Tyrannicide

Tyrannicide or tyrannomachia is the killing or assassination of a tyrant or unjust ruler, purportedly for the common good, and usually by one of the tyrant's subjects. Tyrannicide was legally permitted and encouraged in the Classical period. 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". The term originally denoted the action of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who are often called the Tyrannicides, in killing Hipparchus of Athens in 514 BC. 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. Right of revolution 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. Support for tyrannicide can be found in Plutarch's Lives, Cicero's De Officiis, and Seneca's Hercules Furens. Plato describes a violent tyrant as the opposite of a good and "true king" in the Statesman, 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. Various Christian philosophers and theologians also wrote about tyrannicide. In late antiquity, they debated whether the Bible justified tyrannicide. Passages such as the Books of the Maccabees, Daniel 7:27, and Acts 5:29 seemed to justify the practice while others such as Romans 13, Exodus 22:27–28, Proverbs 8:15, and 1 Peter 2:13–18 seemed to condemn it.