Phalaris
historical figure · 12 works · 12 mentions · 13 anchored passages
in the texts
Nicomachean Ethics
Tyrant of Akragas notorious for cruelty, cited as an example of bestial depravity.
or the reported depravity of Phalaris.
I mean, for instance, Phalaris might have had the desire to eat a child, or to practise unnatural vice, and refrained;
On Moral Ends
Notoriously cruel tyrant of Acragas, invoked as an extreme counter-example to Plato in testing the Stoic claim that all the unwise are equally wretched.
And, since puppies which are now about to see are equally blind with those just born, must Plato too, since he did not yet see wisdom, have been equally blind in mind with Phalaris?
On the Commonwealth
Notoriously cruel tyrant of Acragas, cited as the degenerate extreme of monarchy.
For under that king, to name him above all—tolerable, or, if you will, even lovable, Cyrus—there lies, ready for the licence of a mind once changed, that most cruel Phalaris, into whose likeness the rule of one man slips by an easy and downhill course.
On the Nature of the Gods
Notoriously cruel tyrant of Agrigentum, eventually overthrown and punished.
' Yes, but after many had first been tortured and slain.
Orations
Tyrant cited as an example of an unjust ruler removed in disgrace.
as one unworthy to be king or to share His own honor and title, and that with shame and outrage—as, I suppose, Phalaris and Apollodorus and many others of like kind.
The Rights of War and Peace
Tyrant of Agrigentum cited as an example of cruel rule.
Yet where a Busiris, a Phalaris or a Thracian Diomede provoke their people to despair and resistance by unheard of cruelties, having themselves abandoned all the laws of nature, they lose the rights of independent sovereigns, and can no longer claim the privilege of the law of nations.
Meditations
The tyrant, cited as an example of a man ruled by impulse rather than reason.
to be jerked by impulses like a puppet belongs even to wild beasts, to the unmanly, to a Phalaris and a Nero.
Pythian
The historical tyrant of Acragas, notorious for roasting victims alive in a bronze bull, cited as an exemplar of undying infamy.
The kindly excellence of Croesus does not perish, but Phalaris, with his pitiless mind, who burned his victims in a bronze bull, is surrounded on all sides by a hateful reputation;
Letters to Lucilius
Ancient tyrant of Agrigentum known for the brazen bull used as an instrument of torture.
Epicurus too says that the wise man, if he were burned in the bull of Phalaris, would cry out:
On Anger
Tyrant of Agrigentum, proverbial for cruelty, cited as an example of ferocity rather than anger.
whether those who commonly rage and take joy in human blood are angry when they kill men from whom they have received no injury and do not even believe themselves to have received one—such as Apollodorus or Phalaris.
On Benefits
Legendary tyrant of Agrigentum known for extreme cruelty, used as the test case for whether gratitude is owed even to a monstrous benefactor.
if," says he, "he has become not only bad, but savage, but monstrous, such as Apollodorus or Phalaris, will you repay this man too the benefit which you had received?
On Mercy
Tyrant of Agrigentum cited as the paradigm case of cruelty defined as punishment exceeding reasonable measure.
Those, then, I shall call cruel who have a cause for punishing but no measure, as in the case of Phalaris, who, they say, raged—not indeed against innocent men, but beyond the human and reasonable measure.