PHAVORINUS. See Guarino.
PHEIDON, the son of Aristodamidas, flourished about the middle of the eighth century b.c., and was king of Argos, which he restored to its former power. With his assistance the Pisans succeeded in depriving the Eleians for a time of their supremacy at the Olympian games. Pheidon introduced copper and silver coin into the Peloponnesus, and also a new scale of weights and measures.—D. W. R.
PHELIPPEAUX, Jean, a native of Angers, and was patronized by Bossuet, whose nephew he taught and accompanied to Rome, where he was when the case of Fenelon was decided.—(See Fenelon.) He wrote a record of the discussions, but in the spirit of a partisan. It was published in 1732 as "A Relation of the Origin, Progress, and Condemnation of Quietism in France." The author died in 1708, at an advanced age.—B. H. C.
PHERECRATES, an Athenian poet, who gained the prize for comedy in the archonship of Theodorus, 438 b.c. He was one of the writers of the old comedy, but we gather from Aristotle that he somewhat modified the broad satire and personal abuse common among authors of that school. He wrote at least fifteen plays, and introduced a new metre, which has been called the Pherecratian.—D. M.
PHERECYDES, an Attic historian contemporary with Herodotus. His works are known to us only from fragments preserved by the grammarians. The most important of them was a history of the Greek mythology. The scattered fragments of Pherecydes have been collected and edited by Sturtz.—D. M.
PHERECYDES, a philosopher of Syros, one of the Greek islands, who lived, according to Diogenes Laertius, about 544 b.c. He taught the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and his opinions on this subject formed the basis of the philosophy of his more distinguished pupil, Pythagoras. The details of his biography are unknown.—D. M.
PHIDIAS, the most celebrated of the sculptors of antiquity, was born at Athens about 485-90 b.c., judging from the period of his earliest celebrity; but the date is quite uncertain. His father was Charmidas, probably also an artist, but his master in sculpture was Ageladas of Argos, who, however, must have been an old man when Phidias was but a youth. He was the master also of Polycletus and of Myron. Phidias was apparently at first a painter; but when Pericles attained to power in Athens about 444 b.c., he must have already established his reputation as a sculptor, as he was by that ruler appointed superintendent of all his public works, in architecture as well as statuary. In 432 b.c. he prematurely died in prison, at Athens, under sixty years of age. During these last twelve years of his life Phidias appears to have been extremely active. All his most renowned works belong to that time, including the great chryselephantine statues, and the renowned Elgin marbles now in the British museum. Among the works of this remarkable sculptor are recorded six so-called chryselephantine statues, that is, composed of ivory and gold; they were, however, of wood, and covered only with ivory, and draped or ornamented with gold, and of colossal proportions, varying from forty to sixty feet in height. The principal of these was the sitting Jupiter at Olympia in Elis, completed in the year 433 b.c. and considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Another most important work was the Minerva of the Parthenon at Athens, completed five years before the Jupiter; and besides there were a Minerva at Elis, another at Pallene in Achaia, a Venus Urania at Elis, and an Æsculapius at Epidaurus. Of bronze statues by Phidias twenty-two are mentioned by ancient writers, of which the most famous was the colossal Minerva Promachos of the Acropolis at Athens, made from spoils taken in the battle of Marathon. There are mentioned, besides, eight works in marble; not including the sculptures of the Parthenon, executed under his superintendence, and to which at present he owes his very great name. The favour of Pericles and his own great merits appear to have raised up many enemies against Phidias, and to this enmity he ultimately fell a victim. He is said to have been accused after his return from Elis, in 432, of having embezzled the gold which was delivered to him for the enrichment of the Minerva of the Parthenon, but that Pericles, having had the metal removed and weighed, found the forty talents complete, and proved the innocence of the sculptor. He had, however, introduced his own head among the combatants in the battle of the Amazons, represented on the shield of the goddess, and his enemies on this account brought against him an accusation of impiety, in consequence of which he was thrown into prison, and there died shortly afterwards. Another, but