PHEIDON (8th or 7th century B.C.)

This article appears in Volume V21, Page 362 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: PER-PIG

PHEIDON (8th or 7th century B.C.) , king of Argos, generally, though wrongly, called " tyrant." According to tradition he flourished during the first half of the 8th century B.C. He was a vigorous and energetic ruler and greatly increased the power of Argos. He gradually regained sway over the various cities of the Argive confederacy, the members of which had become practically independent, and (in the words of Ephorus) " re-united the broken fragments of the inheritance of Temenus." His object was to secure predominance for Argos in the north of Peloponnesus. According to Plutarch, he attempted to break the power of Corinth, by requesting the Corinthians to send him moo of their picked youths, ostensibly to aid him inwar, his real intention being to put them to death; but the plot was revealed. Pheidon assisted the Pisatans to expel the Elean superintendents of the Olympian games and presided at the festival himself. The Eleans, however, refused to recognize the Olympiad or to include it in the register, and shortly afterwards, with the aid of the Spartans, who are said to have looked upon Pheidon as having ousted them from the headship of

Greece

GREECE

, defeated Pheidon and were reinstated in the possession of Pisatis and their former privileges. Pheidon is said to have lost his life in a

faction

FACTION (through the French, from Lat. factio, a company of persons combined for action, facere, to do; from the other French derivative facon comes " fashion ")

fight at Corinth, where the monarchy had recently been overthrown. The affair of the games has an important bearing on his date. Pausanias (vi. 22, 2) definitely states that Pheidon presided at the festival in the 8th Olympiad (i.e. in 748 B.C.), but in the

list

LIST (O.E.
lisle
- LISLE, ALICE (c. 1614-1685)
, a Teutonic word, cf. Dut. lust, Ger. Leiste, adapted in Ital. lista and Fr.
lisle
- LISLE, ALICE (c. 1614-1685)
)
LIST,
FRIEDRICH
- FRIEDRICH, JOHANN (1836— )
(1789-1846)

of the suitors of Agariste, daughter of

Cleisthenes

CLEISTHENES

of Sicyon, given by Herodotus, there occurs the name of Leocedes (Lacedas), son of Pheidon of Argos. According to this, Pheidon must have flourished during the early part of the 6th century. It has therefore been assumed that Herodotus confused two Pheidons, both kings of Argos. The suggested substitution in the text of Pausanias of the 28th for the 8th Olympiad (i.e. 668 instead of 748) would not bring it into agreement with Herodotus, for even then Pheidon's son could not have been a suitor in 570 for the hand of Agariste. But the story of Agariste's wooing resembles romance and has slight chronological value. On the whole, modern authorities assign Pheidon to the first half of the 7th century. Herodotus further states that Pheidon established a system of weights and

measures

MEASURES

throughout Peloponnesus, to which Ephorus and the Parian Chronicle add that he was the first to coin silver money, and that his mint was at Aegina. But according to the better authority of Herodotus (i. 94) and Xenophanes of Colophon, the Lydians were the first coiners of money at the beginning of the 7th century, and, further, the oldest known Aeginetan coins are of later date than Pheidon. Hence, unless a later Pheidon is assumed, the statement of Ephorus must be considered unhistorical. No such difficulty occurs in regard to the weights and

measures

MEASURES

; it is generally agreed that a system was already in existence in the time of Pheidon, into which he introduced certain changes. A passage in the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens (x. 2) states that the measures used before the Solonian period of reform were called " Pheidonian."
See Herodotus vi. 127; Ephorus in Strabo viii. 358, 376; Plutarch, Amatoriae narrations, 2; Marmor parium, ep. 30; Pollux ix. 83; Nicolaus Damascenus, frag. 41 (in C. W. Muller's Frog. hist. graecorum, iii.); G. Grote, History of

Greece

GREECE

, pt. ii. ch. 4; B. V. Head, Ilistoria Numorum (1887) ; F. Hultsch, Griechische and romische Metrologie (1882); G. Rawlinson's Herodotus, appendix, bk. i., note 8. On the question of Pheidon's date, see J. B. Bury, History of Greece, ii. 468 (1 02); J. P. Mahaffy, Problems in Greek History, ch. 3 (1892); J. G. Frazer's note on Pausanias vi. 22, 2; and especially G. Busolt, Griechische Geschichte (2nd ed., 1893), ch. iii. 12. C. Trieber, Pheidon von Argos (Hanover, 1880) , and J. Beloch, in Rheinisches Museum, xlv. 595 (1890), favour a later date, about 580.

End of Article: PHEIDON (8th or 7th century B.C.)

If you wish, you can link directly to this article.

<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/PER_PIG/PHEIDON_8th_or_7th_century_BC_.html">
PHEIDON (8th or 7th century B.C.)
</a>

(Previous)
PHEIDIAS

(Next)
PHELPS, AUSTIN (182o-1890)

JCSM was founded in 1997 and exists to help the community and bring people into a life-changing and productive relationship with Jesus Christ. JCSM offers over 200,000 free web pages, including its weekly inspirational emails that were sent continuously for over a decade.

Jesus Christ Saves Ministries
P.O. Box 9297
San Diego, CA 92169
1-888-887-0417 or Email