The story of the infant Cypselus is put by Plutarch[1005] into the mouth of a certain “Chersias the poet,” who is represented as having during a banquet given by Periander “mentioned others whose lives had been saved when despaired of and in particular Cypselus the father of Periander.” One of the sceptics[1006] has recently accepted this Chersias as historical and imagined Plutarch as here making use of a poem of his which he proceeds to explain as a fiction invented to give an appearance of legitimacy to the Cypselids. The explanation is quite gratuitous. It is true that Diogenes Laertius[1007] speaks of Periander as “of the race of the Heraclids.” But Chersias in Plutarch does not mention even the parents of Cypselus, much less his remote ancestors, and there is no evidence that he had them in mind[1008]. The poem itself is a doubtful item. The only inference to be drawn from Plutarch is that to his readers the poem (assuming its existence) probably seemed in keeping with the scene. It is however well to be reminded that even Plutarch had much more literary material to draw from for this early period than have the moderns. On the whole therefore the safest attitude towards the narrative of Nicolaus will be one of benevolent agnosticism. No doubt he had a tendency to rationalize half or wholly mythical stories. It is not improbable that he did this to some extent in his account of the infant Cypselus with which we can compare the version of Herodotus. But when he makes a simple statement of commonplace fact, as, for instance, that Cypselus was polemarch before he became tyrant, the most prudent and the most critical course is to accept it as probably true[1009]. The reason why the record of this fact was preserved is not far to seek. The fourth century historians seized on the name as evidence that Cypselus was in fact as well as in name a ruler of the same order as Dionysius, who started his career as a military demagogue. [Sidenote: but that is no evidence of military power. Cypselus cannot have been a military despot.] But the context shows that the polemarch was not in this case a military officer[1010], and we know by implication that Cypselus was not a warlike person, for the record of how Periander changed the character of the government goes on to say that he _became_[1011] warlike. And, as remarked long ago by Schubring[1012], if the tenure of the polemarchy is historical, still it was not the means by which Cypselus reached the tyranny, but rather like the murder of the Bacchiad Patrokleides, a sign and token that he was already in a position to seize it. [Sidenote: What then was the basis of his power? The only possible evidence is to be found in the story] Nicolaus therefore brings us little nearer to understanding the basis of the future tyrant’s power. Our only hope of doing this lies in Herodotus, who tells the story of the infant Cypselus with certain details omitted by Nicolaus but which probably contain the