A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

2. One of the council of ten, appointed by the Spartans in B. C. 418, to control Agis. At the battle of Mantineia in that year, he restrained the Lacedaemonians from pressing too much on the defeated enemy, and so running the risk of driving them to despair (Thuc. 5.63, &c.; Diod. 12.79 ; Wess. ad loc.). Diodorns speaks of him as having been high in dignity among his countrymen, and Pausanias (6.3) tells us that he was one of those to whom the Ephesians erected a statue in the temple of Artemis, after the close of the Peloponnesian war. He seems to have been the same person who was admiral in B. C. 397, and co-operated with Dercyllidas in his invasion of Caria, where the private property of Tissaphernes lay [DERCYLLIDAS]. In B. C. 396 he laid siege, with 120 ships, to Caunus, where Conon was then stationed; but he was compelled to withdraw by the approach of a large force under Pharnabazus and Artaphernes, according to Diodorus, in whom however the latter name appears to be a mistake for Tissaphernes (Xen. Hell. 3.2. §§ 12. &c. ; Diod. 14.79; Paus. 6.7; Thirlwall's Greece, vol. iv. p. 411). We learn from Theopompus apud Alten. xii. p. 536b. c.) that Pharax was much addicted to luxury, and was more like a Greek of Sicily in this respect than a Spartan.