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Dixerat; at Phalaris, pænæ mirande repertor,
Ipse tuum præsens imbue, dixit, opus.
Nec mora, monstratis crudeliter ignibus ustus,
Exhibuit querulos ore tremente sonos.

Ov. Trist, iii. 11.

This bull is said by Cicero to have been found at Carthage among the spoils of Sicily by Scipio, and to have been restored to the Agrigentines with this admonition, "æquum esse illos cogitare, utrum esset Siculis utilius, suisne servire, an populo Romano obtemperare, cum idem monumentum et domesticæ crudelitatis, et nostræ mansuetudinis haberent."*

The whole account of this bull was, however, regarded by Timæus, an early historian, and a native of Sicily, as fictitious.

The people of Agrigentum, at length provoked by the relentless cruelty of their tyrant, rose in a body, and took vengeance by putting him to death. Ovid says that he was burnt in his own bull-no un fit display of retributive justice.

Utque ferox Phalaris, lingua prius ense resecta,
More bovis, Paphio clausus in aere gemas.

Ibis, 439.

Lucian has written two declamations under the title of Phalaris. The first is in the character of the tyrant himself, who is represented as sending his brazen bull to Delphi, to be dedicated in the temple of Apollo. But fearing lest the gift should be rejected on account of the cruel and impious purposes for which it had been employed, he directs his ambassadors to undertake the defence of his conduct, allowing, indeed, that he had seized the sovereign power, and had in some instances punished the guilty with severity, but urging in his behalf necessity, the tyrant's plea. The second declamation is put into the mouth of a Delphian priest, who prudently counsels his brethren to accept the gift, alledging that it would not tend to their own profit, or the honour of their god, if the offerings of his votaries should be rashly rejected. He concludes with dissuading any innovation on the salutary system of adorning and enriching their temple with the donations of zealous worshippers.

A collection of epistles has been current under the name of Phalaris, which was formerly by many learned men received as genuine. They have been mentioned by few of the Greek authors, and of those few none approach the age of the tyrant to whom the work is ascribed. The authors enumerated by Bentley and his antagonists, as citing or referring to them, are Stobæus, Suidas, Tzetzes, Photius, and Nonnus, an ignorant commentator on Gregory Nazianzen, who makes Phalaris contemporary with Dionysius, the tyrant to whom, according to this writer, he presented his brazen bull, but Dionysius, detesting the cruelty of the invention, made the first experiment of its efficacy upon Phalaris himself. Of these authors, Photius mentions the epistles in

In Verr. iv. 35.

a manner

a manner which implies some suspicion of their genuineness. On the revival of learning the opinions of critics were divided respecting them. By Politian they were ascribed to Lucian. Lilius Gyraldus speaks of their authority as doubtful. By others they were received with credit, and, among the English scholars, by Selden. A circumstance which probably attracted particular notice to them in this country, was the praise which they had the fortune of receiving from the pen of Sir William Temple, who mentions them in terms of the highest praise, inferring their antiquity from their excellence, and their genuineness from the strokes of nature with which he conceives them to abound. "I think the epistles of Phalaris," says that writer, "to have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern. I know several learned men (or that usually pass for such under the name of critics) have not esteemed them genuine, and Politian, and some others, have attributed them to Lucian; but I think he must have little skill in painting that cannot find out this to be an original.. Such diversity of passions upon such variety of actions and passages of life and government, such freedom of thought, such boldness of expression, such bounty to his friends, such scorn of his enemies, such honour of learned men, such esteem of good, such knowledge of life, such contempt of death, with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge, could never be represented, but by him that possessed them. And I esteem Lucian to be no more capable of writing than of acting what Phalaris did. In all one writ, you find the scholar or sophist-and all the other, the tyrant and the commander."

