(s. v.
Chron. an. 1365,
1393, 1446 ; Syncell. p. 213d. ed. Paris; 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 ( Vat. p. 25, 26 ; Tzetz. Chil. 5.956;
Cic. de Off. 2.7; Schol. ad Pind. Ol. 3.68.) The
statement of Iambilichus, who represents him as dethroned by Pythagoras (De
Vit. Pyth. 32.122. ed. Kiessl.), is wholly unworthy of credit.
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. ;
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. (De Off. ii. 7, 3.6, De Rep. 1.28, and other passages;
Ver. Hist. 23, Bis. Accus.
8; Plut. de ser. num. rind. p. 553.)
But in the later ages of Greek literature, there appears to have existed or arisen a totally different tradition concerning Phalaris, which represented him as a man of a naturally mild and humane disposition, and only forced into acts of severity or occasional cruelty, by the pressure of circumstances and the machinations of his enemies. Still more strange is it that he appears at the same time as an admirer of literature and philosophy, and the patron of men of letters.
Such is the aspect under which the character of the tyrant of Agrigentum is presented to us in two declamations commonly ascribed to Lucian (though regarded by many writers as not the work of that author), and still more strikingly in the well-known epistles which bear the name of Phalaris himself. Purely fictitious as the latter undoubtedly are, it is difficult to conceive that the sophist who composed them would have given them a colour and character so entirely opposite to all that tradition had recorded of the tyrant, if there had not existed some traces of a wholly different version of his history.
The once celebrated epistles alluded to are now remembered chiefly on account of the
literary controversy to which they gave rise, and the masterly dissertation in which Bentley
exposed their spuriousness. The proofs of this, derived from the glaring anachronisms in
which they abound -- such as the mention of the cities of Tauromenium, Alaesa, and Phintias,
which were not built till long after the death of Phalaris -- the allusions to tragedies and
comedies as things well known and of ordinary occurrence -- the introduction of sentiments
and expressions manifestly derived from later writers, such as Herodotus, Democritus, and
even Callimachus -- and above all, the dialect of the epistles themselves, which is the
later Attic, such as was the current language of the learned in the latter ages of the Roman
empire -- would appear so glaring, that it is difficult to conceive how a body of men of any
pretensions to learning could be found to maintain their authenticity. Still more
extraordinary is it, that a writer of so much taste and cultivation as Sir William Temple
should have spoken in the highest terms of their intrinsic merit, and have pronounced them
unquestionably genuine on this evidence alone. (Essay on Ancient and Modern
Leaarning, Works, vol. iii. p. 478.) Probably no reader at the present day will be
found to look into them without concurring in the sentence of Bentley, that they are "a
fardlle of common-places." The epistle in which the tyrant professes to give the Athenians
an account of his treatment of Perillus, and the reasons for it (Ep. v.
of Lennep and Schaefer, it is Ep. ccxxii. of the older editions), would seem sufficient in
itself to betray the sophist. The period at which this forgery was composed cannot now be
determined. Politian ascribed the Spurious epistles in question to Lucian, but there is
certainly no ground for this supposition, and they are probably the work of a much later
period. The first author who refers to them is Stobaeus, by whom they are repeatedly quoted,
without any apparent suspicion (Floriley. tit. 7.68, 49. §§
16, 26., 86.17); but Photirus alludes to them Ep. 207) in terms that
clearly intimate that he regarded them as spurious. At a later period they are mentioned
with the greatest admiration by Suidas (s. v. Chil. 1.669, §c., 5.1839-969.) After the
revival of learn. ing also, they appear to have enjoyed considerable reputation, though
rejected as spurious by Politian, Menage, and other eminent scholars.
They were first given to the world in a Latin translation by
Life
of Bentley, chaps. 4-6, and Dyce's preface to his edition of Bentley's works (8vo.
Lond. 1836).
The epistles have also been repeatedly translated into Italian and French, and three
separate versions of them have appeared