put to death his wife Melissa, it chanced that on
his first affliction a second followed of a different kind. His wife
had borne him two sons, and one of them had now reached the age of
seventeen, the other of eighteen years, when their mother's father,
Procles, tyrant of Epidaurus,[16] asked them to his court. They went,
and Procles treated them with much kindness, as was natural,
considering they were his own daughter's children. At length, when the
time for parting came, Procles as he was sending them on their way
said, "Know you now, my children, who it was that caused your mother's
death?" The elder son took no account of this speech, but the younger,
whose name was Lycophron, was sorely troubled at it--so much so that
when he got back to Corinth, looking upon his father as his mother's
murderer, he would neither speak to him nor answer when spoken to nor
utter a word in reply to all his father's questionings. So Periander,
at last growing furious at such behavior, banished his son from his
house.

The younger son gone, he turned to the elder and asked him what it was
that their grandfather had said to them. Then the son related in how
kind and friendly a fashion the grandfather had received them; but,
not having taken any notice of the speech which Procles had uttered at
parting, he quite forgot to mention it. Periander insisted that it was
not possible this should be all--their grandfather must have given
them some hint or other--and he went on pressing his son till at last
he remembered the parting speech and told it. Periander, after he had
turned the whole matter over in his thoughts and felt unwilling to
give way at all, sent a messenger to the persons who had opened their
houses to his outcast son and forbade them to harbor him. Then the
boy, when he had been driven from one friend, sought refuge with
another, but was forced from shelter to shelter by the threats of his
father, who menaced all those that took him in, and commanded them to
shut their doors against him. Still, as fast as he was forced to leave
one house he went to another, and was received by the inmates; for his
acquaintances, altho in no small alarm, yet gave him shelter, as he
was Periander's son.

At last Periander made proclamation that whoever harbored his son, or
even spoke to him, should forfeit a certain sum of money to Apollo. On
hearing this no one any longer liked to take him in, or even to hold
converse with him, and he himself