Tyrannicide (pronounced ti-ran-uh-sahyd
or tahy- ran-uh-sahyd)
(1) The
act of killing a tyrant.
(2) A
person who kills a tyrant.
1640-1650:
From the French tyrannicide, from the
Latin tyrrannicīdium & tyrannicīda, the construct being tryant
+
-cide. Tryant was from the Middle
English ttyraun, tiraunt, tyrant & tyrante, from the Old French tyrant, constructed with the addition of
a terminal -t to tiran (from the
Middle French tyran (a tryant or bully), from the Latin tyrannus (despot (source also of the
Spanish tirano and the Italian tiranno)), from the Ancient Greek
τύραννος (túrannos) (usurper,
monarch, despot) of uncertain origin but which some have speculated may be a
loan -word from a language of Asia Minor (perhaps Lydian); some etymologists
compare it to the Etruscan Turan
(mistress, lady (and the surname of Venus)).
The evolutionary process was via a back-formation related to the
development of French present participles out of the Latin -ans form, thus the unetymological
spelling with -t arose in Old French by analogy with present-participle endings
in -ant. The feminine form tyranness
seems first to have been documented in 1590, perhaps derived from the Medieval
Latin tyrannissa, although whether
this emerged from courtiers in palaces or husbands in more humble abodes isn’t
recorded. The plural was tryants.
In Archaic
Greece, tryant was a technical rather than a casually descriptive term, applied
to a usurper (one who gains power and rules extra-legally, distinguished from
kings elevated by election or natural succession), something discussed by Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712–1778) in his landmark The
Social Contract (1762) in which he noted “they applied it indifferently to good and bad princes whose authority
was not legitimate”. It’s now used
to describe a despot; a ruler who governs unjustly, cruelly, or harshly and, by
extension, any person in a position of authority who abuses the power of their position
or office to treat others unjustly, cruelly, or harshly. In Greece, a ruler (tyrannical or otherwise)
was variously the archon, basileus or aisymnetes; an unjust ruler or superior is typically now called autocrat,
dictator, despot or martinet. What
Rousseau didn’t dwell on was that while in the Greek tradition, the word was
not applied to old hereditary sovereignties (basileiai) and despotic kings, it was used of usurpers, even when
popular, moderate, and just (the most celebrated in the surviving histories
being Cypselus of Corinth in the seventh century BC) but, presumably by
unfortunate association, it soon became a word of reproach in the modern sense. A hint of this may be found in the way in Greek
theatre of the fourth century BC, cherished pathos in regard to tyrannicide. The noun plural was tyrannicides.
The suffix –cide was from the From Middle French -cide, from the Latin -cīda (cutter, killer), from -cīdium (killing), from caedō (to cut, hew, kill) and was a noun-forming suffix denoting “an act of killing or a slaughter”, “one who kills” or “one who cuts” from the appropriate nouns stems. In English, the alternative form was –icide.
Tyrannicide
is a noun. The adjective tyrannous (of
tyrannical character) was from the late fifteenth century whereas the now more
common adjective tyrannical dates from the 1530s from the Classical Latin tyrannicus (arbitrary, despotic), from the
Ancient Greek tyrannikos (befitting a
despot) from tyrannos. The adjectival variation tyrannic was used in
this sense from the late fifteenth century and the companion adverb was tyrannically. The adjective tyrannicidal was a creation of
the mid-1800s which gained a new popularity in the next century when examples
abounded. The late fourteenth century
noun tyranny (cruel or unjust use of power; the government of a tyrant) was
from the thirteenth century Old French tyranie,
from the Late Latin tyrannia (tyranny),
from the Ancient Greek tyrannia (rule
of a tyrant, absolute power) from tyrannos
(master).
The tyrannosaurus
(carnivorous Cretaceous bipedal dinosaur) was named in 1905 and came to public
attention the following year when US paleontologist, geologist (and
enthusiastic eugenicist) Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935) who coined the
term, published his research in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural
History, the construct being the Ancient Greek tyrannos + -saurus (from
the Ancient Greek σαῦρος (saûros) (lizard, reptile)). The now familiar abbreviation T-Rex appears
not to have been used before 1970 when it was adopted as the name of a
pop-group. In the avian branch of
zoology, tyrant birds are members of the family Tyrannidae, which often fight
or drive off other birds which approach their nests which seems a bit of a
slur.
In the
early days of Antiquity, tyrannicide was a part of the political process and
rather than being thought of as what would now be called a “criminal” act, it
was just another method of transferring power.
As societies evolved and recognizable civilizations emerged from
competing cultures, attitudes did change and tyrannicide began to be regarded
as a form of murder which might be self-justifying depending on the context and
the degree of tyranny eradicated although Aristotle did distinguish between those
who committed tyrannicide for personal gain and those (rare) disinterested
souls who did it for the good of the community.
However
intricately philosophers and legal theorists added the layer of nuance, tyrannicide
(many of which were of course also acts of regicide ("the killing of a
king" (used also for assassinated queens, ruling princes etc) or "one
who does the killing", from the Latin rēgis
(king (genitive singular of rēx)) + -cide
(killer), patterned after suicide, tyrannicide etc) remained a popular and expedient way to
hasten dynastic or political change. It
could be said the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which ended the Thirty
Years' War (1618–1648) and Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) and established the
principle that the religion a ruler choose to adopt for himself and his nation
was a purely internal matter and not one to be changed by foreign intervention,
represented the beginning of an international law which would come to outlaw
the assassinations of rulers, tyrants or not.
