exception of Cadmus (q.v.) of Miletus, he was the first Greek prose-writer He belonged to the circle of Peisistratus at Athens, and was the founder of an Orphic community. He is characterized as “one of the earliest Representatives of a half-critical, half-credulous eclecticism” (Gomperz). He was credited with having originated the doctrine of metempsychosis (q.v), while Cicero and Augustine assert that he was the first to teach the immortality of the soul. Of his astronomical studies he left a proof in the “heliotropion,” a cave at Syros which served to determine the annual turning-point of the sun, like the grotto of Posillipo (Posilipo, Posilippo) at Naples, and was one of the sights of the island.
In his cosmogonic treatise on nature and the gods, called Πεντέμυχος (Preller’s correction of Suidas, who has ἐπτάμυχος) from the five elementary or original principles (aether, fire, air water, earth; Gomperz substitutes smoke and darkness for aether and earth), he enunciated a system in which science allegory and mythology were blended. In the beginning were Chronos, the principle of time, Zeus (Zas), the principle of life, and Chthoniē, the earth goddess. Chronos begat fire, a and water, and from these three sprang numerous other gods. Smoke and darkness appear in a later tradition. A fragment of the “sacred marriage” of Zas and Chthoniē was found on an Egyptian papyrus at the end of the 19th century.
See H. Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (1903); also O. Kern, De Orphei, Epimenidis, Pherecydis theogoniis (1888), D. Speliotopoulos, Περι Φ ρεκύδου τοῦ Συρί υ (Athens, 1890); T. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers (Eng. trans.), i. 85, B. P. Grenfell, New Classical Fragments (1897) H. Weil, Etudes sur l’antiquité grecque (1900).
PHIGALIA, or Phigaleia (Φιγάλία or Φιγαλεία; mod. Pavlitsa), an ancient Greek city in the south-west angle of Arcadia, situate on an elevated rocky site, among some of the highest mountains in the Peloponnesus—the most conspicuous being Mt Cotylium and Mt Elasum; the identification of the latter is uncertain.
In 659 B.C. Phigalia was taken by the Lacedaemonians but soon after recovered its independence by the help of the Orasthasians. During the struggle between Achaeans and Aetolians in 221 B.C. it was held by Dorimachus, who left it on the approach of Philip V. of Macedon. In common with the other cities of Arcadia, it appears from Strabo to have fallen into utter decay under the Roman rule. Several curious cults were preserved near Phigalia, including that of the fish-tailed goddess Eurynome and the Black Demeter with a horse’s head, whose image was renewed by Onatas. Notices of it in Greek history are rare and scanty. Though its existing ruins and the description of Pausanias show it to have been a place of considerable strength and importance, no autonomous coins of Phigalia are known Nothing remains above ground of the temples of Artemis or Dionysus and the numerous statues and other works of art which existed at the time of Pausanias visit, about A.D. 170. A great part of the city wall, built in fine Hellenic masonry, partly polygonal and partly isodomous, and a large square central fortress with a circular projecting tower, are the only remains now traceable—at least without the aid of excavation. The walls, once nearly 2 m. in circuit, are strongly placed on rocks, which slope down to the little river Neda.
One very important monument still exists in a fairly perfect state, this is a temple dedicated to Apollo Epicurius (the Preserver), built, not at Phigalia itself, but at Bassae, 5 or 6 m. away, on the slope of Mt Cotylium, it commemorates the aid rendered by Apollo in stopping a plague which in the 5th century B.C. was devastating Phigalia This temple is mentioned by Pausamas (viii. 41) as being (next to that of Tegea) the finest in the Peloponnesus, “from the beauty of its stone and the symmetry of its proportions.” It was designed by Ictmus, who, with Callicrates, was joint architect of the Parthenon at Athens. Though visited by Chandler, Dodwell, Gell, and other English travellers, the temple was neither explored nor measured till 1811–1812, when C. R. Cockerell and some other archaeologists spent several months in making excavations there. After nearly fifty years’ delay, Professor Cockerell published the results of these labours, as well as of his previous work at Aegina in Temples of Aegina and Bassae (1860), one of the most careful and beautifully illustrated archaeological works produced. The labours of Cockerell and his companions were richly rewarded, not only were sufficient remains of the architectural features discovered to show clearly the whole design, but the internal sculptured frieze of the cella was found almost perfect. This and other fragments of its sculpture are now in the British Museum. The colonnade of the temple has been recently restored by the Greek authorities.
