Phemonoe, a priestess of Apollo, who is supposed to have invented heroic verses. Pausanias, bk. 10, ch. 6.
Phenēum, a town of Arcadia, whose inhabitants, called Pheneatæ, worshipped Mercury. Cicero, de Natura Deorum, bk. 3.
Pheneus, a town with a lake of the same name in Arcadia, whose waters were unwholesome in the night and wholesome in the daytime. Cicero, de Natura Deorum, bk. 3, ch. 22.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 8, li. 165.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 15, li. 332.——A son of Melas, killed by Tydeus. Apollodorus.
Pheræ, a town of Thessaly, where the tyrant Alexander reigned, whence he was called Pheræus. Strabo, bk. 8.—Cicero, bk. 2, de Officis.—Ovid, Ibis, li. 321.—Valerius Maximus, bk. 9, ch. 13.——A town of Attica.——Another in Laconia in Peloponnesus. Livy, bk. 35, ch. 30.
Pheræus, a surname of Jason, as being a native of Pheræ.
Pheraules, a Persian whom Cyrus raised from poverty to affluence. He afterwards gave up all his possessions to enjoy tranquillity in retirement. Xenophon, Cyropaedia.
Pherĕclus, one of the Greeks during the Trojan war. Ovid, Heroides, poem 15.——A pilot of the ship of Theseus, when he went to Crete. Plutarch, Theseus.
Pherēcrătes, a comic poet of Athens, in the age of Plato and Aristophanes. He is supposed to have written 21 comedies, of which only a few verses remain. He introduced living characters on the stage, but never abused the liberty which he had taken, either by satire or defamation. He invented a sort of verse, which from him has been called Pherecratian. It consisted of the three last feet of an hexameter verse, of which the first was always a spondee, as for instance, the third verse of Horace’s bk. 1, ode 5, Grato Pyrrha sub antro.——Another, descended from Deucalion. Cicero, Tusculanæ Disputationes.
Pherecȳdes, a philosopher of Scyros, disciple of Pittacus, one of the first who delivered his thoughts in prose. He was acquainted with the periods of the moon, and foretold eclipses with the greatest accuracy. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul was first supported by him, as also that of the metempsychosis. Pythagoras was one of his disciples, remarkable for his esteem and his attachment to his learned master. When Pherecydes lay dangerously ill in the island of Delos, Pythagoras hastened to give him every assistance in his power, and when all his efforts had proved ineffectual, he buried him, and after he had paid him the last offices, he retired to Italy. Some, however, suppose, that Pherecydes threw himself down from a precipice as he was going to Delphi, or, according to others, he fell a sacrifice to the lousy disease, B.C. 515, in the 85th year of his age. Diogenes Laërtius.—Lactantius [Placidus].——An historian of Leros, surnamed the Athenian. He wrote a history of Attica, now lost, in the age of Darius Hystaspes.——A tragic poet.
Pherendates, a Persian set over Egypt by Artaxerxes.