I heard this in a class I took at uni but I can't remember the details. All I remember is that two Romans - I believe generals - were trying to talk about what to do re some kind of uprising. However, they couldn't speak openly, and so one of them guided the other through a field of corn essentially talking nonsense, while also cutting off the tallest heads of corn in the field. The other one understood the message and returned back to his land and slaughtered the people leading the rebellion.
I was wondering if anyone had heard of this or had more details/a source? Thank you!
This is not a story about Romans, but Greeks; it is not about generals, but tyrants. The story is preserved in Herodotos:
Now Periander [the tyrant of Corinth] was to begin with milder than his father, but after he had held converse by messenger with Thrasyboulos the tyrant of Miletos, he became much more bloodthirsty than Kypselos.
He had sent a herald to Thrasyboulos and inquired in what way he would best and most safely govern his city. Thrasyboulos led the man who had come from Periander outside the town, and entered into a sown field. As he walked through the corn, continually asking why the messenger had come to him from Corinth, he kept cutting off all the tallest ears of wheat which he could see, and throwing them away, until he had destroyed the best and richest part of the crop. Then, after passing through the place and speaking no word of counsel, he sent the herald away.
When the herald returned to Corinth, Periander desired to hear what counsel he brought, but the man said that Thrasyboulos had given him none. The herald added that it was a strange man to whom he had been sent, a madman and a destroyer of his own possessions, telling Periander what he had seen Thrasyboulos do.
Periander, however, understood what had been done, and perceived that Thrasyboulos had counselled him to slay those of his townsmen who were outstanding in influence or ability; with that he began to deal with his citizens in an evil manner. Whatever act of slaughter or banishment Kypselos had left undone, that Periander brought to accomplishment.
-- Herodotos 5.92f-g
Periander ruled Corinth c. 600-585 BC, and it is not certain how much of this story can possibly be true. While Herodotos paints Periander as a barbaric, necrophiliac tyrant, the general Greek tradition listed him among the Seven Sages of the Archaic period. It seems likely that genuine traditions about Periander's life did not survive, allowing Herodotos to paint him with the same brush used to paint all tyrants by the Classical period, when this system of use had fallen into disfavour in mainland Greece.