Tyrants

Victor Ehrenberg: From Solon to Socrates:

From Hesiod onward oppression and injustice were causes of growing complaint.

The community needed a stronger supreme authority, a unified domestic and foreign policy, and above all social peace and economic prosperity. In various cities the opportunity was seized by individual leaders, strong personalities who gained power by usurpation. The Greeks called them 'tyrants'....

Hesiod - Wikipedia:

Hesiod was a Greek poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.

Encyclopædia Britannica

In the 10th and 9th centuries bce, monarchy was the usual form of government in the Greek states. The aristocratic regimes that replaced monarchy were by the 7th century bce themselves unpopular. Thus, the opportunity arose for ambitious men to seize power in the name of the oppressed.

The tyrants often sprang from the fringe of the aristocracy; for example, the mother of Cypselus belonged to the ruling clan of the Bacchiads, but his father did not. The nature of the public discontent that provided them with a following may have varied from place to place.

The great tyrants were notable patrons of the arts and conspicuous builders. They often aided in the transition from narrow aristocracy to more-democratic constitutions, but the Greeks in principle chafed under their illegal autocracy. Tyranny thus early acquired a bad name...

That was then.

Steve LeVine at Axios, 2018:

Unforced by coup or war, one developed country after another has chosen an authoritarian style of democracy over the last two years, an all-but unforeseen shift that has left more mainstream leaders scrambling to understand it and turn back time.

The big picture: Economics ultimately underpins the turmoil...

If we fix the economic problem, our political problems will evaporate.