Pheidon

Pheidon (Greek: Φείδων) was a king of Argos, Greece in the 7th century BC. At that time, the monarch was nominal with almost no genuine power. Pheidon seized the throne from the reigning aristocracy. He is considered in the tradition of other tyrants, like Gyges of Lydia, as an outsider to the ruling caste in some ways even though a fragment of the Parian Chronicle confirms him to have been a noble and places him as eleventh in line from Heracles. Scholarship has called Pheidon's 'reign' a tyranny based on Aristotle's definition in politics. Pheidon is said to have lost his life in a faction fight at Corinth, where the monarchy had recently been overthrown.