Phœnīce, or Phœnīcia, a country of Asia, at the east of the Mediterranean, whose boundaries have been different in different ages. Some suppose that the names of Phœnicia, Syria, and Palestine are indiscriminately used for one and the same country. Phœnicia, according to Ptolemy, extended on the north as far as the Eleutherus, a small river which falls into the Mediterranean sea, a little below the island of Aradus, and it had Pelusium or the territories of Egypt as its more southern boundary, and Syria on the east. Sidon and Tyre were the most capital towns of the country. The inhabitants were naturally industrious; the invention of letters is attributed to them, and commerce and navigation were among them in the most flourishing state. They planted colonies on the shores of the Mediterranean, particularly Carthage, Hippo, Marseilles, and Utica; and their manufactures acquired such a superiority over those of other nations, that among the ancients, whatever was elegant, great, or pleasing, either in apparel, or domestic utensils, received the epithet of Sidonian. The Phœnicians were originally governed by kings. They were subdued by the Persians, and afterwards by Alexander, and remained tributary to his successors and to the Romans. They were called Phœnicians, from Phœnix son of Agenor, who was one of their kings, or, according to others, from the great number of palm trees (θοινικες) which grow in the neighbourhood. Herodotus, bk. 4, ch. 42; bk. 5, ch. 58.—Homer, Odyssey, bk. 15.—Mela, bk. 1, ch. 11; bk. 2, ch. 7.—Strabo, bk. 16.—Apollodorus, bk. 3, ch. 1.—Lucretius, bk. 2, li. 829.—Pliny, bk. 2, ch. 47; bk. 5, ch. 12.—Curtius, bk. 4, ch. 2.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 1, &c.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 12, li. 104; bk. 14, li. 345; bk. 15, li. 288.
Phœnīce, a town of Epirus. Livy, bk. 22, ch. 12.
Phœnīcia. See:, [Phœnice].
Phœnīcus, a mountain of Bœotia.——Another in Lycia, called also Olympus, with a town of the same name.——A port of Erythræ. Livy, bk. 56, ch. 45.
Phœnicŭsa, now Felicudi, one of the Æolian islands.
Phœnissa, a patronymic given to Dido, as a native of Phœnicia. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 4, li. 529.
Phœnix, son of Amyntor king of Argos by Cleobule, or Hippodamia, was preceptor to young Achilles. When his father proved faithless to his wife, on account of his fondness for a concubine called Clytia, Cleobule, jealous of her husband, persuaded her son Phœnix to ingratiate himself into the favours of his father’s mistress. Phœnix easily succeeded, but when Amyntor discovered his intrigues, he drew a curse upon him, and the son was soon after deprived of his sight by divine vengeance. According to some, Amyntor himself put out the eyes of his son, which so cruelly provoked him, that he meditated the death of his father. Reason and piety, however, prevailed over passion, and Phœnix, not to become a parricide, fled from Argos to the court of Peleus king of Phthia. Here he was treated with tenderness. Peleus carried him to Chiron, who restored to him his eyesight, and soon after he was made preceptor to Achilles, his benefactor’s son. He was also presented with the government of many cities, and made king of the Dolopes. He accompanied his pupil to the Trojan war, and Achilles was ever grateful for the instructions and precepts which he had received from Phœnix. After the death of Achilles, Phœnix, with others, was commissioned by the Greeks to return to Greece, to bring to the war young Pyrrhus. This commission he performed with success, and after the fall of Troy, he returned with Pyrrhus, and died in Thrace. He was buried at Æon, or, according to Strabo, near Trachinia, where a small river in the neighbourhood received the name of Phœnix. Strabo, bk. 9.—Homer, Iliad, bk. 9, &c.—Ovid, Ibis, li. 259.—Apollodorus, bk. 2, ch. 7.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 2, li. 762.——A son of Agenor, by a nymph who was called Telephassa, according to Apollodorus and Moschus, or, according to others, Epimedusa, Perimeda, or Agriope. He was, like his brothers Cadmus and Cilix, sent by his father in pursuit of his sister Europa, whom Jupiter had carried away under the form of a bull, and when his inquiries proved unsuccessful, he settled in a country which, according to some, was from him called Phœnicia. From him, as some suppose, the Carthaginians were called Pœni. Apollodorus, bk. 3.—Hyginus, fable 178.——The father of Adonis, according to Hesiod.——A Theban, delivered to Alexander, &c.——A native of Tenedos, who was an officer in the service of Eumenes.
Pholoe, one of the horses of Admetus.——A mountain of Arcadia, near Pisa. It received its name from Pholus the friend of Hercules, who was buried there. It is often confounded with another of the same name in Thessaly, near mount Othrys. Pliny, bk. 4, ch. 6.—Lucan, bk. 3, li. 198; bk. 6, li. 388; bk. 7, li. 449.—Ovid, bk. 2, Fasti, li. 273.——A female servant, of Cretan origin, given with her two sons to Sergestus by Æneas. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 5, li. 285.——A courtesan in the age of Horace. Horace, bk. 1, ode 33, li. 7.
Pholus, one of the Centaurs, son of Silenus and Melia, or, according to others, of Ixion and the cloud. He kindly entertained Hercules when he was going against the boar of Erymanthus, but he refused to give him wine, as that which he had belonged to the rest of the Centaurs. Hercules, upon this, without ceremony, broke the cask and drank the wine. The smell of the liquor drew the Centaurs from the neighbourhood to the house of Pholus, but Hercules stopped them when they forcibly entered the habitation of his friend, and killed the greatest part of them. Pholus gave the dead a decent funeral, but he mortally wounded himself with one of the arrows which were poisoned with the venom of the hydra, and which he attempted to extract from the body of one of the Centaurs. Hercules, unable to cure him, buried him when dead, and called the mountain where his remains were deposited by the name of Pholoe. Apollodorus, bk. 1.—Pausanias, bk. 3.—Virgil, Georgics, bk. 2, li. 456; Æneid, bk. 8, li. 294.—Diodorus, bk. 4.—Silius Italicus, bk. 1.—Lucan, bks. 3, 6 & 7.—Statius Thebaid, bk. 2.——One of the friends of Æneas, killed by Turnus. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 12, li. 341.
Phorbas, a son of Priam and Epithesia, killed during the Trojan war by Menelaus. The god Somnus borrowed his features when he deceived Palinurus, and threw him into the sea near the coast of Italy. Virgil, Æneid, bk. 5, li. 842.——A son of Lapithus, who married Hyrmine the daughter of Epeus, by whom he had Actor. Pelops, according to Diodorus, shared his kingdom with Phorbas, who also, says the same historian, established himself at Rhodes, at the head of a colony from Elis and Thessaly, by order of the oracle, which promised, by his means only, deliverance from the numerous serpents which infested the island. Diodorus, bk. 2.—Pausanias, bk. 5, ch. 1.——A shepherd of Polybus king of Corinth.——A man who profaned Apollo’s temple, &c. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 11, li. 414.——A king of Argos.——A native of Cyrene, son of Methion, killed by Perseus. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 5, fable 3.