Il tiranno e le spighe più alte. Un celebre aneddoto erodoteo interpretato alla luce del mito di Litierse

[Machine translation] The article tries to identify the origin of the famous anecdote told by Herodotus about the ears of wheat cut by the tyrant Trasibulus of Miletus as a metaphor to suggest the elimination of the most prominent citizens in order to keep their tyranny safe. The archetype seems to be found in the myth of Litierse, the legendary son of King Midas, who used to ask passing foreigners to help him cut the wheat, only to kill them by wrapping them in sheaves of wheat and decapitating them, in a rite interpreted by moderns as the personification of wheat in Phrygian folklore; Litierse was finally killed in the same way by Heracles. The reception of this myth in an anecdote of probable Milesian origin seems to confirm the close cultural relations between the Greeks of Ionia and the indigenous peoples of the hinterland.