Note 1409 — Chapter IX · Sicyon, Megara, Miletus, Ephesus, Leontini, Agrigentum, Cumae

Somewhere about the time of Phalaris Sicily was invaded by a Carthaginian army under a commander named Malchus, Justin XVIII. 7. It has been suggested that Phalaris was pre-eminently the leader of the Agrigentines against the Punic peril (Bury, Hist. Greece2, p. 297), and that he played a similar part to that played during a later invasion by the Syracusan Dionysius. For this suggestion there is no evidence whatsoever. There is no certainty either that the invasion of Malchus occurred in the age of Phalaris or that Agrigentum was endangered by it or even alarmed. On the other hand there are hints that Phalaris was the reverse of anti-Carthaginian. The Semites of Carthage were devoted to the cult of Moloch, in whose worship no small part was played by the molten image of a calf and the offering to it of human sacrifices. Perhaps the most likely origin of the story of the bull of Phalaris is to be sought in this Moloch worship. The tyrant may have had a large Phoenician contingent among his foreign employees and have very much shocked his Greek subjects by allowing these Semites to practise Semitic rites in Agrigentum. Meyer, however, Ges. d. Alt. II. p. 682 n., suggests a connexion between the bull of Phalaris and the Cretan bull cult. Note that the story of the bull of Phalaris impressed Grote as having a historical basis: “The reality of the hollow bull appears to be better authenticated than the nature of the story would lead us to presume,” Hist. