Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
Do you need
volunteer, community service, work, military or court hours?
|
|
Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
|
|
Click here and add this page to your favorites!
|
Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: PER-PIG |
|
|
PHALARIS , tyrant of Acragas (Agrigentum) in Sicily, c. 570554 B.C. He was entrusted with the building of the temple of Zeus Atabyrius in the citadel, and took advantage of his position to make himself despot (Aristotle, Politics, v. 10). Under his rule
bull .After ages have held tip Phalaris to infamy for his excessive cruelty. In his brazen bull , invented, it is said, by Perillus of Athens, the tyrant's victims were shut up and, a fire being kindled beneath, were roasted alive, while their shrieks represented the bellowing of the bull. Perillus himself is said to have been the first victim. There is hardly room to doubt that we have here a tradition of human sacrifice in connexion with the worship of the Phoenician Baal (Zeus Atabyrius) such as prevailed at Rhodes; when misfortune threatened Rhodes the brazen bulls in his temple bellowed. The Rhodians brought this worship to Gela, which they founded con-jointly with the Cretans, and from Gela it passed to Agrigentum. Human sacrifices to Baal were common, and, though in Phoenicia proper there is no proof that the victims were burned alive, the Carthaginians had a brazen image of Baal, from whose down-turned hands the children slid into a pit of fire; and the story that Minos had a brazen man who pressed people to his glowing breast points to similar rites in Crete, where the child-devouring Minotaur must certainly be connected with Baal and the favourite sacrifice to him of children.The story of the bull cannot be dismissed as pure invention. Pindar
instrument of torture with the name of the tyrant. There was certainly a brazen bull at Agrigentum, which was carried off by the Carthaginians to Carthage, whence it was again taken by Scipio and restored to Agrigentum. In later times the tradition prevailed that Phalaris was a naturally humane man and a patron of philosophy and literature. He is so described in the declamations ascribed to Lucian, and in the letters which bear his own name. Plutarch, too, though he takes the unfavourable view, mentions that the Sicilians gave to the severity of Phalaris the name of justice and a hatred of crime. Phalaris may thus have been one of those men who combine justice and even humanity with religious fanaticism (Suidas, s.v.; Diod. Sic. ix. 20, 30, xiii. 90, xxxii. 25; Polybius
The letters bearing the name of Phalaris (148 in number) are now chiefly remembered for the crushing exposure they received at the hands of Richard Bentley in his controversy with the Hon. Charles Boyle, who had published an edition of them in 1695. The first edition of Bentley 's Dissertation on Phalaris appeared in 1697, and the second edition, replying to the answer which Boyle published in 1698, came out in 1699. From the mention in the letters of towns (Phintia, Alaesa and Tauromenium) which did not exist in the time of Phalaris, from the imitations of authors (Herodotus, Democritus, Euripides, Callimachus) who wrote long after he was dead, from the reference to tragedies, though tragedy was not yet invented in the lifetime of Phalaris, from the dialect, which is notDorian but Attic, nay, New or Late
Erasmus
End of Article: PHALARIS If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/PER_PIG/PHALARIS.html"> PHALARIS </a> |
|
|
(Previous) PHALANX (Gr. /&Xa'y, , of unknown origin) |
(Next) PHALLICISM, or PHALLISM (from Gr. cbaXAos) |
|
Sponsored Advertisements