page_title: Tyrannicide
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Tyrannicide / History
caption_attribution_description: Español: Nápoles. Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Harmodio y Aristogeiton.
context_page_description: Tyrannicide is the killing or assassination of a tyrant or unjust ruler, usually for the common good,
  and usually by one of the tyrant's subjects.
  The term originally denoted the action of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who are often called the Tyrannicides, in killing Hipparchus of Athens in 514 BC.
context_section_description: Throughout history, many leaders have died under the pretext of tyrannicide. Hipparchus, one of the last Greek leaders to use the title of "tyrant," was assassinated in 514 BC by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the original tyrannicides. Since then "tyrant" has been a pejorative term, lacking objective criteria. Many rulers and heads of state have been considered as such by their enemies but not by their adherents and supporters. For example, when John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865, he wrote how he considered Lincoln a tyrant while comparing himself to Marcus Junius Brutus, who stabbed the Roman dictator Julius Caesar in 44 BC.
  Tyrannicides have a poor record of achieving their intended outcome. Caesar's death, for example, failed to bring a return to republican power, and instead led to the Roman Empire, but it galvanized later assassins. Several of Caesar's successors (Roman Emperors) came to their demise by assassinations, including Caligula, who was stabbed in 41 by Cassius Chaerea and other Praetorian Guards, and Domitian, stabbed in 96 by a steward of Flavia Domitilla named Stephanus. Many attempts on Commodus's life in the late 2nd century failed, including the one instigated by his own sister Lucilla, but he ultimately fell victim to his own excess by a successful murderous coup. Other emperors assassinated from within include Claudius, Marcus Aurelius, and Severus Alexander.
  After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, tyrannicide continued in the Byzantine Empire when Emperor Andronikos I Komnenos, was tied to a pillar, beaten, and dismembered by a mob in 1185.
  Tyrannicide has also been connected to revolution, with many taking place during successful revolutions, and others sparking revolutionary upheavals. In the midst of the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre, took power as the President of the National Convention, but after leading the Reign of Terror from 1793 to 1794, he was executed by beheading by the National Convention. The Romanian Revolution, one of the Revolutions of 1989, enabled a group of defected soldiers to capture Nicolae Ceauşescu, the country's communist leader, and to stage a trial after which he was executed by a firing squad of paratroopers Ionel Boeru, Georghin Octavian and Dorin-Marian Cirlan.
  Many assassins have been killed in the act, such as Rigoberto López Pérez, who shot Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García in 1956. Claus von Stauffenberg tried to kill Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944, was sentenced to death by an impromptu court martial and executed a few hours after the attempted murder. Others were prosecuted for the killing: Antonio de la Maza and his conspirators were executed after their shooting of Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic in 1961, as was Kim Jaegyu, who shot South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee in 1979. Five of the members of Young Bosnia who were involved with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo were sentenced to death by hanging, while eleven were sentenced to various years in prison, including Gavrilo Princip who fired the fatal shot. Khalid Islambouli was one of three members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad executed for the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the autocratic President of Egypt in 1981. Even both Hipparchus's assassins were themselves killed, Harmodius on the spot and Aristogeiton after being tortured, and the major conspirators in the plot to kill Caesar were likewise killed or forced to commit suicide.
  Outright revolt was the context for other tyrannicides, and allowed individual killers to escape or remain anonymous. During World War II and the Italian resistance movement, Walter Audisio claimed to have led his team of partisans in the abduction and execution by firing squad of Benito Mussolini in 1945. The circumstances remain clouded, though Audisio was later elected to both the Italian Chamber of Deputies and the Italian Senate. In 1990, Samuel Doe, the President of Liberia was tortured to his death. In 1996, during their takeover of Afghanistan, Taliban soldiers captured Mohammad Najibu
caption: Statue of Harmodius and Aristogeiton
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 600D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2013:06:16 11:47:14", "Image ExifOffset": "168", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/50", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:06:16 11:47:14", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:06:16 11:47:14", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "45/8", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "23", "EXIF SubSecTime": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3456", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "5184", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "97379/17", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "331079/57", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "283076106832", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[18, 55, 0, 0]", "EXIF LensModel": "EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 III", "EXIF LensSerialNumber": "000016c747"}