Note 158 — Chapter I · Introduction

Neither the Homeric Thersites nor the “leaders of the people” of Solon show any of the essential features of the demagogue as known to Herodotus, Plato, and Aristotle. Individual early tyrants are often said to have been demagogues, but only by the writers of the fourth century or later, whose evidence on this point is valueless; cp. below, pp. 30 f.