A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

256 PHEIDON. PHEMONOE.
and silver coinage, and of a new scale of weights (Dor. i. 7. ~ 15) that the latter was sometinime
and measures, which, through his influence, became called a Corinthian, because Corinth lay in his doprevalent in the Peloponnesus, and ultimately minions. The words, however, of the scholiast.
throughout the greater portion of Greece. The bJIeiwe T-st dvr)p Kopivs'os, will not admit of this
scale in question was known by the name of the charitable interpretation. We have no ground at
Aeginetan, and it is usually supposed, according to all for identifying the king of Argos with the Cothe statement of Ephorus, that the coinage of rinthian legislator of Aristotle.
Pheidon was struck in Aegina; but there seems 3. One of the thirty tyrants established at
good reason for believing, with Mr. Grote, that Athens in B. c. 40-1 (Xen. IYell. ii. 3. ~ 2). 1le
what Pheidon did was done in Argos, and nowhere was strongly opposed to Critias and his party in
else,-that "Pheidonian measures" probably did the government, and, therefore, after the battle of
not come to bear the specific name of Aeginetan Munychia he was appointed one of the new Council
until there was another scale in vogue, the Euboic, of Ten, in the hope that he would bring about a
from which to distinguish them,-and that both reconciliation with the exiles in the Peiraeens.
the epithets were probably derived, not from the But he showed no willingness at all for such a
place where the scale first originated, but from the course, and we find him shortly after going to
people whose commercial activity tended to make Sparta to ask for aid against the popular party.
them most generally known,-in the one case the (Xen. Hell. ii. 4. ~~ 23, 28; Lys. c. Erat. p. 125.)
Aeginetans, in the other case the inhabitants of 4. An Athenian, who, if we may believe a story
Chalcis and Eretria. preserved in St. Jerome (c. Jovin. i. p. 186; comp.
With respect to the date of Pheidon there is Schneid. ad Xen. IHell. ii. 3. ~ 2), was slain at a
some considerable discrepancy of statement. Pau- banquet by the thirty tyrants, who then obliged
sanias mentions the 8th Olympiad, or l/. c. 748, as his daughters to dance naked before them on the
the period at which he presided at the Olympic floor that was stained with their father's blood.
games; but the Parian marble, representing him To avoid further and worse dishonour, the maidens
as the eleventh from Hercules, places him in B. C. drowned themselves.
895. Hence Larcher and others would understand 5. A character in the'I7rnrorp0ocos of the comic
Pausanias to be reckoning the Olympiads, not poet Mnesimachus. From the context of the fragfrom Coroebus, but from Iphitus: but Pausanias and ment in which his name occurs, he seems to have
Ephorus tell us that the Olympiad which Pheidon been one of the Phylarchs, who superintended the
celebrated was omitted in the Eleian register, and cavalry of Athens (MIesism. op. Ai&h. ix. p. 4 02, f.;
we know that there was no register of the Olym- Meineke, Fragme. Com. Grac. vol. iii. pp. 568,
piads at all before the Olympiad of Coroebus in 571). The name occurs also in the Ilornots of
B. c. 776. On the other hand, Herodotus, accord- Antiphanes, but does not refer to any real person.
ing to the common reading of the passage (vi. 127), (Antiph. ap. Ath. vi. p. 223, a.; Meineke, Frosw/m.
calls Pheidon the father of Leocedes, one of the Com. Graec. vol. iii. p. 106.) [E. E.]
suitors of Agarista, the daughter of Cleisthenes of PHEME. [OssA.]
Sicyon; and, as this would bring down the Argive PHE'MIUS (o,,Utos). 1. The famous minstrel,
tyrant to a period at least a hundred years later was a son of Terpius, and entertained with his
than the one assigned him by Pausanias, some song the suitors in the house of Odysseus in Ithaca.
critics have suspected a mutilation of the text of (Hom. Od. i. 154, xxii. 330, &c. xvii. 263.)
Herodotus, while others would alter that of Pau- 2. One of the suitors of Helen. (Hygin. Fulb.
sanias from the 8th to the 28th Olympiad, and 81.)
others again suppose two kings of Argos of the name 3. The father of Aegeus, and accordingly the
of Pheidon, and imagine Herodotus to have con- grand-father of Theseus, who is hence called 4o,1founded the later with the earlier. Of these views, /ilosv rars. (Lycoph. 1324, with the note of Tzetz.)
that which ascribes incorrectness to the received 4. A son of Ampyx, and the mythical founder
reading of the passage in Herodotus is by far the of the town of Phemliae in Arnaea. (Steph. Byz.
most tenable. At any rate, the date of Pheidon is s. v. iLasie; comp. TEMON.) [L. S.]
fixed on very valid grounds, which may be found PHEMO'NOE (bDeovdi,), a mythical Greek
in Clinton, to about the middle of the eighth cen- poetess of the ante-Homeric period, was said to
tury B. C. have been the daughter of Apollo, and his first
(Ephor. ap. Strab. viii. p. 358; Theopomp. priestess at Delphi, and the inventor of the hexap. Diod. tFragem. B. vii.; Arist. Pol. v. 10, ameter verse (Paus. x. 5. ~ 7, 6. ~ 7; Strab. ix. p.
ed. Bekk.; Paus. vi. 22; Plut. Am. Narr. 2; 419; Plin. H. N. vii. 57; Clem. Alex. Stro'm. i.
Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. iv. 1212; Schol. ad Pind. pp. 323, 334; Schol. ad Eursi). Orest. 1094; Eust.
Olyomp. xiii. 27; Poll. Onose. x. 179; Plin. II.N. Prol. ad Iliad.; and other authors cited by Favii. 56; Diog. Lagirt. viii. 14; Ael. V. H. xii. 10; bricius). Some writers seem to have placed her
Perizon. ad loc.; Clint. F. H. vol. i. app. i.; at Delos instead of Delphi (Atil. Fort. p. 2690,
Larcher, ad Herod. vi. 127; Miiller, Dor. i. 7. ~ Putsch); and Servius identifies her with the Cu15; Herm. Po!. Ant. ~ 33; Btickh, Publ. Econ. maean Sybil (ad Vihp. Aen. iii. 445). The traof Athens, b. i. ch. 4, b. iv. ch. 19; Thirlwall's dition which ascribed to her the invention of the
Greece, vol. i. p. 358; Grote's Greece, part ii. ch. 4.) hexameter, was by no means uniform; Pausanias,
2. An ancient Corinthian legislator, of uncertain for example, as quoted above, calls her the first who
date, who is said by Aristotle to have had in view used it, but in another passage (x. 12. ~ 10) he
an arrangement which provided for a fixed and un- quotes an hexameter distich, which was ascribed to
changeable number of citizens, without attempting the Peleiads, who lived before PhemonoP: the
to equalize property (Arist. Pol. ii. 3, ed. Gdttling; traditions respecting the invention of the hexameter
Gottl. ad loc.). The scholiast on Pindar (01. xiii. are collected by Fabricius (Bibl. Graec. vol. i. p.
20) appears to confound this Pheidon with the 207). There were poems which went under the
Argive tyrant, though Miller explains it by saying name of PhemonoU, like the old religious poems