Periander

“ Periander's intolerable tyranny.
It is not surprising that the populace often rebelled against the power of these royal despots, for they seem to have exercised their power, when their interests or their passions excited them to do it, in the most tyrannical and cruel manner. One of them, it was said, a king of Corinth, whose name was Periander, sent a messenger, on one occasion, to a neighboring potentate—with whom he had gradually come to entertain very friendly relations—to inquire by what means he could most certainly and permanently secure the continuance of his power. ”

“ Wondering and distressed Periander returns singing Penelope's song; he approaches and endeavours to rouse Odysseus to a sense of his duty; he reminds him of home and wife and child, but in vain; the infatuated hero, under the influence of this unholy passion, so far forgets himself as in furious rage to attack Periander with his spear. {407} Periander in grief and despair turns to depart, and is mortally wounded by the spear of Odysseus which the latter hurls at him in his flight. ”

“ Periander said nothing; but he understood the meaning of Thrasybulus, which was, that he was to govern by cutting off all the foremost citizens. After this he became a much worse tyrant than his father, and finished the work which he had begun. On one occasion he stripped all the women of Corinth of their clothes. ”

“ When the ambassador returned to Corinth, Periander was desirous of learning the advice of Thrasybulus. The ambassador replied that Thrasybulus had given him no commands. Then he reported what he had seen Thrasybulus doing. But Periander, understanding the act, and imagining that he was advised by Thrasybulus to kill all the most distinguished citizens, then began to practise every wickedness against the citizens. Soon he was able, after killing all the chief men, to do everything he wished. ”

“ Solon was one of the seven wise men of Greece, who all lived at the same time. The other six were Thales, Bion, Pittacus, Cleobulus, Chilo, and Periander. This last was called Tyrant of Corinth. When the ancient Greeks spoke of a tyrant, they did not mean a cruel king so much as a king who had not been heir to the crown, but had taken to himself the rule over a free people. A very curious story belongs to Periander, for we have not quite parted with the land of fable. It is about the poet Arion, who lived chiefly with him at Corinth, but made one voyage to Sicily. ”

“ As for Periander, the man who gave information about the oracle to Thrasybulos, he was the son of Kypselos, and despot of Corinth. In his life, say the Corinthians, (and with them agree the Lesbians) , there happened to him a very great marvel, namely that Arion of Methymna was carried ashore at Tainaron upon a dolphin's back. ”

“ Then Periander, clinging still in affection to the youth, sent to him next his own daughter, the sister of Lycophron, supposing that he would yield to her persuasion more than to that of others; and she arrived there and spoke to him thus: "Boy, dost thou desire that both the despotism should fall to others, and also the substance of thy father, carried off as plunder, rather than that thou shouldest return back and possess them? Come back to thy home: cease to torment thyself. Pride is a mischievous possession. Heal not evil with evil. ”

“ Hereupon, the officers of state, and the officers of the [Pg 419] household who stood near the vestibule, waiting their return, seeing Periander, the ambassador, and the courtiers at the other end, hastened towards them, shouting as before—'There are but seven wise men, and Periander is the wisest.' Periander ordered them to be beaten with stripes; then, retiring into his private apartment with the ambassador, he conversed freely with him, and dismissed him with many and large presents. ”

“ Periander, seeing no other way of getting Lycophron out of his sight, sent him to rule over Corcyra, which was a colony of Corinth and, contrary to the usual practice66 among the Greeks, remained under the government of the mother city. When Lycophron had lived long in Corcyra, Periander grew old and unequal to the task of ruling the Corinthians, and besought Lycophron to come and be tyrant at Corinth, promising that he himself would go to Corcyra. ”

“ A man, possessing nothing, lives expensively
They hand him over to the executioner!” Periander also, desirous, as Aristotle suggests, of keeping his people too busy to think, stimulated the artistic skill which they had always possessed. A persistent tradition has asserted that Corinthian architects at an early date invented the roof-tiles by means of which temple roofs could be made to slope, thus forming the pediment or “eagle.” The Temple of Apollo was probably built at Periander’s instigation. ”

