Greci d’Asia e Imperi orientali: dall’indipendenza all’assimilazione.
Conclusions: The success of the city-states depended on the possibility and ability to make the best use of resources and opportunities associated to - and deriving from - water, the sea and seafaring. This entailed, in diverse situations but in alike manners, organizational, technological and economic efforts that came to influence the short- and long-term historical developments.
Sea-bound activities and access to the Mediterranean markedly distinguished the social and political identity of the Greeks - especially the Greeks of Asia Minor - in opposition to the land-based Oriental empires.

The Polycrates commended in the poem discovered in P. Oxy. 1790 – Ibyc. fr. S 151 Dav. – is most probably the master of Samos when, still young and not yet a tyrant, he was the descendant of a wealthy and powerful family, who loved music and poetry. At the end of v. 46, toi`~ me;n pevda kavlleo~ aijevn:, the punctuation mark of the papyrus should be kept, while interpreting pevda as a verbal form; an already ancient exegesis, this doesn’t exclude the hypothesis of identification of the character here embraced. At v. 5 (xanqa`~ ïElevna~ peri; ei[dei) an interpretation of the substantive eidos, with the generic meaning of image, appearance, is proposed, in opposition to the established rendering, that refers it to the beauty of the heroine. This might induce us, albeit with a daring supposition, to detect in the verse an allusion to the well-known Stesichorean version of Helena's myth, who was taken away from Paris and replaced with an eidolon. The story must have been known to the Samian audience, which Ibycus most likely addressed, because it was likely to have already been sung by Hesiod, a poet whose verses are recalled at any other point of the encomium to Polycrates.

The Samian stories in Herodotus present an interesting example of the Achaemenid imperial policy on the Greek world. In the narration of Cyrus’ rise to power, Polycrates’ tyranny, and the Ionian revolt, we can see how the Achaemenids use peaceful strategies along with military actions. All the populations that come into contact with the Persians must acknowledge the superiority of the Great King, either voluntarily or by force. The mere threat of violence is almost as efficient as violence itself. Among the Greeks, after all, there are many people available to acknowledge their own inferiority without resistance, granting “earth and water” to the Great King and integrating themselves peacefully in the empire.