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phalaris:phalaris-the-source-material [2013/11/18 21:55] – [Aristotle: Rhetoric Book 2] frank | phalaris:phalaris-the-source-material [2013/11/21 18:32] – [Pindar: Pythian Odes] frank | ||
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====== Phalaris - The Source Material ====== | ====== Phalaris - The Source Material ====== | ||
- | Phalaris (Greek: Φάλαρις) was the tyrant of Acragas (now Agrigento) in Sicily, from approximately 570 to 554 BC. Phalaris developed a reputation for being a proactive leader and building up a prosperous city, yet being alleged to have been cannibalistic and brutal. His best known story is of him and the brazen bull, which was used to execute individuals by burning them to death inside the bull. Read more about Phalaris below. The listings are ordered by how many times Phalaris is mentioned in the text. | + | Phalaris (Greek: Φάλαρις) was the tyrant of Acragas (now Agrigento) in Sicily, from approximately 570 to 554 BC. Phalaris developed a reputation for being a proactive leader and building up a prosperous city, yet was alleged to have been cannibalistic and brutal. His best known story is of him and the brazen bull, which was used to execute individuals by burning them to death inside the bull. Read more about Phalaris below. The listings are ordered by how many times Phalaris is mentioned in the text. |
===== Diodorus Siculus: Fragments of Book 9 ===== | ===== Diodorus Siculus: Fragments of Book 9 ===== | ||
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I say, then, we have to deal not with Phalaris, not with a single tyrant, not with this bull, not with so much weight of bronze,— but with every king and prince who frequents our temple at this day; with gold and silver and all the precious offerings that should pour in upon the God; that God whose interests claim our first attention. Say, why should we change the old-established usage in regard to offerings? What fault have we to find with the ancient custom, that we should propose innovations? | I say, then, we have to deal not with Phalaris, not with a single tyrant, not with this bull, not with so much weight of bronze,— but with every king and prince who frequents our temple at this day; with gold and silver and all the precious offerings that should pour in upon the God; that God whose interests claim our first attention. Say, why should we change the old-established usage in regard to offerings? What fault have we to find with the ancient custom, that we should propose innovations? | ||
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+ | ===== Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics Book 7 ===== | ||
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+ | Besides those things however which are naturally pleasant, of which some are pleasant generally and others pleasant to particular races of animals and of men, there are other things, not naturally pleasant, which become pleasant either as a result of arrested development or from habit, or in some cases owing to natural depravity. Now corresponding to each of these kinds of unnatural pleasures we may observe a related disposition of character. [2] I mean bestial characters, like the creature in woman' | ||
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+ | Now these various morbid dispositions in themselves do not fall within the limits of Vice, nor yet does Bestiality; and to conquer or yield to them does not constitute Unrestraint in the strict sense, but only the state so called by analogy; just as a man who cannot control his anger must be described as ‘unrestrained in’ that passion, not ‘unrestrained.’ | ||
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+ | (Indeed folly, cowardice, profligacy, and ill-temper, whenever they run to excess, are either bestial or morbid conditions. [6] One so constituted by nature as to be frightened by everything, even the sound of a mouse, shows the cowardice of a lower animal; the man who was afraid of a weasel was a case of disease. So with folly: people irrational by nature and living solely by sensation, like certain remote tribes of barbarians, belong to the bestial class; those who lose their reason owing to some disease, such as epilepsy, or through insanity, to the morbid.) [7] | ||
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+ | With these unnatural propensities it is possible in some cases merely to have the disposition and not to yield to it: I mean, for instance, Phalaris might have had the desire to eat a child, or to practise unnatural vice, and refrained; or it is possible not merely to possess but to yield to the propensity. [8] As therefore with Vice, that natural to man is called simply vice, whereas the other kind is termed not simply vice, but vice with the qualifying epithet bestial or morbid, similarly with Unrestraint, | ||
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+ | ===== Polybius: Histories Book 12 ===== | ||
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+ | **General Remarks on Timaeus as an Historian** | ||