“ He committed incest with his mother, and put to death his wife Melissa, upon false accusation. He also banished his son Lycophron to the island of Corcyra, because the youth pitied and wept at the miserable end of his mother, and detested the barbarities of his father. Periander died about 585 years before the christian era, in his 80th year, and by the meanness of his flatterers, he was reckoned one of the seven wise men of Greece. Though he was tyrannical, yet he patronized the fine arts; he was fond of peace, and he showed himself the friend and the protector of genius and of learning. ”

“ The relations of Periander with his younger son Lycophron form one of the most touching episodes in Herodotus. The lad had learnt the fact of his mother's murder, and from that time would neither speak to his father nor answer him. The father at last banished him from his house. He even sent warning to the friends with whom his son took refuge, that all who harboured him did so at their peril nay, that any who even spoke to him should pay a fine to Apollo. ”

“ And Pythænetus, in the third book of his History of Ægina, says that Periander fell violently in love with Melissa, the daughter of Procles of Epidaurus, when he had seen her clothed in the Peloponnesian fashion (for she had on no cloak, but a single tunic only, and was acting as cup-bearer to the young men,) and he married her. And Tigris of Leucadia was the mistress of Pyrrhus king of Epirus, who was the third in descent from the Pyrrhus who invaded Italy; but Olympias, the young man's mother, took her off by poison. ”

“ In contrast with his father Cypselus, the founder of the dynasty, he is generally represented as a cruel despot, or at any rate as having used all possible devices for keeping his city in subjection. Among numerous anecdotes the following is characteristic. Periander, on being consulted by the tyrant Thrasybulus of Miletus as to the best device for maintaining himself in power, by way of reply led the messenger through a cornfield, and as he walked struck off the tallest and best-grown ears (a legend applied to Roman circumstances in Livy i. 54) . ”

“ V Everybody had heard of Periander, king of Corinth. Some had heard of his great learning, and others had heard of his selfishness and cruelty.
Strangers admired him for his wisdom. His own people despised him for his wickedness.
When he heard that some men had come to Corinth with a very costly golden tripod, he had them brought before him.
"I have heard all about that tripod," he said, "and I know why you are carrying it from one place to another. Do you expect to find any man in Corinth who deserves so rich a gift?"
"We hope that you are the man," said the messengers. ”

“ Says Cleobulus, where the citizens fear blame, more than punishment: Says Chilo, where the laws are more regarded, and have more authority, than the orators. From all these opinions Periander concluded, that the most perfect popular government would be that which came nearest to aristocracy, where the sovereign authority is lodged in the hands of a few men of honour and virtue.
This city standing between two seas, an attempt was made by Periander, and afterwards by Alexander, Demetrius, Julius Cæsar, Caligula, Nero, and Herodes Atticus, to unite them ”

“ In face of this proclamation none would address or receive the boy into his house; nor did the boy himself think well to try to defy the warning, but hardened his heart and lay untended in porches. After three days Periander saw him all starved and unwashed, and took pity on him: his anger being somewhat abated, he came near and said: “My son, which is the better way to choose—to follow your present way of life, or to obey your father and inherit my sovereignty and the good things which I now possess? You are my son, and a prince of wealthy Corinth ”

“ Periander, the tyrant of Corinth. “Methymnæan hand”: Arion was born at Methymna, in Lesbos. Orthian, of Orthia: this was a surname of Diana. Tænarus, the point of land to which the dolphin carried Arion, whence he travelled to the court of Periander. Verse lxxxii., “See Horace to the boat”: the ode is the third of the First Book of Horace’s Odes. ”

