A Tenedian fellow

Explanation

Tenes son of Cycnus, falsely accused by his stepmother of attempting her, and cast by his father into a chest, was preserved by sea to the island of Tenedos. He decreed that, at trials, a man with an axe should stand behind both judge and accused, that the convicted might at once be struck dead with the axe. Hence the proverb is also said of those terrible to look at; for he who held the axe stood by in fearful sort. Menander mentions it in his Ephesian.