less accredited account, represents the accusation of embezzlement to have been made in Elis in reference to the Olympian Jupiter, and the imprisonment and consequent death to have taken place there. To judge from the Elgin marbles, the style of Phidias was purely ideal and generic. These invaluable remains of ancient art were brought to this country from Athens by Lord Elgin in 1803, and were purchased for the British museum in 1816. They were executed probably by the scholars of Phidias, some of whose names have been preserved to us, as Agoracritus, Alcamenes, and Colotes; his assistants are sometimes named by ancient writers in noticing his works. Colotes of Paros assisted him in the Olympian Jupiter; and Mys in the Minerva Promachos. The Elgin marbles are the most magnificent remains of ancient sculpture; the so called Theseus, the Ilissus and other fragments of the pediments, the Metopes and the Panathenaic frieze all display the most perfect ideality of form, and a matchless generic character: being quite distinct in spirit from the works of a later period, in which individuality of character and various technical refinements constituted the chief excellencies. Fine as the Elgin marbles are, they are not those works for which Phidias was praised by ancient writers; the greatest sensation was caused by his chryselephantine works, which doubtless did not only address themselves to the vulgar, though their effect was much aided both by splendour of material, and the natural awe inspired by a superstitious religion. These works, besides being venerable objects of an anthropomorphistic worship, were high æsthetic works of art, in which all the powers of form and colour were combined in their utmost perfection. The strange modern notions or prejudices about the purity of abstract form, seem to have had no existence among the truly art-loving Greeks, and accordingly not only their architects but their sculptors also, as a rule, had recourse to the aid of colour to produce the desired effect: not a religious or superstitious effect, but a genuine æsthetic influence of the elements or forces of nature applied to art—form and colour combined—rudely coloured images of the earlier times being eventually developed into the gorgeous works of ivory and gold with which Phidias, its most finished sculptor, gladdened and astounded the ancient world. Pausanias has given us an elaborate description of the Olympian Jupiter and its throne, the painted decorations of which were executed by Panænus, the nephew of Phidias. Quatremere de Quincy, in his elaborate work on this statue—Le Jupiter Olympien—has made a coloured representation of this work from the account of Pausanias, and has suggested, in great detail, the method of the construction of such figures of ivory, the pieces of ivory being built upon a wooden core; but it is possible that the core was of some other material. As the Greeks appear to have had a method of softening ivory, the process of attaching the pieces may not have been so difficult as now supposed. Plutarch mentions softeners of ivory (μαλακτῆρες ἐλεφαντος) as one of the distinct classes of artists employed by Pericles. In a variable climate like ours it would be difficult to preserve such works; and there was a difficulty in Greece where the situation was high and dry. It was then at certain intervals necessary to sprinkle the ivory with water. Such was the respect of the Eleans for Phidias, that they gave his descendants perpetual charge of the Olympian Jupiter; they were called Phaidruntai (polishers or cleaners); their duty was to keep it clean and to rub it constantly with oil; this was a precaution against the marshy atmosphere of the grove in which the temple was built. They had still the care of it in the time of Pausanias, who visited Olympia five centuries after the death of Phidias. It remained undisturbed at Olympia other three centuries, when it is said to have been removed to Constantinople by the orders of Theodosius the Great, and there to have perished about a century afterwards, in the fire which consumed the Lanseion, in which it was placed, in the year 475. Another account says it was lost at sea. This work occupied Phidias and his assistants four years. The most difficult work, however, executed by Phidias was probably the bronze statue of Minerva Promachos on the Acropolis, which, according to Strabo, was upwards of fifty feet high, independent of its pedestal; it could be seen at sea from the promontory of Sunium, a distance of several miles. The fame of ancient artists generally, and of painters especially, as come down to us, preserved chiefly by the remarks in ancient writers, has often been questioned by modern
