David A. Teegarden. Death to Tyrants! Ancient Greek Democracy and the Struggle against Tyranny

David A. Teegarden has offered an exasperating book. He is absolutely correct that no previous study has provided an exhaustive examination of Greek anti-tyranny laws authorizing the violent death of tyrants, or has sought to connect such measures to the self-conscious protection of democratic regimes against their enemies. Thus, his collection and analysis of such measures is a welcome contribution to the field of Greek political and legal history. His thesis is provocative and stimulating: democratic regimes, aware of the threats to their existence, enacted laws encouraging tyrannicide to assure reluctant, democratically minded citizens that they would not resist anti-democratic forces in dangerous isolation, and thereby gave would-be anti-democratic revolutionaries pause before any putsch against the prevailing democracy. However, the book engages theoretical assumptions both stated and unstated that undermine the argument's persuasiveness, and as a legal and constitutional history of ancient Greece, it fails to converse with several relevant works on the nature of Greek law.

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