² Since Bentley, few things have been usefully written about the Letters; but note Lenschau, Th. in RE xix, 1652Google Scholar; Freeman, E. A., History of Sicily ii, 469Google Scholar ff.; H. Berve, Die Tyrannis 751 ff.; some recent articles will be mentioned in their place. See also n. 73 below.

³ L. O. Th. Tudeer, ‘The Epistles of Phalaris: preliminary investigations of the manuscripts’ (Helsinki 1931). Meanwhile, the standard edition is that in Hercher, R., Epistolographi Graeci (Paris 1872) 409–59Google Scholar, with his adnotatio critica, ibid. pp. lii–lix.

⁴ See Tudeer 111, who adduces reasons for thinking 57 did not belong to the collection. For the background, see now Gottschalk, Heraclides Ponticus, 124 ff.

⁵ Tudeer 121.

⁶ Hercher lii. For convenience I list the letters in Hercher's numbering as van Lennep would re-arrange them: 18, 67, 20, 119, 122, 94, 109, 121, 92, 108, 88, 93, 147, 73, 72, 22, 146, 63, 78, 144, 79, 65, 12, 51, 76, 24, 90, 115, 86, 96, 58, 112, 53, 5, 4, 40, 32, 85, 30, 104, 52, 2, 7, 8, 130, 60, 114, 101, 75, 136, 82, 105, 125, 126, 10, 133, 134, 113, 116, 118, 44, 48, 138, 46, 83, 117, 110, 77, 95, 107, 27, 41, 42, 55, 62, 43, 106, 57, 23, 74, 38, 139, 29, 91, 28, 145, 132, 141, 47, 39, 11, 35, 97, 66, 128, 54, 103, 31, 15, 33, 59, 98, 19, 68, 69, 70, 1, 21, 71, 84, 140, 148, 137, 81, 37, 87, 3, 13, 14, 6, 9, 64, 45, 123, 89, 129, 26, 102, 49, 127, 50, 99, 16, 17, 34, 56, 142, 143, 138, 135, 131, 59, 25, 80, 120, 100, 36, 111, 124. This kind of order has of course no justification in tradition or in ancient or Byzantine tastes (which preferred letter-books nullo rerum aut temporum ordine [cf. Plin. epist. 1.1]); its use is purely practical. Some nineteenth-century reference books (e.g. Pape-Benseler, early edd. of Liddell and Scott) will be found using van Lennep's order.

⁷ Pyth. 1.95 τὸν δὲ ταύρω χαλκέῳ καυτῆρα νηλέα νόον / ὲχθρὰ Φάλαριν κατέχει παντᾷ ψάτις, / ούδέ μιν φόρμιγγες ύπωρόφιαι κοινανίαν / μαλθακάν παℓδων όάροισι δέκονται.

⁸ E.g. Ovid, Tristia iii 11.39, Ibis 437; Prop, ii 25.11; Silius Italicus xiv 212; Claudian, in Eutropium i 163, in Rufinum i 253.

⁹ On these see Bompaire, J., Lucien écrivain (Paris 1958) 167.Google Scholar Lucian also has Phalaris, with Busiris and others, misbehaving in the next world (Verae Historíae ii 23).

¹⁰ Only here is he explicitly Athenian; in 66, nothing is said of his origin, and the tradition outside the Letters is clear that Perilaos or Perillos is an Acragantine (Schol. Pind. Pyth. 1.95, Diod. ix 28, 32.25, etc.)

¹¹ On names, see below p. 104.

¹² χαλκευθηναι.

¹³ It is from the scholion that we know the lines of Callimachus, l.c.: πρῶτος ἐπεί τὸν ταῦρον ἐκαίνισεν, ὂς τὸν ὅλεθρον / εὗρε τὸν ἐν χαλκῷ καί πυρί γιγνόμενον.

¹⁴ ‘Take them in the whole bulk, if a great person would give me leave, I should say they are a fardle of commonplaces, without any life or spirit from action and circumstance … you converse with some dreaming pedant with his elbow on his desk; not with an active, ambitious tyrant, with his hand on his sword, commanding a million of subjects: Bentley, Dissertations ii, 171 Dyce.

¹⁵ Cf. 79, 80, 146, esp. 146.1: σù περὶ ὴμῶν, ὧ ∑τησίχορε, μηδέν μέτε έν ᾡδαῖς μήτε ἄλλοθί που λέγε ούδέν γάρ βούλομαι μᾶλλον ἤ σιωπᾶσθαι τά ήμέτερα.

¹⁶ Cic. de div. 1.46 = Heraclides Ponticus fr. 132 Wehrli.

¹⁷ Polyaenus v 1.1, v 1.2.

¹⁸ See 11, 15, 43, 55, 64, 135, 142.

