Note 986 — Chapter VII · Corinth

Strabo VIII. 378; cp. Barth, Corinth. Comm. p. 14. Strabo calls the Bacchiads tyrants, probably in the later sense of bad despotic rulers. Note, however, that he associates their “tyranny” with great wealth and commercial connexions. “The Bacchiads too became tyrants, and being wealthy and many and of distinguished family for some two hundred years they held rule and exploited the market with impunity. These Cypselus put down and himself became tyrant.... Of the wealth associated with this house there is evidence in the dedication of Cypselus at Olympia, a hammered gold statue of large size.” Busolt, Lakedaim. I. 201–3, thinks that the Bacchiads had the industry of Corinth in their own hands, and that they employed in it numerous slaves who proved irresistible competitors to the crowd of petit bourgeois, and that Cypselus made himself tyrant by putting himself at the head of the latter. Servile competition was put out of the way when Cypselus had made himself tyrant, and the working classes of the citizen population were occupied in numerous public works. Busolt rightly recognizes the commercial element in Cypselus’ power, but the evidence is all against a highly organized servile industry at this early date; in Corinth itself the legislation against servile labour is attributed to Periander, and the date of the legislation is a good indication of the date at which servile labour first seriously threatened free; the exploiting of the market by the Bacchiads is not evidence for commercial undertakings on the part of the Bacchiads, but rather of their having held aloof from commerce.