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Herodotus devoted much of the first book to the Persians, their conquest of Lydia, and their subjugation of the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor and the offshore islands.  He spends a great deal of time on the Ionian Revolt, provoked by Persian expansion, because it is both the predecessor and a major cause of the first Persian War with the mainland Greek cities.  The early Greeks, who were not unified either in dialect or ethnicity, were divided into distinct ethnic and dialect groups:  The Ionians, who were predominant in Asia Minor, the Aegean islands, the great island...

By Herodotus’ time, tyranny had developed a bad name, and he his descriptions of their behavior constitutes a pragmatic manual to set beside Machiavelli’s The Prince.  Tyrants champion the poor and the weak particularly women and foreigners; they are lustful and prone to adultery and eccentricity—Periander was accused of having relations with his dead wife.  They maintain power by disarming the citizenry and oppressing anyone who is distinguished for birth, talent, virtue, or wealth.  I know, it sounds exactly like the Democratic Party today.

CPR: I began to wonder if this website was a good place to launch the book.  It is not the small circulation that disturbed me, but the apparent lack of interest.  When I asked for the metrics on my chapters in comparison with other stuff, what you gave me showed a huge gap between pieces authored by you and those that had been written by others.  I began to wonder if this site was not simply, you know, some kind of ego trip for an editor who had been bounced from his job.  The idea of you getting more attention than me was pretty demoralizing.