A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Φέρων, Φερῶς), or PHEROS, king of Egypt, and son of Sesostris. He was visited with blindness, an hereditary complaint, though, according to the legend preserved in Herodotus, it was a punishment for his presumptuous impiety in throwing a spear into the waters of the Nile when it had overflowed the fields. By attending to the directions of an oracle he was cured, and the circumstances connected with the restoration of his sight strongly illustrate the general corruption of morals among the Egyptian women of the time. He dedicated an obelisk at Heliopolis, in gratitude for his recovery; and Pliny tells us that this, together with another also made by him but broken in its removal, was to be seen at Rome in the Circus of Caligula and Nero at the foot of the Vatican hill. Pliny calls the Pheron of Herodotus Nuncoreus, or Nencoreus, a name corrupted, perhaps, from Menophtheus. Diodorus gives him his father's name, Sesoosis. Pheron is of course the same word as Pharaoh. (Hdt. 2.111; Diod. 1.59; Plin. H. N. 1. 36.11; comp. Tac. Ann. 14.14; Bunsen, Aegyptess Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, vol. iii. Urkundenbuch, p. 86.)

[E.E]