His son and successor Periander, though energetic as a warrior, distinguished as an encourager of poetry and music, and even numbered by some among the seven wise men of Greece,—is, nevertheless, uniformly represented as oppressive and inhuman in his treatment of subjects. The revolting stories which are told respecting his private life, and his relations with his mother and his wife, may for the most part be regarded as calumnies suggested by odious associations with his memory; but there seems good reason for imputing to him tyranny of the worst character, and the sanguinary maxims of precaution so often acted upon by Grecian despots were traced back in ordinary belief to Periander,[56] and his contemporary Thrasybulus, despot of Milêtus. He maintained a powerful body-guard, shed much blood, and was exorbitant in his exactions, a part of which was employed in votive offerings at Olympia; and this munificence to the gods was considered by Aristotle and others as part of a deliberate system, with the view of keeping his subjects both hard at work and poor. On one occasion, we are told that he invited the women of Corinth to assemble for the celebration of a religious festival, and then stripped them of their rich attire and ornaments. By some later writers, he is painted as the stern foe of everything like luxury and dissolute habits,—enforcing industry, compelling every man to render account of his means of livelihood, and causing the procuresses of Corinth to be thrown into the sea.[57] Though the general features of his character, his cruel tyranny no less than his vigor and ability, may be sufficiently relied on, yet the particular incidents connected with his name are all extremely dubious: the most credible of all seems to be the tale of his inexpiable quarrel with his son, and his brutal treatment of many noble Korkyræan youths, as related in Herodotus. Periander is said to have put to death his wife, Melissa, daughter of Proklês, despot of Epidaurus; and his son Lykophrôn, informed of this deed, contracted an incurable antipathy against him. After vainly trying, both by rigor and by conciliation, to conquer this feeling on the part of his son, Periander sent him to reside at Korkyra, then dependent upon his rule; but when he found himself growing old and disabled, he recalled him to Corinth, in order to insure the continuance of the dynasty. Lykophrôn still obstinately declined all personal communication with his father, upon which the latter desired him to come to Corinth, and engaged himself to go over to Korkyra. So terrified were the Korkyræans at the idea of a visit from this formidable old man, that they put Lykophrôn to death,—a deed which Periander avenged by seizing three hundred youths of their noblest families, and sending them over to the Lydian king, Alyattês at Sardis, in order that they might be castrated and made to serve as eunuchs. The Corinthian vessels in which the youths were dispatched fortunately touched at Samos in the way; where the Samians and Knidians, shocked at a proceeding which outraged all Hellenic sentiment, contrived to rescue the youths from the miserable fate intended for them, and, after the death of Periander, sent them back to their native island.[58]

While we turn with displeasure from the political life of this man, we are at the same time made acquainted with the great extent of his power,—greater than that which was ever possessed by Corinth after the extinction of his dynasty. Korkyra, Ambrakia, Leukas, and Anaktorium, all Corinthian colonies, but in the next century independent states, appear in his time dependencies of Corinth. Ambrakia is said to have been under the rule of another despot named Periander, probably also a Kypselid by birth. It seems, indeed, that the towns of Anaktorium, Leukas, and Apollonia in the Ionian gulf, were either founded by the Kypselids, or received reinforcements of Corinthian colonists, during their dynasty, though Korkyra was established considerably earlier.[59]

The reign of Periander lasted for forty years (B. C. 625-585): Psammetichus son of Gordius, who succeeded him, reigned three years, and the Kypselid dynasty is then said to have closed, after having continued for seventy-three years.[60] In respect of power, magnificent display, and wide-spread connections both in Asia and in Italy, they evidently stood high among the Greeks of their time. Their offerings consecrated at Olympia excited great admiration, especially the gilt colossal statue of Zeus, and the large chest of cedar-wood dedicated in the temple of Hêrê, overlaid with various figures in gold and ivory: the figures were borrowed from mythical and legendary story, and the chest was a commemoration both of the name of Kypselus and of the tale of his marvellous preservation in infancy.[61] If Plutarch is correct, this powerful dynasty is to be numbered among the despots put down by Sparta;[62] yet such intervention of the Spartans, granting it to have been matter of fact, can hardly have been known to Herodotus.

