Evil Lords : Theories and Representations of Tyranny From Antiquity to the Renaissance

__Evil Lords__uses the prism of bad rule or tyranny to enhance our understanding of political discourse from the ancient world to the Renaissance, elucidating premodern notions of sovereignty as well as the relation between ethics and politics, the individual and society, power, and propaganda. Eleven chapters present case studies exploring Hebrew, Graeco-Roman, Byzantine, early, high and late medieval, and Renaissance conceptions and representations of bad or tyrannical government. Since bad rule is always a perversion of the norm, its shifting conceptualizations shed light on historically specific assessments of what constitutes acceptable and legitimate political behavior. Meanwhile, political debate also reflects specific power structures, authorial intent, and audience expectations. Each of the essays, therefore, examines bad rule and its agents within the ideological frameworks and societal patterns of the respective periods, thereby painting a picture of historical and intellectual change. Despite these often profound variations, however, the volume also shows that it is meaningful to think of a Western tradition of tyranny in the premodern world that derived from shared roots in Classical and biblical thought and was further defined by ongoing cross-fertilization spanning two millennia. Thus,__Evil Lords__offers scholars and students of Western political theory, history, and literature a critical framework through which to revisit the__longue dur�e__of premodern political reflection. Evil Lords uses the prism of bad rule or tyranny to enhance our understanding of political discourse from the ancient world to the Renaissance, elucidating premodern notions of sovereignty as well as the relation between ethics and politics, the individual and society, power, and propaganda. Eleven chapters present case studies exploring Hebrew, Graeco-Roman, Byzantine, early, high and late medieval, and Renaissance conceptions and representations of bad or tyrannical government. Since bad rule is always a perversion of the norm, its shifting conceptualizations shed light on historically specific assessments of what constitutes acceptable and legitimate political behavior. Meanwhile, political debate also reflects specific power structures, authorial intent, and audience expectations. Each of the essays, therefore, examines bad rule and its agents within the ideological frameworks and societal patterns of the respective periods, thereby painting a picture of historical and intellectual change. Despite these often profound variations, however, the volume also shows that it is meaningful to think of a Western tradition of tyranny in the premodern world that derived from shared roots in Classical and biblical thought and was further defined by ongoing cross-fertilization spanning two millennia. Thus, Evil Lords offers scholars and students of Western political theory, history, and literature a critical framework through which to revisit the longue dur�e of premodern political reflection. Evil Lords uses the prism of bad rule or tyranny to enhance our understanding of political discourse from the ancient world to the Renaissance, elucidating premodern notions of sovereignty as well as the relation between ethics and politics, the individual and society, power, and propaganda. Eleven chapters present case studies exploring Hebrew, Graeco-Roman, Byzantine, early, high and late medieval, and Renaissance conceptions and representations of bad or tyrannical government. Since bad rule is always a perversion of the norm, its shifting conceptualizations shed light on historically specific assessments of what constitutes acceptable and legitimate political behavior. Meanwhile, political debate also reflects specific power structures, authorial intent, and audience expectations. Each of the essays, therefore, examines bad rule and its agents within the ideological frameworks and societal patterns of the respective periods, thereby painting a picture of historical and intellectual change. Despite these often profound variations, however, the volume also shows that it is meaningful to think of a Western tradition of tyranny in the premodern world that derived from shared roots in Classical and biblical thought and was further defined by ongoing cross-fertilization spanning two millennia. Thus, Evil Lords offers scholars and students of Western political theory, history, and literature a critical framework through which to revisit the longue durée of premodern political reflection. Cover 1 Half title 2 Evil Lords 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Contributors 10 Introduction: Tyranny and Bad Rule in the Premodern West 16 1. The Discourse of Tyranny and the Greek Roots of the Bad King 26 2. ‘A King Like the Other Nations’: The Foreignness of Tyranny in the Hebrew Bible 42 3. Discourse of Kingship in Late Republican Invective 58 4. Imperial Madness in Ancient Rome 76 5. Contradictory Stereotypes: ‘Barbarian’ and ‘Roman’ Rulers and the Shaping of Merovingian Kingship 96 6. Tyrannos basileus: Imperial Legitimacy and Usurpation in Early Byzantium 114 7. Evil Lords and the Devil: Tyrants and Tyranny in Carolingian Texts 134 8. There Are No ‘Bad Kings’: Tyrannical Characters and Evil Counselors in Medieval Political Thought 152 9. A Crooked Mirror for Princes: Vernacular Reflections on Wenceslas IV ‘the Idle’ 172 10. ‘I Don’t Know Who You Call Tyrants’: Debating Evil Lords in Quattrocento Humanism 187 11. Machiavelli’s Prince and the Concept of Tyranny 206 Bibliography 226 Index 252 By focusing on bad kingship, or tyranny, 'Evil Lords' offers innovative insights into pre-modern conceptions of sovereignty, as well as into the relation between ethics and politics, individual and society, and power and propaganda, as elaborated in a number of different contexts, periods, and genres from Antiquity to the Renaissance