That however is a retrospective view and not one at the time discussed.
Nor
would legal niceties have been likely much to influence those who would wish to
kill a tryant, some of whom have even claimed some justification under natural
law. Whether Brutus (85-42 BC) ever
uttered the phrase Sic semper tyrannis
(thus always to tyrants) after stabbing Julius Caesar (100-44
BC) or not (as the historian Plutarch (46-circa 122) maintained), it resonated
through history, John Wilkes Booth, noting in his diary that he
shouted "Sic semper tyrannis"
after killing Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; US president 1861-1865) in 1865. History doesn’t record if the words were on
the lips of those who either attempted or succeeded in dispatching Adolf Hitler
(1944), Benito Mussolini (1945), Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García (1956),
the Dominican Republic’s dictator Rafael Trujillo (1961), South Korean dictator
Park Chung-hee (1979), President Anwar Sadat of Egypt (1981), Afghan President Mohammad
Najibullah (1996) & Colonel Muammar Gaddafi (2011), but it can be imagined
they weren’t far from the assassins’ thoughts.
International
law did however evolve to the point where the UN’s Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons was
presented in 1973, coming into force in 1977 and eventually ratified by 180
countries. Although the convention was
inspired by a spike in the assassination of diplomats in the early 1970s, the
protection was extended to tyrants, the wording of the relevant clause being in
Article 1a which declared that the ranks of “internationally protected persons”
included:
A Head of State, including any member of a
collegial body performing the functions of a Head of State under the
constitution of the State concerned, a Head of Government or a Minister for
Foreign Affairs, whenever any such person is in a foreign State, as well as
members of his family who accompany him.
While
it’s true Libya’s ratification of the convention didn’t save Colonel Gaddafi
from becoming a victim of tyrannicide, he would at least have died knowing he
was being assassinated in contravention of a UN convention. Whether Joe Biden (b 1942; US president since
2021) was either explicitly calling for or hinting that an act of tyrannicide
should be visited upon Vladimir Putin excited much interest recently when the
US president labeled his Russian counterpart as a “butcher” who “cannot remain
in power”. It certainly could be
construed as a call for Mr Putin’s “removal”, despite the White House in recent
weeks having repeatedly emphasized that regime change in Russia is not US policy. “For
God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power” Mr Biden said at the end of
his speech in front of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, an unscripted sentiment he apparently
added in the heat of the moment.
Methods
of tyrannicide vary: this is the kiss of death.It took only minutes for the White
House damage-control team to scramble, playing down the remarks with a
Kafkaesque assertion that the president “was
not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change” but was instead
making the point that Putin “…cannot be
allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region.” Within the Washington DC’s Capital Beltway
the internal logic of the distinction makes complete sense, the White House
insisting, a la the Barry Goldwater (1909–1998; Republican presidential
candidate 1964) school of clarity of expression that what matters is not what
Mr Biden says but what he means and they’re here to explain that. Perhaps the staff should give Mr Biden a list
of helpful ways of advocating tyrannicide.
Arthur Calwell (1896–1973; Leader of the Australian Labor Party
1960-1967) didn’t escape controversy when he called for “the visitation of the angel of death” upon the tyrannical Archbishop
Daniel Mannix (1864–1963; Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne 1917-1963) but
it was more poetic than Mr Biden’s efforts and Calwell, if accused of
advocating tyrannicide, could point out he was calling merely for episcopicide (the
killing of a bishop, the construct being the Latin episcopus (bishop in a Christian church who governs a diocese),
from the Ancient Greek ἐπίσκοπος
(epískopos) (overseer), the construct
being ἐπί (epí) (over) + σκοπός (skopós) (watcher, lookout, guardian) + -cide),
something with a long if not always noble tradition.
US
Secretary of State Antony Blinken (b 1962; US secretary of state since 2021),
noted for his precision of oral expression, followed up by saying it wasn’t the
intention of Mr Biden to topple Mr Putin.
“The president made the point last
night that, quite simply, President Putin cannot be empowered to wage war or
engage in aggression against Ukraine or anyone else” Mr Blinken said while
speaking in Jerusalem on Sunday, adding that “the US did not have a strategy of regime change in Russia or anywhere
else”. It’s “… up to the people of the country in question… the Russian people”.
Given
the context of Mr Biden’s speech, it wasn’t difficult to understand why it
aroused such interest. Earlier, he’d
called the invasion of Ukraine an act of aggression “… nothing less than a direct challenge to the rule-based international
order established since the end of World War II” and that the valiant
resistance of the Ukrainian people was a “battle for freedom” and the world
must prepare for a “long fight ahead”. “We
stand with you,” he told Ukrainians in the speech which had begun with the famous
words of the Polish Pope Saint John Paul II (1920–2005; pope 1978-2005): “Be not afraid”, a phrase associated with
a earlier call for regime change within the countries of what was then the
Warsaw Pact. In remarks addressed
directly to citizens of Russia, he added: This war is not worthy of you, the
Russian people”.
The
Kremlin’s displeasure at the remarks was soon expressed, prompting the White
House cleaners to explain that what Mr Biden said was not what he meant and by
Sunday the president appeared to be back on-message. When asked by a reporter if he was calling for
regime change in the Kremlin, he answered: “No”.
Forms
in English constructed with the suffix –cide.