Plan of the Temple at Bassae.
The figure shows the plan of the temple, which is of the Doric order, but has an internal arrangement of its cella unlike that of any other known temple it stands on an elevated and partly artificial plateau, which commands an extensive view of the oak clad mountains of Arcadia, reaching away to the blue waters of the Messenian Gulf. Unlike other Doric temples, which usually stand east and west, this is placed north and south; but it has a side entrance on the east. It is, hexastyle, with fifteen columns on its flanks; thirty-four out of the thirty-eight columns of the peristyle, are still standing, with the greater part of their architrave, but the rest of the entablature and both pediments have fallen, together with the greater part of the internal columns the cella it will be seen from the plan that these are very strangely placed, apparently without symmetry, as regards the interior, though they are set regularly opposite the voids in the peristyle.
With the exception of one at the south end, which is Corinthian, the internal columns are of the Ionic order, and are engaged with the cella-wall, forming a series of recesses, which may have been designed to contain statues. Another peculiarity of this interior is that these columns reach to the top of the cella in one order, not in two ranges of columns, one over the other, as was the usual Doric fashion. These inner columns carried an Ionic entablature, of which the frieze now in the British Museum formed a part The pediments and external metopes of the peristyle appear to have contained no sculpture, but the metopes within the peristyle on the exterior of the cella had sculptured subjects; only a few fragments of these were, however, discovered The position occupied by the great statue of Apollo is a difficult problem. Cockerell, with much probability, places it in the southern portion of the cella, facing the eastern side door, so that it would be lighted up by the rays of the rising sun. The main entrance is at the northern end through the pronaos, once defended by a door in the end of the cella and a metal screen, of which traces were found on the two columns of the pronaos. There was no door between the posticum and the cella The general proportions of the fronts resemble those of the Theseum at Athens, except that the entablature is less massive, the columns thicker, and the diminution less—all proportionally speaking. In plan the temple is long in proportion to its width—measuring, on the top of the stylobate, 125 ft. 7 in. by 48 ft. 2 in., while the Theseum (built probably half a century earlier) is about 101 ft. 2 in. by 45 ft. 2 in.
The material of which the temple is built is a fine grey limestone (once covered with painted stucco), except the roof-tiles, the capitals of the cella columns, the architraves, the lacunaria (ceilings) of the posticum and pronaos, and the sculpture, all of which are of white marble. The roof tiles, specially noticed by Pausanias, are remarkable for their size, workmanship, and the beauty of the Parian marble of which they are made. They measure 2 ft. 1 in. by 3 ft. 6 in., and are fitted together in the most careful and ingenious manner. Unlike those of the Parthenon and the temple of Aegina, the άρμοί or “joint-tiles” are worked out of the same piece of marble as the flat ones, for the sake of more perfect fitting and greater security against wet
Traces of painting on various architectural members were found by Cockerell, but they were too much faded for the colours to be distinguished. The designs are the usual Greek patterns—the fret, the honeysuckle, and the egg and dart.
The sculpture is of the greatest interest, as being designed to decorate one of the finest buildings in the Peloponnesus in the latter half of the 5th century B.C., see Brit. Mus. Catalogue of Sculpture, vol. 1.
The frieze, now in the British Museum, is complete; it is nearly 101 ft. long by 2 ft. high, carved in relief on twenty-three slabs of marble 412 to 5 in. thick The subjects are the battle of the Lapithae and the Centaurs, and that between the Amazons and the Greeks. the
