Contrary to the usual Achaemenid policy, he abolished the ruling "tyrants" and restored democracies in Ionia, thereby removing a major source of unrest.
Besides being geopolitical wildcards, Uzbek President Islam Karimov is widely considered a tyrant, ruling over his country's oil reserves and national wealth since a questionable 1991 election.
It has mobilized the crowds and encouraged them to rise up against the tyrants ruling over them.
The Aristotelian view suggests that tyrants were inevitably unpopular, ruling a cowed citizenry who feared and hated them and wished only to be free.
But it is fair to assume that most Zimbabweans would love to kick out their tyrant and the gaggle of gangsters who make up the country's ruling party, ZANU-PF.At a parliamentary election on March 31st, Zimbabwean voters have, in theory, a chance to express their frustrations.
If a tyrant cannot die in his own bed, the best he can do is try to stage manage his downfall, because such characters find it unthinkable to exist without ruling.
Thereafter no tyrant could consider himself safe from charges of crimes against humanity.Until the Pinochet ruling, most had managed to avoid being brought to account.
Now a powerful partner in the ruling coalition with Benazir Bhutto's widower, Asif Zardari, he courted popularity by casting Musharraf as an anti-Muslim tyrant.
But he was fast to hail Tunisians fighting for their rights, he pushed the Egyptian transition through influence over the army, he restrained the violent initial instincts of the ruling al-Khalifa family in Bahrain, and now he is pressing hard to oust Libya's lunatic tyrant, Muammar el-Qaddafi.
