241 
for ever destroyed the credit which had been given to these 
epistles : — 
(1.) He shows that in them Phalaris speaks of borrowing 
money from the inhabitants of a town in Sicily nearly 
three centuries before that town was built. 
(2.) Phalaris is represented as giving to the physician a 
present of cups, called by the name of a Corinthian 
potter who lived more than a hundred years after 
Phalaris’ death. 
(3.) Phalaris speaks of Zancle and Messene as distinct 
towns, whereas, in truth, Zancle was merely the ancient 
name of Messene. 
(4.) In one of his letters, Phalaris addresses Pythagoras as 
a philosopher, and speaks of his system of philosophy, 
whereas we know that Pythagoras first called himself 
a philo-sophos, or lover of wisdom, when Leon of % 
Sicyon asked him what he was. And it is impossible 
to believe that the term was in vogue, or even known 
to Phalaris, who, when he wrote the letter, had never 
seen Pythagoras. 
(5.) Phalaris is very angry with Aristolochus for writing 
tragedies against him at a time when the word tragedy 
was utterly unknown. 
(6.) Phalaris writes in Attic Greek, whereas, as a Sicilian, 
his dialect would have been Doric. 
Let me illustrate this kind of criticism by a different 
example. On the Monte Cavallo— the old Quirinal Hill, at 
Pome — stand two colossal statues of horses, called “Colossi di 
Monte Cavallo.” Under one pedestal are, or were, inscribed 
the words Opus Phidice , under the other Opus Praxitelis. But 
formerly there were two more elaborate inscriptions, one to the 
effect that Phidias had here sculptured Bucephalus, the horse 
of Alexander the Great ; and the other that Praxiteles, in com- 
petition with Phidias, had sculptured another figure of the 
same horse, Bucephalus. Now Phidias died somewhere about 
432 b.c. Praxiteles flourished in 364 b.c., nearly a century 
later, and Alexander the Great was not born until 356 b.c. 
This was too much for even the credulity of a bygone genera- 
tion, and Pope Urban VIII. effaced the inscriptions, and sub- 
stituted for them the simple words Opus Phidice and Opus 
Praxitelis , which had at all events the merit of not being guilty 
of a palpable anachronism, although each is most probablyabso- 
lutely untrue. But such an anachronism is not quite so bad as 
that of the writer in a feuilleton of the Constitutionnel (supposed 
to have been Lamartine), who says, “ The tombs of great 
poets inspire great passions. It was at Tasso’s tomb that 
Petrarch nourished his respectful remembrance of Laura!” 
