Marinai, rinnegati e reietti. Le basi fragili della tirannide di Aristodemo

The Tyranny at Cumae did not outlive its founder Aristodemus. The failure of this government has its roots in its political and social premises. These were the result of the peculiar context of Archaic Cumae. The Cumaean society was the outcome of two di!erent elements, the first being the political struggle between the aristocracy on one side, and the traders, the craftsmen, and the poor on the other; and the second the embedding of the Euboean colony in the complex ethnic mosaic of the Campanian plain. Aristodemus arose from this unstable situation and tried to set up a new order. The experiment could not last long, since its shifting grounds. The events that led Aristodemus to power and, later, to his fall follow the same logic that C.L.R. James identified in his essay Mariners, renegades and castaways in the rise and the collapse of the totalitarian type. The Cumaean tyrant tried to shape the Campanian society according to his will, but he failed just like many twentieth century totalitarian types.