Tyrannicide or tyrannomachia is the killing or assassination of a tyrant or unjust ruler, purportedly for the common good,[1]
and usually by one of the tyrant's subjects.[2] Tyrannicide was legally permitted and encouraged in Classical Greece.[citation needed] Often, the term "tyrant" was a justification for political murders by rivals, but in some exceptional cases students of Platonic philosophy risked their lives against tyrants. The killing of Clearchus of Heraclea in 353 BC by a cohort led by his own court philosopher is considered a sincere tyrannicide. A person who carries out a tyrannicide is also called a "tyrannicide".[3][need quotation to verify]
The term originally denoted the action of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who are often called the Tyrannicides, in killing Hipparchus of Athens in 514 BC.[4] In modern terms, carrying out a tyrannicide, as in taking life of another person, is a criminal act, and lawbreakers are liable to police arrest and trial by a court.
Tyrannicide can also be a political theory and, as an allegedly justified form of the crime of murder, a dilemmatic case in the philosophy of law, and as such dates from antiquity.[5] Support for tyrannicide can be found in Plutarch's Lives, Cicero's De Officiis,[6] and Seneca's Hercules Furens.[7]Plato describes a violent tyrant as the opposite of a good and "true king" in the Statesman,[7] and while Aristotle in the Politics sees it as opposed to all other beneficial forms of government, he also described tyrannicide mainly as an act by those wishing to gain personally from the tyrant's death, while those who act without hope of personal gain or to make a name for themselves are rare.[8]
In Thomas Aquinas's commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Aquinas gave a defense not only of disobedience to an unjust authority, using as an example Christian martyrs in the Roman Empire, but also of "one who liberates his country by killing a tyrant."[11] The Monarchomachs in particular developed a theory of tyrannicide, with Juan de Mariana describing their views in the 1598 work De rege et regis institutione,[12] in which he wrote, "[B]oth the philosophers and theologians agree, that the prince who seizes the state with force and arms, and with no legal right, no public, civic approval, may be killed by anyone and deprived of his life..."[6]
The Jesuisticcasuistry developed a similar theory, criticized by Blaise Pascal in the Provincial Letters.[13] Before them, the scholastic philosopher John of Salisbury also legitimised tyrannicide, under specific conditions, in the Policraticus, circa 1159.[14] His theory was derived from his idea of the state as a political organism in which all the members cooperate actively in the realization of the common utility and justice. He held that when the ruler of this body politic behaves tyrannically, failing to perform his characteristic responsibilities, the other limbs and organs are bound by their duty to the public welfare and God to correct and, ultimately, to slay the tyrant.[15]
In 1408, the theologian Jean Petit used biblical examples to justify tyrannicide following the murder of Louis I, Duke of Orleans by Petit's patron John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. Petit's thesis was extensively discussed and eventually anathematized by the church at the Council of Constance. A Shone Treatise of Politike Power, written by John Ponet in 1556, argued that the people are custodians of natural and divine law, and that if governors and kings violated their trust, then they forfeited their power, whether they relinquished their positions voluntarily or whether they had to be removed forcefully.[16]The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates by John Milton in 1649 also described the history of tyrannicide, and a defense of it when appropriate.[17]
Cambridge's David George has also argued that terrorism is a form of tyranny of which tyrannicide is a negation.[18]Abraham Lincoln believed that assassinating a leader is morally justified when a people has suffered under a tyrant for an extended period of time and has exhausted all legal and peaceful means of ouster.[19]
Throughout history, many leaders have died under the pretext of tyrannicide. Hipparchus, one of the last Greek leaders to use the title of "tyrant", was assassinated in 514 BC by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the original tyrannicides.[20][4] Since then "tyrant" has been a pejorative term, lacking objective criteria. Many rulers and heads of state have been considered tyrannical by their enemies but not by their supporters. For example, when John Wilkes Boothassassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865, he wrote that he considered Lincoln a tyrant while comparing himself to Marcus Junius Brutus,[21] who stabbed the Roman dictatorJulius Caesar in 44 BC.[22] Booth famously shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" during the assassination.
^Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Tyrannicide." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Thomas Zemanek. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0001.682. Originally published as "Tyrannicide" in the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 16:785 (Paris, 1765).
^Fine, Jonathan (2010). "Political and Philological Origins of the Term 'Terrorism' from the Ancient Near East to Our Times". Middle Eastern Studies. 46 (2): 271–288. doi:10.1080/00263201003619927. JSTOR20720662. S2CID143268246.
^For Aquinas, "when what is ordered by an authority is opposed to the object for which that authority was constituted ... not only is there no obligation to obey the authority, but one is obliged to disobey it, as did the holy martyrs who suffered death rather than obey the impious commands of tyrants." One may even be "praised and rewarded" for being the "one who liberates his country by killing a tyrant." Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, trans. J.G. Dawson (Oxford, 1959), 44, 2 in O’Donovan, pp. 329–330.
^Nederman, Cary J. (1988), "A Duty to Kill: John of Salisbury's Theory of Tyrannicide", The Review of Politics, 50 (3), Cambridge University Press: 365–389, doi:10.1017/S0034670500036305, S2CID145277381
^George, David (1988), "Distinguishing Classical Tyrannicide from Modern Terrorism", The Review of Politics, 50 (3), Cambridge University Press: 390–419, doi:10.1017/S0034670500036317, S2CID146523905