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+ | The story of the brazen bull is this. It was made by Phalaris at Agrigentum; and he used to force men to get into it, and then by way of punishment light a fire underneath. The metal becoming thus red hot, the man inside was roasted and scorched to death; and when he screamed in his agony, the sound from the machine was very like the bellowing of a bull. When the Carthaginians conquered Sicily this bull was removed from Agrigentum to Carthage. The trap door between the shoulders, through which the victims used to be let down, still remains; and no other reason for the construction of such a bull in Carthage can be discovered at all: yet Timaeus has undertaken to upset the common story, and to refute the declarations of poets and historians, by alleging that the bull at Carthage did not come from Agrigentum, and that no such figure ever existed there; and he has composed a lengthy treatise to prove this. . . . ((Histories. Polybius. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. translator. London, New York. Macmillan. 1889. Reprint Bloomington 1962. )) | ||
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+ | ===== Plutarch: Parallels, or a Comparison Between the Greek and Roman Histories ===== | ||
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+ | 39. Phalaris of Agrigentum, a cruel tyrant, was wont to put strangers and travellers to the most exquisite torment. Perillus, a brass-founder, | ||
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+ | ===== Lucian: The True History ===== | ||
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+ | Just after the Games were over, news came that the Damned had broken their fetters, overpowered their guard, and were on the point of invading the island, the ringleaders being Phalaris of Agrigentum, Busiris the Egyptian, Diomedes the Thracian, Sciron, and Pityocamptes. Rhadamanthus at once drew up the Heroes on the beach, giving the command to Theseus, Achilles, and Ajax Telamonius, now in his right senses. The battle was fought, and won by the Heroes, thanks especially to Achilles. Socrates, who was in the right wing, distinguished himself still more than in his lifetime at Delium, standing firm and showing no sign of trepidation as the enemy came on; he was afterwards given as a reward of valour a large and beautiful park in the outskirts, to which he invited his friends for conversation, | ||
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+ | ===== Plotinus: The First Ennead ===== | ||
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+ | 13. The characteristic activities are not hindered by outer events but merely adapt themselves, remaining always fine, and perhaps all the finer for dealing with the actual. When he has to handle particular cases and things, he may not be able to put his vision into act without searching and thinking, but the one greatest principle is ever present to him, like a part of his being- most of all present, should he be even a victim in the much-talked-of Bull of Phalaris. No doubt, despite all that has been said, it is idle to pretend that this is an agreeable lodging; but what cries in the Bull is the thing that feels the torture; in the Sage there is something else as well, The Self-Gathered which, as long as it holds itself by main force within itself, can never be robbed of the vision of the All-Good.((The Six Enneads by Plotinus translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page. London, 1917. )) | ||
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+ | ===== Diodorus Siculus: Library of History Volume 13 ===== | ||
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+ | Himilcar, leading his army at dawn within the walls, put to death practically all who had been left behind; yes, even those who had fled for safety to the temples the Carthaginians hauled out and slew. And we are told that Tellias, who was the foremost citizen in wealth and honourable character, shared in the misfortune of his country: He had decided to take refuge with certain others in the temple of Athena, thinking that the Carthaginians would refrain from acts of lawlessness against the gods, but when he saw their impiety, he set fire to the temple and burned himself together with the dedications in it. For by one deed, he thought, he would withhold from the gods impiety, from the enemy a vast store of plunder, and from himself, most important of all, certain physical indignity. But Himilcar, after pillaging and industriously ransacking the temples and dwellings, collected as great a store of booty as a city could be expected to yield which had been inhabited by two hundred thousand people, had gone unravaged since the date of its founding, had been well-nigh the wealthiest of the Greek cities of that day, and whose citizens, furthermore, | ||
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+ | ===== Polybius: Histories Book 7 ===== | ||
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+ | **Fall of Heronymus** | ||
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+ | Some of the historians who have described the fall of Hieronymus have written at great length and in terms of mysterious solemnity. They tell us of prodigies preceding his coming to the throne, and of the misfortunes of Syracuse . They describe in dramatic language the cruelty of his character and the impiety of his actions; and crown all with the sudden and terrible nature of the circumstances attending his fall. One would think from their description that neither Phalaris, nor Apollodorus, | ||
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+ | ===== Plutarch: That a Philosopher Ought Chiefly to Converse with Great Men ===== | ||
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+ | If then it is so pleasant to do good to a few, how are their hearts dilated with joy who are benefactors to whole cities, provinces, and kingdoms? And such benefactors are they who instil good principles into those upon whom so many millions do depend. On the other hand, those who debauch the minds of great men — as sycophants, false informers, and flatterers, worse than both, manifestly do — are the centre of all the curses of a nation, as men who do not only infuse deadly poison into the cistern of a private house, but into the public springs of which so many thousands are to drink. The people therefore laughed at the hangers-on of Callias, whom, as Eupolis says, neither fire nor brass nor steel could keep from supping with him; but as for the favorites of those execrable tyrants Apollodorus, | ||
