(Φάλαρις), ruler of Agrigentum in Sicily, has obtained a proverbial celebrity as a cruel and inhuman tyrant. But far from the noto riety thus given to his name having contributed to our real knowledge of his life and history, it has only served to envelope every thing connected with their him in a cloud of fable, through which it is scarcely possible to catch a glimpse of truth. The period at which he lived has been the subject of much dis pute, and his reign has been carried back by some writers as far as the 31st Olympiad (B. C. 656), but there seems little doubt that the statement of Suidas, who represents him as reigning in the 52d Olympiad. is in the main correct. Eusebius in one passage gives the older date, but in another assigns the commencement of his reign to the third year of the 52d Olympiad (B. 100.570); and this is confirmed by statements which represent him ascontemporary temporary with Stesichorus and Croesus. (Suid. s. v. Φάλαρις; Euseb. Chron. an. 1365, 1393, 1446 ; Syncell. p. 213d. ed. Paris; Oros. 1.20 Plin. Nat. 7.56; Arist. Plut. 2.20; Diod. Eac. Vat. pp. 25, 26; Betley, Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris ; Clinton, F. H.vol. i. p. 236, vol. ii. p. 4.)
There seems no doubt that he was a native of Agrigentum, though the author of the spurious epistles ascribed to him represents him as born in the island of Astypalaea, and first arriving in Sicily and as an exile. Concerning the steps by which he Indignant rose to power we are almost wholly in the dark. Polyaenus indeed tells us that he was a farmer of the public revenue, and that under pretence of constructing a temple on a height which comma the city, he contrived to erect a ternporary citadel, which he occupied with an armed force, and thus made himself master of the sovereignty. But this story has much the air of a fable, and it is clearly implied by Aristotle (Aristot. Pol. 5.10) that he office inb the state, of which he afterwards availed himself to assume a despotic authority. Of the events of his reign, which lasted according to Eusebius sixteen years, we can hardly be said to know anything; but a few anecdotes preserved to us by Polyaenus (5.1.), the authority of which it is difficult to estimate, represent him as engaged in frequent wars with his neighbours, and extending his power and dominion on all sides, though more frequently by stratagem than open force. It would appear from Aristotle (Aristot. Rh. 2.20), if there be no mistake in the story there told, that he was at one time master of Himera as well as Agrigentum ; but there certainly is no authority for the statemeant of Suidas (s. v. Φαίλαρις), that his power extende over the whole of Sieily. The story told
No circumstance connected with Phalaris is more celebrated than the brazen bull in which he is said to have burnt alive the victims of his cruelty, and of which we are told that he made the first experiment upon its inventor Perillus. [PERILLUS. This latter story has much the air of an invention of later times, and Timaeus even denied altogether the existence of the bull itself. It is indeed highly probable, as asserted by that writer, that the statue extant in later times-which was carried off from Agrigentum by the Carthaginians, and afterwards captured by Scipio at the taking of that city-was not, as pretended, the identical bull of Phalaris, but this is evidently no argument against its origiml existence, and it is certain that the fame of this celebrated engine of torture was inseparably associated with the name of Phalaris as early as the time of Pindar. (Pind. Pyth. i. 185 ; Scho. ad loc. ; Diod. 13.90; Plb. 12.25 ; Timaeus, fr. 116-118. ed. Didot; Callim. fr. 119, 194; Plut. Parall. p. 315.) That poet also speaks of Phalaris himself in terms which clearly prove that his reputation as a barbarous tyrant was then already fully established, and all subsequent writer, until a very late period, allude to him in terms of similar import. Cicero in particular calls him "crudelissimurs omnium tyrannorum" ( in Verr.4.33), and uses his name as proverbial for a tyrant in the worst sense of the word, as opposed to a mild and enlightened despot like Peisistratus. (Cic. Att. 7.20; see also De Off. ii. 7, 3.6, De Rep. 1.28, and other passages; Plb. 7.7; Lucian. Ver. Hist. 23, Bis. Accus. 8; Plut. de ser. num. rind. p. 553.)
[E.H.B]