From PeselyG@apsu.edu Wed Apr 30 13:04:12 2003 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.133]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW03.04/8.12.1+UW03.02) with ESMTP id h3UK4B1M027816 for ; Wed, 30 Apr 2003 13:04:12 -0700 Received: from exchange2.apsu.edu (exchange2.apsu.edu [198.146.56.25]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW03.04/8.12.1+UW03.02) with ESMTP id h3UK49kB026778 for ; Wed, 30 Apr 2003 13:04:09 -0700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.0.6375.0 Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Periander/Thrasybulus story and Kaiser Friedrich II Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 15:04:08 -0500 Message-ID: <4B02634A34EE6043B56B6CA32CAB722D31B2B3@exchange2.apsu.edu> X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: From: "Pesely, George" To: David Abulafia's excellent book _Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor_ = (Oxford, 1988), 299, reports this story from 1236: An anecdote about Frederick and Ezzelino [da Romano, despot of Verona], = if true, suggests that the emperor had a clearer idea how to manage the = cities than did Ezzelino. Walking together in the fields outside = Vicenza, the two started talking about how Ezzelino could restore his = authority over the town [recently sacked and burned by imperial forces]. = The emperor said, 'I will show you how,' and unsheathing a sword he = lopped down the longest blades of grass (which symbolized leadership in = the cities). The removal of powerful rivals in the cities was the way = for a _signore_ to establish his control for good. It was a recipe that = Ezzelino and other despots were to follow widely. This resembles the advice Thrasybulus of Miletus gave to Periander, = according to Herodotus 5.92 (advisor and advisee reversed in Aristotle's = _Politics_). I haven't tracked down the literary sources for this = exchange (Abulafia doesn't have footnotes, but gives some = bibliographical references for the Italian despots of this period), so I = don't know if this reflects Frederick's learning or that of his = historian...I wouldn't expect familiarity with Herodotus in the West at = this time, and don't know if the _Politics_ had already been translated = into Latin. No doubt there are some Roman writers (Livy? Cicero?) who = quote or adapt the Periander/Thrasybulus anecdote. A little later (p. 317) Abulafia describes an oration by Piero della = Vigna defending the emperor against the pope, which uses a line from = Ovid's _Heroides_: "It is right to bear patiently suffering that is deserved; punishment = imposed without justice produces sorrow instead." George Pesely Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tennessee .