For which reason those who hate a tyranny and find fault with the advice which Periander gave to
Thrasybulus, must not think there was nothing to be said in its defence; for the story goes, that Periander said nothing to the messenger in answer to the business he was consulted about, but striking off those ears of corn which were higher than the rest, reduced the whole crop to a level; so that the messenger, without knowing the cause of what was done, related the fact to
Thrasybulus, who understood by it that he must take off all the principal men in the city.
Like Chaerephon (Apol.) the real Anytus was a democrat, and had joined
Thrasybulus in the conflict with the thirty.
Historiae, 5.92): Periander asked
Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus, for
X Astraptes alardus (Stoll, 1790) X Astraptes aulestes (Stoll, 1790) X Astraptes pheres (Mabille, 1903) X Astraptes naxos (Hewitson, 1867) X Bolla cupreiceps (Mabille, 1891) X X Cecropterus aunus (Fabricius, 1793) X Cycloglypha
thrasybulus (Fabricius, 1793) X X Dubiella fiscella (Hewitson, 1867) X Eracon clinias (Mabille, 1890) X Entheus priassus (Linnaeus, 1758) X X Euphyes peneia (Godm.
Theramenes,
Thrasybulus and the Athenian Moderates.
As they walked past a wheat field
Thrasybulus, so the story goes, took out a knife and cut the ears from the tallest stalk he could see - the inference being that targeting and removing the most eminent citizens from the city would ensure the safest governance.
(19) Rhetoric originated, in fact, through legal conflicts: in 465 BCE, when the tyrant
Thrasybulus was overthrown in Syracuse, the courts were flooded by disputes over property the dictatorship had stolen; this led Corax and other early rhetoricians to develop a systematic approach to persuasive discourse, a system that might benefit litigants arguing their own cases in court.
One essential aspect of the "accepted" story was that Corax invented rhetoric in "response to the challenges of democratic politics after the popular revolution which deposed the last of the Syracusan tyrants, Hieron's brother
Thrasybulus." See Thomas Cole's article, "Who was Corax?," Illinois Classical Studies, 16 (1992): 65-84, esp.