¹⁹ For the γλαύκινα περιʒὠματα, see Plu. praec. gen. r. p. 827e.

²⁰ Polyaenus v 1.3 ( = Frontinus ii 4.6), v 1.4.

²¹ Wars with Leontini; 5, 32, 53, 112; with Tauromenium 15, 31, 35; sea battle as well as land battle 8; war with Camarina 75, 82; Phalaris wounded 28, cf. 33. The mention of Tauromenium is of course a gross anachronism (cf. Bentley i, 235 Dyce—‘[Phalaris] must either have had the prescience and divination of the Sibyls or his Epistles are as false and commentitious as our Sibylline Oracles’); but it is worth noting that the place appears in the Pythagoras legend, probably from the time of Timaeus (cf. Iamblichus, Vit. Pyth. 33; Levy, , Recherches sur la légende de Pythagore [Paris 1926] 57).Google Scholar

²² Aelian, VH ii 4; Athenaeus xiii 602b; Plu. Amatorius 760c (with the names reversed). See Wehrli on Heraclides Ponticus frr. 64-6.

²³ Stobaeus iii 7.70, a somewhat abridged version.

²⁴ Stobaeus iv 8.26, a partial quotation and a distinctly different text.

²⁵ Pind. New. 4.4; αl δέ σοφαί Mοισᾶν θύγατρες άοιδαι …

²⁶ Luciani Opera (Oxford 1987) iv p. xvi.

²⁷ Helicon (1967) 323 ff. Bentley (i, 69 Dyce) thought that the Letters might date from before the time of Titus.

²⁸ Three ‘Lycinus’ letters (1, 4, 5) come early in the traditional order, and this may be significant.

²⁹ Textgeschichte der griechischen Lyriker (Berlin 1900) 35.2. The problem is, however, extremely complicated. It should be possible to follow the techniques proposed by Hörandner, W. (‘Der Prosarhythmus in der rhetorischen Literatur der Byzantiner’, Wiener Byzantinische Studien xvi [1981])Google Scholar and Klock, C. (‘Untersuchungen zu Stil und Rhythmus bei Gregor von Nyssa’, Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie clxxiii [1986])Google Scholar in order to study this; but the shortness of the individual letters makes any observation hazardous, to say nothing of our lack of a critical text. But that there are wide divergences of practice seems clear. I take a pair of contrasting instances: (a) 41, 42 and 43, all concerned with a person called Hippolytion, observe the regular forms of ‘Meyer's Law’ in leaving two or four unaccented syllables between the last two accents; (b) 23, a letter to Pythagoras, shows no accentual regularity, but displays elevated quantitative clausulae, viz. ditrochaei and cretic +spondee: φρονρᾶς ὔποπτος, ουμβιῶναι, καί τυράννου, χρηστότης άκίυδννον, συγγενέσθαι, προσβεβαιὠση. It seems highly improbable that the same writer wrote in such different ways.

³⁰ Tudeer 110.

³¹ Stylistic observation, apart from rhythm, has a subjective element, especially in short texts. But while some letters seem relatively chaste and dignified (e.g. 72, the dialogue with the conspirators' wives), others are quite bizarre (e.g. 147, with the strange words έμπρόσωπος and περισκμθίʒω [‘scalp’]). I hope to deal with some of these points elsewhere.

³² But other contexts could also be investigated: there is a serious inconsistency in the story of Phalaris' wife Erytheia, who brings up the boy Paurolas (18, 69), and yet is killed by a lover (51).

³³ Rhet. ii 1393^b.

³⁴ i, 164 Dyce.

³⁵ έκτειχίσειν, from Demosth. viii 36.

³⁶ ὂς αύτούς εκτρίψει πίτυος δίκην, from Herod, vi 37.

³⁷ Hercher prints [καί ό Nαύπλιος στόλος], but perhaps the phrase can be kept with a change to σκοττός ‘watcher’.

³⁸ οùδ' ἄν εί θεῶν σέ τις καθ' ύμᾶς τούς ποιητᾶς άïστώσειεν.

³⁹ εις την ‘lμεραίων θηρόβοτον. Cf. 34 τά θηρόβοτα Nομάδων ένδιαιτηματα. Hercher gives ‘in bestiarum quae Himerac cst caveam’ in 147, but there seems no reason to suppose different meanings in the two passages, and the supplied noun in our passage is presumably χώρα.

⁴⁰ The letters involved are 142, 143, 135, 131, 59, 25, 80.

⁴¹ Chion, epist. 10 (I. Düring, Chion of Heraclea [Göteborg 1951] p. 94).

⁴² [Plato], epist. 13.

⁴³ οῖσθα ἢν λέγω—a natural indication to the reader that a new theme is here begun.