In 1695 an edition of Phalaris was published at Oxford by Mr. Boyle, which gave rise to one of the most memorable literary controversies which have occurred. The preface of this edition contained the following reflection on Dr. Bentley: "Collatas etiam curavi usque ad ep. XL. cum MSS. in bibliotheca regia, cujus mihi copiam ulteriorem Bibliothecarius pro singulari sua humanitate negavit." The injustice, and, it may almost be said, the meanness of this insinuation, is abundantly refuted by Bentley; into the particulars of his defence it is needless here to enter. The secret cause of the resentment of the Oxford editor and his friends, is supposed by Bentley himself to be an opinion which, during the preparation of their work, he had advanced in conversation, respecting the spuriousness of the epistles. "I had the hard hap in some private conversation to say, the epistles were a spurious piece, and unworthy of a new edition. Hinc illæ lacrymæ."

In 1695 Dr. Bentley published a dissertation on Phalaris and Esop, annexed to Wotton's discourse on ancient and modern learning, in which he briefly stated the reasons for which he deemed the epistles a spurious work, and refuted the charge advanced against him by Mr. Boyle respecting the refusal of the MS. from the royal library. This was shortly followed by a reply from Boyle, assisted by some of his associates at Oxford, entitled, "Dr. Bentley's Dissertations examined." This drew forth from Bentley a second edition of his work, fortified by many additional proofs, in which he has so fully decided the question, that whoever shall attempt to revive it, must be prepared to put hiş own reputation to the most imminent hazard.

A very brief summary of the principal arguments employed by Bentley, without regard to the order of their arrangement, may not be uninteresting to those who have paid no attention to the contro

versy.

The dialect of the letters is Attic. Doric, on the contrary, was the language of Sicily, and must have been employed by Phalaris, if he were a native of that island. But he is said to have emigrated from Astypalæa, either a city of Crete, or an island among the Sporades, and therefore might use a dialect different from that of the Sicilians. It happens, however, unfortunately for this objection, that Crete and Astypalæa were both colonized by Dorians, and a native of either must have used the Doric dialect.

Were it possible that Phalaris should have employed the Attic dialect, yet still the Attic of the letters is of a much more recent date than the tyrant's age, The Greek was like other languages, subject to great variation during the long period of time through which it continued to be employed. Not to mention the prevalence of different dialects in different ages, and the gradual formation of the common dialect employed by the later writers, different periods are distinguished by peculiar characters of composition, and the style of Plutarch inay be as easily discriminated from that of Plato, as the style of Johnson from that of Temple or Addison. On this subject Bentley must be allowed to be a competent judge, and he asserts the general complexion of style in the letters, of Phalaris to be that of the recent attic, independently of various particular instances which he produces.

Sir William Temple affirms the letters to be impressed with the most unequivocal internal characters of genuine composition. On the contrary Bentley detects in them various instances of inconsistency, improbability and absurdity, and thinks that if compared with the letters of Cicero and other statesmen, the reader must feel that he is conversing "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."

The letters contain various historical and geographical errors, inconsistent with the supposition of their genuineness. Phalaris is made to speak of the Hyblenses and Phintienses as having promised to lend him money on interest. But Diodorus, himself a Sicilian, informs us that Phintias, tyrant of Agrigentum, built Phintia, and called it after his own name, at the time when the Romans were at war with Pyrrhus, nearly three centuries after the death of Phalaris. A similar error occurs in the mention of Alesa, which was built by Archonides a hundred and forty years after the death of Phalaris. The city of Messana is called in the letters both by that name and by

its

its ancient appellation of Zancle. The name of Messana was not in use till sixty years after the death of Phalaris. In the age of the tyrant Taurominium, mentioned in the epistles, bore the name of Naxos, which is constantly employed by Herodotus and Thucydides. A new town named Taurominium was founded on a hill called Taurus, near the ruins of Naxus, and afterwards enlarged by the accession of the dispersed Naxians, a hundred and fifty years after Phalaris.

The forger of the epistles errs likewise in the incidental mention of subjects relative to arts and customs. He speaks of Thericlean cups, which were named from an artist contemporary with Aristophanes, and more than a century later than Phalaris. The profusion of learning which Bentley pours forth on the subject of Thericlean cups, has been made a subject of ridicule by some of his detractors, who could not deny the force of his arguments, but wished to insinuate that his critical powers, the admission of which they could not avoid, were exercised at the expence of his taste and judgment. The sophist. likewise commits various errors in his estimate of Sicilian money, which are detected by Bentley with great skill and learning.

