Periander william

---

Periander

（*Peri/andros).1. A son of Cypselus, whom he succeeded as tyrant of Corinth, probably about B. C. 625. By his bitterest opponents his rule was admitted to have been mild and beneficent at first; and, though it is equally certain that it afterwards became oppressive, we must remember that his history has come down to us through the hands of the oligarchical party, which succeeded to power on the overthrow of the Cypselidae, and that suspicion therefore attaches to much of what is recorded of him. In the speech which Herodotus (5.92) puts into the mouth of Sosicles, the Corinthian delegate at Sparta, and which is couched in the language of a strong partisan, the change in question is absurdly ascribed to the advice of Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus, whom Periander had consulted on the best mode of maintaining his power, and who is said to have taken the messenger through a corn-field, cutting off, as he went, the tallest ears, and then to have dismissed him without committing himself to a verbal answer. According to the story, however, the action was rightly interpreted

•