and silver coinage, and of a new scale of weights
and measures, which, through his influence, became
prevalent in the Peloponnesus, and ultimately
throughout the greater portion of Greece. The
scale in question was known by the name of the
Aeginetan, and it is usually supposed, according to
the statement of Ephorus, that the coinage of
Pheidon was struck in Aegina ; but there seems
good reason for believing, with Mr. Grote, that
what Pheidon did was done in Argos, and nowhere
else, — that "Pheidonian measures" probably did
not come to bear the specific name of Aeginetan
until there was another scale in vogue, the Euboic,
from which to distinguish them, — and that both
the epithets were probably derived, not from the
place where the scale first originated, but from the
people whose commercial activity tended to make
them most generally known, — in the one case the
Aeginetans, in the other case the inhabitants of
Chalcis and Eretria.
With respect to the date of Pheidon there is
some considerable discrepancy of statement. Pau-
sanias mentions the 8th Olympiad, or h. c. 748, as
the period at which he presided at the Olympic
games ; but the Parian marble, representing him
as the eleventh from Hercules, places him in B. c.
895. Hence Larcher and others would understand
Pausanias to be reckoning the Olympiads, not
from Coroebus, but from Iphitus : but Pausanias and
Ephorus tell us that the Olympiad which Pheidon
celebrated was omitted in the Eleian register, and
we know that there was no register of the Olym-
piads at all before the Olympiad of Coroebus in
B. c. 776. On the other hand, Herodotus, accord-
ing to the common reading of the passage (vi. 127),
calls Pheidon the father of Leocedes, one of the
suitors of Agarista, the daughter of Cleisthenes of
Sicyon ; and, as this would bring down the Argive
tyrant to a period at least a hundred years later
than the one assigned him by Pausanias, some
critics have suspected a mutilation of the text of
Herodotus, while others would alter that of Pau-
sanias from the 8th to the 28th Olympiad, and
others again suppose two kings of Argos of the name
of Pheidon, and imagine Herodotus to have con-
founded the later with the earlier. Of these views,
that which ascribes incorrectness to the received
reading of the passage in Herodotus is by far the
most tenable. At any rate, the date of Pheidon is
fixed on very valid grounds, which may be found
in Clinton, to about the middle of the eighth cen-
tury B. c.
(Ephor. ap. Strab. viii. p. 358 ; Theopomp.
ap. Diod. Fragm. B. vii. ; Arist. Pol. v. 10,
ed. Bekk. ; Paus. vi. 22 ; Plut. Am. Narr. 2 ;
Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. iv. 1212 ; Schol. ad Find.
Olymp. xiii. 27 ; Poll. Onom. x. 179 ; Plin. H.N.
vii. 56 ; Diog. Laert. viii. 14 ; Ael. V. II. xii. 10 ;
Perizon. ad loc. ; Clint. F. H. vol. i. app. i. ;
Larcher, ad Herod, vi. 127 ; MUller, Dor. i. 7. §
15 ; Herm. Pol. Ant. % Z'i ; Bockh, PM. Econ.
of Alliens, b. i. ch. 4, b. iv. ch. 19 ; Thirlwall's
Greece, vol. i. p. 358 ; Grote 's G^reece, part ii. ch. 4.)
2. An ancient Corinthian legislator, of uncertain
date, who is said by Aristotle to have had in view
an arrangement which provided for a fixed and un-
changeable number of citizens, without attempting
to equalize property (Arist. Pol. ii. 3, ed. Giittling ;
Gottl. ad loc). The scholiast on Pindar {01 xiii.
20) appears to confound this Pheidon with the
Argive tyrant, though MUller explains it by saying
{Dor. i. 7. § 15) that the latter was sometimeg called a Corinthian, because Corinth lay in his do- minions. The words, however, of the scholiast, «l»eiSa>j' Tts dvfp KopivQios, will not admit of this charitable interpretation. We have no ground at all for identifying the king of Argos with the Co- rinthian legislator of Aristotle. 3. One of the thirty tyrants established at Athens in B.C. 404 (Xen. Hell. ii. 3. § 2). He was strongly opposed to Critias and his party in the government, and, therefore, after the battle of Munychia he was appointed one of the new Council of Ten, in the hope that he would bring about a reconciliation with the exiles in the Peiraeeus. But he showed no willingness at all for such a course, and we find him shortly after going to Sparta to ask for aid against the popular party. (Xen. Hell. ii. 4. §§ 23, 28 ; Lys. c. Emt. p. 125.) 4. An Athenian, who, if we may believe a story preserved in St. Jerome (c. Jovin. i. p. 186 ; comp. Schneid, ad Xen. Hell. ii. 3. § 2), was slain at a banquet by the thirty tyrants, who then obliged his daughters to dance naked before them on the floor that was stained with their father's blood. To avoid further and worse dishonour, the maidens drowned themselves.
5. A character in the (
Greek characters) of the comic
poet Mnesimachus. From the context of the frag-
ment in which his name occurs, he seems to have
been one of the Phylarchs, who superintended the
cavalry of Athens (Mnesim. ap. Ath. ix. p. 402, f.;
Meineke, Fragm. Com. Grace, vol. iii. pp. 568,
571). The name occurs also in the nol77cns of
Antiphanes, but does not refer to any real person.
(Antiph. ap. Ath. vi. p. 223, a.; Meineke, Fragm.
Com. Grace, vol. iii. p. 106.) [E. E.]
PHEME. [OssA.]
PHE'MIUS ((Greek characters)). 1. The famous minstrel,
was a son of Terpius, and entertained with his
song the suitors in the house of Odysseus in Ithaca.
(Horn. Od. i. 154, xxii. 330, &c. xvii. 263.)
2. One of the suitors of Helen. (Hygin. Fah. 81.)
3. The father of Aegeus, and accordingly the grand-father of Theseus, who is hence called 4>?7- lAov TTois. (Lycoph. 1 324, with the note of Tzetz.)
4. A son of Ampyx, and the mythical founder
of the town of Phemiae in Arnaea. (Steph. Byz.
s.v. (Greek characters) ; comp. Temon.) [L. S.]
PHEMO'NOE ((Greek characters)) a mythical Greek
poetess of the ante-Homeric period, was said to
have been the daughter of Apollo, and his first
priestess at Delphi, and the inventor of the hex-
ameter verse (Paus. x. 5. § 7, 6. § 7 ; Strab. ix. p.
419 ; Plin. H.N. vii. 57 ; Clem. Alex. Strom, i.
pp. 323,334 ; Schol ad Eurip. Orest. 1094 ; Eust.
Prol. ad Iliad. ; and other authors cited by Fa-
bricius). Some writers seem to have placed her
at Delos instead of Delphi {Atil. Fort. p. 2690,
Putsch ) ; and Servius identifies her with the Cu-
maean Sybil {ad Virg. Aen. iii. 445). The tra-
dition which ascribed to her the invention of the
hexameter, was by no means uniform ; Pausanias,
for example, as quoted above, calls her the first who
used it, but in another passage (x. 12. § 10) he
quotes an hexameter distich, which was ascribed to
the Peleiads, who lived before Phemonoe : the
traditions respecting the invention of the hexameter
are collected by Fabricius (Bibl. Grace, vol. i. p.
207). There were poems which went under the
name of Phemonoe, like the old religioug poems
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