Iambic verses, apparently taken from dramatic poets, occur in the Pseudo-Phalaris. But neither tragedy nor comedy in the form of written poems existed in the age of the genuine Phalaris, as is amply shewn by Bentley in two dissertations, replete with erudition.*

Some particular expressions which occur in the letters seem to be taken from authors more recent than the age of Phalaris. Πιτυος δικην εκτριβειν, a phrase employed in a threat of Phalaris against the Himeræans, "that he would extirpate them like a pine-tree," occurs in Herodotus, who says that the proverb originated in a message of Græsus to the people of Lampsacus. If this were the origin of the saying, it is posterior to Phalaris, and was most probably borrowed by the sophist either immediately or indirectly from Herodotus. The phrase gradually became proverbial. In the thirty-fifth letter, λογος έργο σκια, words the shadow of things, ascribed to Democritus, is given to Phalaris, who lived a century before him. Other phrases may with some plausibility be suspected to be taken from Pindar and Callimachus.

So decisive is the internal evidence against the genuineness of these epistles. They are likewise destitute of any external evidence which can give them support. During a thousand years they remain in perfect obscurity, and various decisive proofs occur that during that period they were unknown. No writer who speaks of the history of Phalaris appeals to their authority, though they might have been employed for the decision of some contested circumstances of his history.

The forgery of these letters is no remarkable circumstance in the literary

• To the instance produced by Bentley, two others are added by Mr. Porson (Med. 139.) who likewise shews that the passage which Bentley quotes, does not merely borrow the expressions of the poet, as that critic thought, but contains his very words, in their metrical arrangement.

literary history of Greece. The practice was common, sometimes for fraudulent purposes, and sometimes as a trial of rhetorical skill.

The epistles have been by some ascribed to Lucian, by others to Libanius, but with no certainty or even probability. Bentley is willing to adınit that they are nearly as ancient as the Christian

æra.

In this controversy the wits of the age ranged themselves on the side of Boyle, and gave him in the public opinion a temporary advantage, which was soon lost, when the affair received an impartial investigation. It is now universally admitted that the work of Bentley is one of the most masterly specimens of critical examination ever employed in the detection of literary imposition. The pretended epistles of Phalaris, it may indeed be said, are a work too insignificant to deserve such a display of erudition, and exercise of argument. It was, however, called forth from Bentley by the unprovoked attacks of his antagonists; and if the principal question has almost ceased to be a sub- ject of interest, it was only by the labour of that great critic that it was brought to a decision so complete; and his work still retains its chief merit, that of an ample repository of curious facts relative to some of the most interesting topics in Greek literature. Its appearance may indeed be considered as forming an æra in the modern art of criticism.

The Latin version of the pretended epistles of Phalaris by Aretinus was published repeatedly in the fifteenth century, before the appearance of the Greek text. They were first published in Greek, 1493, without mention of place. They are found in the scarce collection of Greek letters by Aldus, 4to. 1499, the editor of which was Marcus Musurus. Subsequent editions require no mention till that of Mr. Boyle, which appeared at Oxford, 1695, 8vo. and was reprinted in 1718. Finally, an edition of Phalaris was undertaken by Lennep, and, after his death, completed and published by Valckenaër, who likewise added a preface, Groningae, 1777, 4to. To this edition is annexed, a Latin translation of the dissertations of Bentley, on the epistles of Phalaris, Themistocles, Socrates, and Euripides, and en the fables of Æsop.

D.

1

ACCOUNTS OF, AND EXTRACTS FROM, RARE AND
CURIOUS BOOKS.

DISCOURSES OF SADI, CONTINUED.

The preceding extract will remind the reader of La Fontaine's first fable; and though the Frenchman, whose genius bears no resemblance to that of the moralist of Shiraz, inculcates in his playful style rather worldly

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