a remarkable tyrant, born at Crete, where his ambitious designs occasioned his banishment: he took refuge in Agrigentum, a free city of Sicily, and there obtained the supreme power by stratagem. The circumstance which has chiefly contributed to preserve his name in history is his cruelty; in one act of which he gave, however, an example of strict justice. It is thus related: Perillus, a brass-founder at Athens, knowing the cruel disposition of Phalaris, contrived a new species of punishment for him to inflict on his subjects. He cast a brazen bull, bigger than the life, with an opening in the side to admit the victim; who being shut up in the body, a fire was kindled under it to roast them to death; and the throat was so contrived, that their dying groans resembled the roaring of a bull. The artist brought it to the tyrant, expecting a great reward. Phalaris admired the invention and workmanship, but ordered the inventor to be put into it to make the first trial. In allusion to which, Ovid says,

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Quam necis artifices arte perire sua.

The end of this detestable tyrant is differently related; but it is very generally believed, with Cicero, that he fell by the hands of the Agrigentines; and, as some suppose, at the instigation of Pythagoras. Ovid tells us, that his tongue was cut out; and that he was then put into the bull to perish by the same slow fire by which means he had murdered so many before. Others say that he was stoned to death; and all agree that his end was violent. He reigned, Eusebius says, 28 years; others say 16. After all, there is great uncertainty both as to his life, death, and history. Many of the circumstances related of him, as they are collected by Mr. Boyle, depend upon the authenticity of those epistles which go under the name of the tyrant; and which have been justly questioned, and with great probability rejected, as the spurious production of some modern sophist. See Bentley, p. 177, col. 2.

or Canary-grass, a genus of plants belonging to the triandra class. See Botany Index.