a tyrant of Agrigentum in Sicily, known to fame for his cruelty and inhumanity, but of whom little is definitely known. Ancient writers are not agreed as to the precise period when he began to reign, but Eusebius fixes the commencement of it B.C. 570, and his death B.C. 555. His father's name was Leodamas, a native of Astypalaea, an island in the Aegean Sea, where Phalaris was born. A dream of his mother is said to have prognosticated the cruelty of her unborn son. (Cic. Div. i. 23.) When he was grown to manhood, he made an attempt to seize upon the government of his native country, but was obliged to fly. He took refuge at Agrigentum, where he contrived to ingratiate himself with the people, and by a stratagem (Polyten. v. 1) got possession of the supreme authority, which he exercised at first with much moderation. The Agrigentines, however, refused to submit quietly to his sway, and Phalaris found himself obliged to maintain by severity that power which he had so unjustly acquired. It is not unlikely that the ancients gave an exaggerated account of his cruelties, with a view of inspiring a hatred of tyranny. Athenaeus speaks of his roasting children alive, and Aristotle states that he actually ate them; but such accounts can scarcely be credited. Perillus, an Athenian artist, is said to have constructed a brazen bull, in which the victims of Phalaris might be roasted; and when he expected to have been highly rewarded, the tyrant ordered him to be shut up in his own horrible machine. This story was doubted by Timaeus (Schol. Prod. Poth. i. 185), but Diodorus Siculus asserts its truth (xiii. 90, xix. 105). When Agrigentum was taken by the Carthaginians, they carried the bull to Carthage, and when that city was destroyed by Scipio Africanus, B.C. 146, it was presented by him to the Agrigentines. (Cic. Ver. iv. 33.) Authors are not agreed as to the mode of his death, but the most probable opinion is, that the Agrigentines, tired of his cruelties, stoned him to death. (Off. ii. 7.) We possess a collection of letters under the name of Phalaris, which Charles Boyle, who has edited them, tries to prove the genuine productions of the tyrant; but there can be no doubt that they were written by some of the later sophists, and that Bentley was right in pronouncing them "a farce of common places." They were published for the first time by Justinopolitanus, at Venice, 1498, in 4to. The best editions are those of Oxford, 1695, 1718, in 8vo, with a Latin translation, notes, and a dissertation of Boyle on the life of Phalaris; that of Groningen, 1777, in 4to, which was begun by Lennep, and finished by Walkenaer; and, above all, that of Schaefer, Leipzig, 1823. The Epistles of Phalaris have been repeatedly translated into Italian, French, and English. (See the Dissertation of Dodwell, De Ætate Phalaridis; and the Answer of Bentley.)