Périandre
Périandre was the second Tyran city of Corinthe, wire of the tyrant Cypsélos.
It succeeded his father in 627. It improved the wearing of Corinth and built the first slope on the isthmus called the diolkos (or dromos ) which made it possible the ships to pass from the Golfe of Corinth to the Golfe Saronique and to avoid circumventing all the Peloponnese (the channel of the Isthmus was completed only at the 19th century). The money gained thanks to this way made it possible Périandre to remove the taxes in Corinthe.
Périandre would have started as a tyrant more moderate than his father but ends up representing the model of the cruel tyrant at Hérodote and Aristote.
According to a history, it would have made ask to the tyrant Thrasybule of Milet what it was to do and this one would have answered only by cutting down the heads of the corn germs, without saying a mot. Périandre understood that it was to eliminate the aristocrats, like the Bacchiades, which could threaten its capacity. It was based on the plebs against the nobility and undertook violent repressions.
It is told that it made castrate boys that it sent to the colony Corcyre. It would have killed his wife Mélissa, girl of Proclès, the tyrant of Épidaure, in an access of anger because of a false charge. It conquered the city of Épidaure in the east of Corinth. It exiled then his son Lycophron in Corcyre when this one reproached him the death of his/her mother. When it tried to be reconciled with Lycophron and that this one agreed to return to Corinthe provided that Périandre comes to deal with the colony, the inhabitants of Corcyre assassinated Lycophron. Périandre would have instituted a worship around the phantom of Mélissa.
Périandre was often put in the lists of the wise Seven of Greece for some of its proverbs, even if Plato were indignant that one confuses his intelligence with Wisdom.
It would have reigned 40 years until in 585. His/her Lycophron son had died and its other Cypsélos wire the young person was stupid. Psammétique, wire of Gordias (without relationship with the Pharaon of the same name), succeeded to him.
Sources
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Political Aristote, (V, 12).
- (III, 48-53; V, 92).
See too