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+ | ===== Plutarch: Political Precepts ===== | ||
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+ | Now the first greatest benefit which is in the reputation of statesmen is the confidence that is had in them, giving them an entrance into affairs; and the second is, that the good-will of the multitude is an armor to the good against those that are envious and wicked; for, | ||
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+ | As when the careful mother drives the flies\\ | ||
+ | From her dear babe, which sweetly sleeping lies, | ||
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+ | it chases away envy, and renders the plebeian equal in authority to the nobleman, the poor man to the rich, and the private man to the magistrates; | ||
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+ | ===== Pindar: Pythian Odes ===== | ||
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+ | **I. For Hieron of Aitna, Winner in the Chariot-Race** | ||
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+ | [...] | ||
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+ | Friend, be not deceived by time-serving words of guile. The voice of the report that liveth after a man, this alone revealeth the lives of dead men to the singers and to the chroniclers: | ||
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+ | ===== Plutarch: Of Common Conceptions, | ||
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+ | 13. But who can complain of this, that shall remember what he has written in his Second Book of Nature, declaring that vice was not unprofitably made for the universe? But it is meet I should set down his doctrine in his own words, that you may understand in what place those rank vice, and what discourses they hold of it, who accuse Xenocrates and Speusippus for not reckoning health indifferent and riches useless. “Vice,” saith he, “has its limit in reference to other accidents. For it is also in some sort according to the reason of Nature, and (as I may so say) is not wholly useless in respect of the universe; for otherwise there would not be any good.” Is there then no good among the Gods, because there is no evil? And when Jupiter, having resolved all matter into himself, shall be alone, other differences being taken away, will there then be no good, because there will be no evil? But is there melody in a choir though none in it sings faultily, and health in the body though no member is sick; and yet cannot virtue have its existence without vice? But as the poison of a serpent or the gall of an hyena is to be mixed with some medicines, was it also of necessity that there must have been some conjunction of the wickedness of Meletus with the justice of Socrates, and the dissolute demeanor of Cleon with the probity of Pericles? And could not Jupiter have found a means to bring into the world Hercules and Lycurgus, if he had not also made for us Sardanapalus and Phalaris? It is now time for them to say that the consumption was made for the sound constitution of men’s bodies, and the gout for the swiftness of their feet; and that Achilles would not have had a good head of hair if Thersites had not been bald. For what difference is there between such triflers and ravers, and those who say that intemperance was not brought forth unprofitably for continence, nor injustice for justice, so that we must pray to the Gods, there may be always wickedness, | ||
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+ | Lies, fawning speeches, and deceitful manners, | ||
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+ | if, when these are taken away, virtue will also vanish and be lost? | ||
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+ | ===== Plutarch: How to Know a Flatterer from a Friend ===== | ||
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+ | 12. They tell us that gad-flies creep into the ears of bulls, and ticks into those of dogs. But I am sure the parasite lays so close siege and sticks so fast to the ears of the ambitious with the repeated praises of their worth, that it is no easy matter to shake him off again. And therefore it highly concerns them to have their apprehensions awake and upon the guard, critically to remark whether the high characters such men lavish out are intended for the person or the thing they would be thought to commend. And we may indeed suppose them more peculiarly designed for the things themselves, if they bestow them on persons absent rather than present; if they covet and aspire after the same qualities themselves which they magnify in others; if they admire the same perfections in the rest of mankind as well as in us, and are never found to falter and belie, either in word or action, the sentiments they have owned. And, what is the surest criterion in this case, we are to examine whether or no we are not really troubled at or ashamed of the commission of those very things for which they applaud us, and could not wish that we had said or acted the quite contrary; for our own consciences, | ||
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phalaris/phalaris-the-source-material.txt · Last modified: 2014/01/14 23:19 by 127.0.0.1