What Herodotus Warned About Trump-Like Authoritarianism

2025-08-13 03:11:17

(MENAFN- Asia Times) “No Kings” rallies .“Good Trouble” protests .“Rage against the Regime” uprisings . These events in the first seven months of President Donald Trump's second term, along with public opinion polls , show that many Americans are concerned about Trump's expansive use of executive power .

Views on this issue often have a partisan slant . Republicans express more concern about presidential power when Democrats control the White House, and vice versa.

But many in both parties prefer that US political leaders work through established channels , rather than through unconventional actions that may pose challenges to the Constitution and the rule of law, such as mass firings and large-scale deportations .

Greek historian and ethnographer Herodotus lived from about 484 B.C.E. to about 425 B.C.E. Metropolitan Museum of Art/Wikimedia

As a professor of classics , I know that concerns about authoritarianism go back thousands of years. One early discussion appears in the work of the fifth-century B.C.E.

Greek writer Herodotus , whose“History” – sometimes called“Histories” – is considered the first great prose narrative in Western literature .

In it, Herodotus analyzed the Persian invasion of Greece – the defining event of his time. To understand how Greece, a much smaller power, achieved a major victory over Persia, Herodotus explored the nature of effective leadership, which he saw as a critical factor in the conflict's outcome.

Persia was already a vast empire when it invaded Greece, a tiny country made up of independent city-states. The Persians expected a quick and easy victory.

A shocking upset

Instead, the Greco-Persian Wars lasted over a decade, from 490 to 479 B.C.E. They ended with Greece defeating the Persians – a shocking upset. Consequently, Persia abandoned its westward expansion, while various Greek city-states formed a tenuous alliance that lasted nearly 50 years.

To explain this unexpected outcome, Herodotus described how Persian and Greek societies developed before this crucial conflict. In his view, the fact that many Greek city-states had representative governments enabled the Greek victory.

These systems allowed individuals to participate in discussing strategies and resulted in the Greeks uniting to fight for freedom . For example, when the Persian fleet was headed toward mainland Greece, the Athenian general Miltiades says,“Never before have we been in such extreme danger. If we give in to the Persians, we will suffer greatly under the tyrant Hippias .”

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