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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.

In these declamation schools under the Empire the boys debated such imaginary questions as this: A reward is offered to one who shall kill a tyrant. A. enters the palace and kills the tyrant's son, whereupon the father commits suicide. Is A. entitled to the reward? In the repertory of Lucian occurs a show piece on each side of this proposition.

"Inhuman monsters?" snarled Heron. "Bah! they don't do their business thoroughly; we want the tyrant's spawn to become a true Republican and a patriot aye! to make of him such an one that even if you and your cursed confederates got him by some hellish chance, he would be no use to you as a king, a tyrant to set above the people, to set up in your Versailles, your Louvre, to eat off golden plates and wear satin clothes.

Right there in the very jaws of death, within a mile of the lair of Ali Higg, in possession of two of the tyrant's wives, with an army at our rear that might at that minute be following old Ali Baba into the gorge to cut off our one possible retreat, he told them the old tales that Arabs love, and soothed them as if they were children.

It was then that I seized and wielded the tyrant's sceptre whilst he slumbered voluptuously in my embrace then, Walter, thy country, for the first time, felt the hand of humanity, and reposed in confidence on my bosom. 'that the man, by whom, of all others, I least wish to be misunderstood, should compel me to turn braggart and parade my unobtrusive virtues to the glare of admiration!

When Cæsar had conquered at Pharsalia, and on his return from the East had graciously met him at Brundisium, and had generously accorded to him permission to live under the shadow of his throne, the time for him must have been full of bitterness. But he had not then quite realized the meaning of a tyrant's throne.

However, he was compensatingly heterodox in his view of the Law's persecution of women; their pertinacious harpings on the theme had brought him to that; and in consideration of the fact, as they looked from yacht to shore, of their being rebels participating largely in the pleasures of the tyrant's court, they allowed him to silence them, and forgave him.

Go thou, too, O Muse, depart, Other regions fairer find; For my land but offers art For the laurel, chains that bind, For a temple, prisons blind. But before thou leavest me, speak: Tell me with thy voice sublime, Thou couldst ever from me seek A song of sorrow for the weak, Defiance to the tyrant's crime.

"Ay!" cried Dundaff, who overheard this part of the conversation, "we invited the usurpation of a tyrant by the docility with which we submitted to his minion. Had we rejected Baliol, we had never been ridden by Edward. But the rowel has gored the flanks of us all! and who amongst us will not lay himself and fortune at the foot of him who plucks away the tyrant's heel?"

The tyrant's avarice ruined not only private citizens, but seized the municipal funds of the cities, and stripped the very temples of their gold and silver offerings. Maximus and Balbinus, on July 9, 237, were declared emperors. The Emperor Maximus advanced to meet the furious tyrant, but the stroke of domestic conspiracy prevented the further eruption of civil war.