stems and ears. Then, returning to the city, he sent the messenger back
without a word of answer to his petition.

Periander, on his herald's return, asked him what counsel he brought.
"None," was the answer; "not a word. King Thrasybulus acted in the
strangest way, destroying his corn as he led me through the field, and
sending me away without a word." He proceeded to tell how the monarch
had acted.

Periander was quick to gather his brother tyrant's meaning. If he would
rule in safety he must cut off the loftiest heads,--signified by the
tall ears of corn. He took the advice thus suggested, and from that time
on treated his subjects with the greatest cruelty. Many of those whom
Cypselus had spared he put to death or banished, and acted the tyrant in
the fullest sense of the word.

He even killed his wife Melissa; just why, we do not know. But we are
told that she afterwards appeared to him in a dream and said that she
was cold, being destitute of clothes. The garments he had buried with
her were of no use to her spirit, since they had not been burned.
Periander took his own way to quiet and clothe the restless ghost. He
proclaimed that all the wives of Corinth should go to the temple of
Juno. This they did, dressed in their best, deeming it a festival. When
they were all within he closed the doors, and had them stripped of their
rich robes and ornaments, which he threw into a pit and set on fire,
calling on the name of Melissa as they burned. And in this way the
demand of the shivering ghost was satisfied.

Periander had two sons,--the elder a dunce, the younger, Lycophron (or
wolf-heart), a youth of noble nature and fine intellect. He sent them on
a visit to Proclus, their mother's father, and from him the boys
learned, what they had not known before, that their father was their
mother's murderer.

This story did not trouble the dull-brained elder, but Lycophron was so
affected by it that on his return home he refused to speak to his
father, and acted so surlily that Periander in anger turned him out of
his house. The tyrant, learning from his elder son the cause of
Lycophron's strange behavior, grew still more incensed. He sent orders
to those who had given shelter to his son that they should cease to
harbor him, And he continued to drive him from shelter to shelter, till
in the end he proclaimed that whoever dared to harbor, or even speak to,
his rebellious son, should pay a heavy fine to Apollo.

Thus, driv