“ If indeed ye think it good for cities to be ruled by tyrants, ye should first set a tyrant over yourselves, and then seek to do the like for your neighbours: for if ye had experienced, as we have, what a tyrant is, ye would bring before us sounder opinions on the subject than those that ye have now declared143." He enforced his opinions by telling a large part of the story of Cypselus and Periander: and the effect of his words was such that the envoys at the congress declared their agreement with them and the Spartans had to abandon all thought of the restoration of the Athenian tyranny. ”

“ Filled with joy at his cure, he tried to seize the bird to whom he owed it all, but, swifter than a swallow, it managed to avoid him. In vain he described the bird to his attendants, who rushed at his first call; in vain they sought the wonderful creature both on horse and foot, and summoned the fowlers to their aid: the bird could nowhere be found. The love the people bore King Peridor was so strong, and the reward he promised was so large, that in the twinkling of an eye every man, woman, and child had fled into the fields, and the towns were quite empty. ”

“ So the Peri returned to her palace, packed up her baggage, which was small in weight but priceless in value, filled the little golden saucer with water, and sprinkled therewith all the stones and the whole multitude of the stones became men. They all took horse, and as they quitted the Peri realm, the earth trembled beneath them and the sky was shaken as if the seven worlds and the seven heavens were mingled together, so that the youth would have died of fright if the Queen of the Peris had not been by his side. ”

“ Then she resumed her natural shape, and he found that the bird was no other than the Queen Constance, whom he had long believed to be dead. Peridor was rejoiced to embrace his wife and his son once more, and with the help of the fairies began to make preparations for the marriage of Saphir and Serpentine, who turned out to be the daughter of Aglantine and Diamantino, and as much a princess as he was a prince. The people of the kingdom were delighted, and everybody lived happy and contented to the end of their lives. ”

“ As to the other King, he was really fond of his wife, Queen Constance, but he often grieved her by his thoughtless ways, and in order to punish him for his carelessness, the fairies caused her to die quite suddenly. When she was gone the King felt how much he had loved her, and his grief was so great (though he never neglected his duties) that his subjects called him Peridor the Sorrowful. It seems hardly possible that any man should live like Peridor for fifteen years plunged in such depth of grief, and most likely he would have died too if it had not been for the fairies. ”

“ The author of the Periplus was an Egyptian Greek, a Roman subject, who traded from the Red Sea down the East African coast and as far as Southern India, in the second half of the first century after Christ. Like Hippalus, who taught the Roman world the use of the monsoons, he steered his course straight across the ocean before the trade-winds, without compass or other aids to navigation. The Periplus is a merchant-captain's log, an original and truthful record of navigation and trade. ”

“ O Hellicanus, down on your knees, thank the holy gods! This is Marina. Now blessings on thee, my child! Give me fresh garments, mine own Helhcanus! She is not dead at Tharsus, as she should have been by the savage Dionysia. She shall tell you all, when you shall kneel to her, and call her your very princess. Who is this?" (observing Lysimachus for the first time.) "Sir," said Hellicanus, "it is the governor of Metaline, who, hearing of your melancholy, came to see you." "I embrace you, sir," said Pericles. ”

“ So Peredur went back, and slew the black man. And when he returned to the palace, he found the black maiden there. “Ah! maiden,” said Peredur, “where is the Empress?” “I declare to Heaven that thou wilt not see her now, unless thou dost slay the monster that is in yonder forest.” “What monster is there?” “It is a stag that is as swift as the swiftest bird; and he has one horn in his forehead, as long as the shaft of a spear and as sharp as whatever is sharpest. And he destroys the branches of the best trees in the forest and he kills every animal that he meets with therein ”

“ As soon as he could speak, he said, "O you gods, why do you make us love your goodly gifts, and then snatch those gifts away?" "Patience, good sir," said Lychorida, "here is all. that is left alive of our dead queen, a little daughter, and for your child's sake be more manly. Patience, good sir, even for the sake of this precious charge." Pericles took the new-born infant in his arms, and he said to the little babe, "Now may your life be mild, for a more blusterous birth had never babe! ”