⁴⁴ The text has θυγατέρας Tzetzes in telling the story makes it θεραπαινℓδας. Bentley (ii, 2 Dyce) assumes that θυγατήρ (like filia) acquired a secondary sense of' girl’, and this is a ‘most manifest token of later Greek’. Whether or not he is right, the sense is plain.

⁴⁵ είκοστόν ἔτος οίκουρούση. As in classical Greece, it seems, nineteen is very old for a girl to marry, since thirteen or fourteen would be normal. (Below, Phalaris describes her έξώρου … οὔσης ηίς γάμον.)

⁴⁶ At least, the assumption of most of the Letters seems to be that they could have been written. There is of course another convention of fictitious letter-writing in which the ‘correspondent’ is unattainable, but the two kinds can hardly be mixed.

⁴⁷ If this follows from the last sentence of 131: μαρτυροῦσα δ' ημῖν πρός σέ πολλά καί μεγάλα Θεανὠ χαρᾶς ημᾶς άναπℓμπλησιν ἃ γάρ ἔτι παῖς ούσα ἔπασχε, μήτηρ γενομένη μαρτυρεῖ.

⁴⁸ Demetrius, π. έρμ., 292: έπειδὴ άηδῶς ἀκούονσιν οί δυνάσται καί δυνάστιδες τὰ αύτῶν άμαρτήματα, παραινοῦντες αύτοῖς μὴ άμαρτάνειν ούκ έξ εύθείας έροῦμεν, άλλ' ητοι έτέρους ψέφομέν τινας τὰ ὅμοια πεποιηκότας, οίον πρός Διονύσιον τόν τύραννον κατά Φαλάριδος τοῦ τυράννου έροῦμεν καί τῆς Φαλάριδος άποτομίας η έπαινεσόμεθά τινας Διονυσίω τά έναντία πεποιηκότας …

⁴⁹ Above, n. 27.

⁵⁰ Cf. Aristot. Pol. 1310^b28; Heraclides Ponticus fr. 65 Wehrli; Magna Moralia 1203² 23 (where Phalaris is with Dionysius and Clearchus of Heraclea, Chion's opponent).

^5l SHA Maximini 8: ‘tam crudelis fuit ut ilium alii Cyclopem alii Busirem alii Scirona nonnulli Falarem multi Tyfona vel Gygam vocarent’. (Note also Hyginas, fab. 257, where ‘Phalaris’ is a common noun for tyrant, and is applied to Dionysius.)

⁵² Letters 13, 26, 32, 94, 99, 102: Moeris 80 Pierson: ἄμυναν δέ ούδείς τῶν 'Aττικῶν λέγει.

⁵³ ii, 171 Dyce.

⁵⁴ P. 177 Hercher.

⁵⁵ Düring, Chion of Heraclea 33; Photius, epist. 207.

⁵⁶ Sopatros, Diairesis Zetematon, 8.2 Walz.

⁵⁷ Epist. 1206 Allen (the Greek letters of Brutus are meant; see T. O. Achelis, Rh. Mus. lxx [1921] 316).

⁵⁸ Cf. Bentley, i, 83 Dyce.

⁵⁹ For these texts, see Weichert, V., Demetrii et Libanii qui feruntur τύποι έπιστολικοί (Leipzig 1910)Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Vita Homeri Herodotea 31, Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi 281 Allen.

⁶¹ Cf. ‘nescit vox missa reverti’, and W. F. Otto, Sprichwörter, s.v. ‘verbum (3)’.

⁶² προφάσεως ού δεῖ πρὸς φίλους, Apostolius xiv 79 (from Phalaris?).

⁶³ A common philosophical revaluation: cf. Aristot. Pol. 1255² 32.

⁶⁴ Otto, op. cit., s.v. ‘fortuna (9)’.

⁶⁵ Ibid., s.v. ‘alienus (2)’.

⁶⁶ ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ or τεθναμέναι γάρ καλόν ένί προμάχοισι πεσόντα (Tyrtaeus 10.1 West); another commonplace.

⁶⁷ Tudeer 72 ff., 81 ff., 88 ff., 99 ff.

⁶⁸ Doenges, N. A., The Letters of Themistodes (New York 1981) 64Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Gösswein, H.-U., Die Briefe des Euripides (Meisentaeus heim am Glan 1975) 24Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Aristotle fr. 611.69 Rose.

⁷¹ Cf. Tudeer p. 117.

⁷² W. Temple, Essays i, 166 (ed. 1720).

⁷³ Bianchetti, Serena, Falaride e Pseudofalaride: Storia leggenda (Rome 1987)Google Scholar appeared too late for me to use. It is a valuable survey of the historical background and e gives a sober view of many of the problems of the Letters.