Note 417 — Chapter XLIII · EVENTS IN SICILY DOWN TO THE EXPULSION OF THE GELONIAN DYNASTY AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF POPULAR GOVERNMENTS THROUGHOUT THE ISLAND.

Everything which has ever been said about Phalaris is noticed and discussed in the learned and acute Dissertation of Bentley on the Letters of Phalaris: compare also Seyffert, Akragas und sein Gebiet, pp. 57-61, who, however, treats the pretended Letters of Phalaris with mere consideration than the readers of Dr. Bentley will generally be disposed to sanction.

The story of the brazen bull of Phalaris seems to rest on sufficient evidence: it is expressly mentioned by Pindar, and the bull itself, after having been carried away to Carthage when the Carthaginians took Agrigentum, was restored to the Agrigentines by Scipio when he took Carthage. See Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 4; Pindar, Pyth. i, 185; Polyb. xii, 25; Diodor. xiii, 90; Cicero in Verr. iv, 33.

It does not appear that Timæus really called in question the historical reality of the bull of Phalaris, though he has been erroneously supposed to have done so. Timæus affirmed that the bull which was shown in his own time at Agrigentum was not the identical machine: which was correct, for it must have been then at Carthage, from whence it was not restored to Agrigentum until after 146 B. C. See a note of Boeckh on the Scholia ad Pindar. Pyth. i, 185.