Note 29 — Chapter IX · CORINTH, SIKYON, AND MEGARA. — AGE OF THE GRECIAN DESPOTS.

Aristot. Polit. iii, 8, 3; v, 8, 7. Herodot. v, 92. Herodotus gives the story as if Thrasybulus had been the person to suggest this hint by conducting the messenger of Periander into a cornfield and there striking off the tallest ears with his stick: Aristotle reverses the two, and makes Periander the adviser: Livy (i, 54) transfers the scene to Gabii and Rome, with Sextus Tarquinius as the person sending for counsel to his father at Rome. Compare Plato, Republ. viii, c. 17, p. 565; Eurip. Supplic. 444-455.

The discussion which Herodotus ascribes to the Persian conspirators, after the assassination of the Magian king, whether they should constitute the Persian government as a monarchy, an oligarchy, or a democracy, exhibits a vein of ideas purely Grecian, and altogether foreign to the Oriental conception of government: but it sets forth,—briefly, yet with great perspicuity and penetration,—the advantages and disadvantages of all the three. The case made out against monarchy is by far the strongest, while the counsel on behalf of monarchy assumes as a part of his case that the individual monarch is to be the best man in the state. The anti-monarchical champion Otanes concludes a long string of criminations against the despot, with these words above-noticed: “He subverts the customs of the country: he violates women: he puts men to death untried.” (Herod. iii, 80-82.)