...Why did he need his people trained by Hercules. He couldn't be keeping everybody under foot if he didn't already have a pretty ruthless army. Did they explain that and I missed it? It's pretty hard to oppress people if you don't have an armed force to do it.
shareI thought the same thing. If a ruler was really that malicious then he'd already have a ruthless army. I guess a crazed tyrant has to build that ruthless army at some point and this was it.
shareSince Reece was winning the civil war my guess is whatever army he had had already been destroyed in battle by Reece. And it may not have been so much an army as a gang of thugs who terrorized people. That is more than enough. There were few professional armies back then. Most had the local citizens called up to fight a war with some basic training then go home. However, he was so unpopular and Reece was a skilled enough commander the regular, barely trained army failed. He needed Hercules to give him a true, highly-trained professional army to win.
shareWhat confused me was what tyrant allows a refugee camp in his courtyard? Why would a refugee camp decide to settle in the courtyard (peacefully) of the one responsible?
shareWhat confused me was what tyrant allows a refugee camp in his courtyard? Why would a refugee camp decide to settle in the courtyard (peacefully) of the one responsible?
he did not hire hercules to train the army, but rather fight with the drafted peasants. herc told him to his face, that they need to train them before sending them out.
also cotys general mentions that most of their real soldiers had already been defeated by rhesus, leaving them only with farmers.
In ancient Greece, Tyrannis simply meant a singular ruler with all the power.
A king, basically.
Oppression as an inherent part of the word was added much later.