 Toward the end of his speech, he inserted as a rhetorical flourish, a comparison between King George III and various historical figures who were brought low by their enemies, including Charles I, Caesar, and in some accounts of the speech, Tarquin.The cultural phenomenon known as "tall poppy syndrome," in which persons of unusual merit are attacked or resented because of their achievements, derives its name from the episode in Livy, in which Tarquin is said to have instructed his son, Sextus, to weaken the city of Gabii by destroying its leading men.The motif of using an unwitting messenger to deliver such a message, through the metaphor of cutting the heads off the tallest poppies, may have been borrowed from Herodotus, whose "Histories" contain a similar story, involving ears of wheat instead of poppies.