Coincident in point of time with the commencement of Periander’s reign at Corinth, we find Theagenês despot at Megara, who is also said to have acquired his power by demagogic arts, as well as by violent aggressions against the rich proprietors, whose cattle he destroyed in their pastures by the side of the river. We are not told by what previous conduct on the part of the rich this hatred of the people had been earned, but Theagenês carried the popular feeling completely along with him, obtained by public vote a body of guards ostensibly for his personal safety, and employed them to overthrow the oligarchy.[63] But he did not maintain his power, even for his own life: a second revolution dethroned and expelled him; on which occasion, after a short interval of temperate government, the people are said to have renewed in a still more marked way their antipathies against the rich; banishing some of them with confiscation of property, intruding into the houses of others with demands for forced hospitality, and even passing a formal palintokia, or decree, to require from the rich who had lent money on interest, the refunding of all past interest paid to them by their debtors.[64] To appreciate correctly such a demand, we must recollect that the practice of taking interest for money lent was regarded by a large proportion of early ancient society with feelings of unqualified reprobation; and it will be seen, when we come to the legislation of Solon, how much such violent reactionary feeling against the creditor was provoked by the antecedent working of the harsh law determining his rights.

We hear in general terms of more than one revolution in the government of Megara,—a disorderly democracy, subverted by returning oligarchical exiles, and these again unable long to maintain themselves;[65] but we are alike uninformed as to dates and details. And in respect to one of these struggles, we are admitted to the outpourings of a contemporary and a sufferer,—the Megarian poet Theognis. Unfortunately, his elegiac verses, as we possess them, are in a state so broken, incoherent, and interpolated, that we make out no distinct conception of the events which call them forth,—still less, can we discover in the verses of Theognis that strength and peculiarity of pure Dorian feeling, which, since the publication of O. Müller’s History of the Dorians, it has been the fashion to look for so extensively. But we see that the poet was connected with an oligarchy, of birth and not of wealth, which had recently been subverted by the breaking in of the rustic population previously subject and degraded,—that these subjects were contented to submit to a single-headed despot, in order to escape from their former rulers,—and that Theognis had himself been betrayed by his own friends and companions, stripped of his property, and exiled, through the wrong doing “of enemies whose blood he hopes one day to be permitted to drink.”[66] The condition of the subject cultivators previous to this revolution he depicts in sad colors;—they “dwelt without the city, clad in goatskins, and ignorant of judicial sanctions or laws:”[67] after it, they had become citizens, and their importance had been immensely enhanced. And thus, according to his impression, the vile breed has trodden down the noble,—the bad have become masters, and the good are no longer of any account. The bitterness and humiliation which attend upon poverty, and the undue ascendency which wealth confers even upon the most worthless of mankind,[68] are among the prominent subjects of his complaint, and his keen personal feeling on this point would be alone sufficient to show that the recent revolution had no way overthrown the influence of property; in contradiction to the opinion of Welcker, who infers without ground, from a passage of uncertain meaning, that the land of the state had been formally redivided.[69] The Megarian revolution, so far as we apprehend it from Theognis, appears to have improved materially the condition of the cultivators around the town, and to have strengthened a certain class whom he considers “the bad rich,”—while it extinguished the privileges of that governing order, to which he himself belonged, denominated in his language “the good and the virtuous,” with ruinous effect upon his own individual fortunes. How far this governing order was exclusively Dorian, we have no means of determining. The political change by which Theognis suffered, and the new despot whom he indicates as either actually installed or nearly impending, must have come considerably after the despotism of Theagenês; for the life of the poet seems to fall between 570-490 B. C., while Theagenês must have ruled about 630-600 B. C. From the unfavorable picture, therefore, which the poet gives as his own early experience of the condition of the rural cultivators, it is evident that the despot Theagenês had neither conferred upon them any permanent benefit, nor given them access to the judicial protection of the city.

It is thus that the despots of Corinth, Sikyôn, and Megara serve as samples of those revolutionary influences, which towards the beginning of the sixth century B. C., seem to have shaken or overturned the oligarchical governments in very many cities throughout the Grecian world. There existed a certain sympathy and alliance between the despots of Corinth and Sikyôn:[70] how far such feeling was farther extended to Megara, we do not know. The latter city seems evidently to have been more populous and powerful during the seventh and sixth centuries B. C., than we shall afterwards find her throughout the two brilliant centuries of Grecian history: her colonies, found as far distant as Bithynia and the Thracian Bosphorus on one side, and as Sicily on the other, argue an extent of trade as well as naval force once not inferior to Athens: so that we shall be the less surprised when we approach the life of Solon, to find her in possession of the island of Salamis, and long maintaining it, at one time with every promise of triumph, against the entire force of the Athenians.