Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/57

 PERIANDER DESPOT AT CORINTH. 41 gave a very different description, and depicted Kypselus as a cruel ruler, who banished, robbed, and murdered by wholesale. His son and successor Periander, though energetic as a warrior, distinguished as an encourager of poetry and music, and even numbered by some among the seven wise men of Greece, is, nevertheless, uniformly represented as oppressive and inhuman in his treatment of subjects. The revolting stories which are told respecting his private life, and his relations with his mother and his wife, may for the most part be regarded as calumnies sug- gested by odious associations with his memory ; but there seems good reason for imputing to him tyranny of the worst character, and the sanguinary maxims of precaution so often acted upon by Grecian despots were traced back in ordinary belief to Periander, 1 and his contemporary Thrasybulus, despot of Miletus. He main- tained a powerful body-guard, shed much blood, and was exorbi- tant in his exactions, a part of which was employed in votive offerings at Olympia ; and this munificence to the gods was con- sidered by Aristotle and others as part of a deliberate system, v/ith the view of keeping his subjects both hard at work and poor. On one occasion, we are told that he invited the women of Cor- inth to assemble for the celebration of a religious festival, and then stripped them of their rich attire and ornaments. By some later writers, he is painted as the stern foe of everything like luxury and dissolute habits, enforcing industry, compelling every man to render account of his means of livelihood, and causing the procuresses of Corinth to be thrown into the Though the general features of his character, his cruel tyranny no less than his vigor and ability, may be sufficiently relied on, yet the particular incidents connected with his name are all ex- tremely dubious : the most credible of all seems to be the tale of his inexpiable quarrel with his son, and his brutal treatment of many noble Korkyncan youths, as related in Herodotus. Peri- book of the CEconomica of Aristotle, coincides with the general view of Herodotus (Aristot. (Econom. ii, 2) ; but I do not trust the statements of this treatise for facts of the sixth or seventh centuries B. c. 1 Aristot. Polit. v, 9. 2-22 ; iii, 8, 3 ; Herodot. v, 92. Kohler; Nicolans Damasc. p. 50, ed. Orcll. ; Diogen. Laort. i, 96-98; Sui- das, v, Kt ifce'Xiduv nvcf
 * Ephorus, Frag. 106, ed. Marx. ; Herakleides Ponticus. Frag, v, cd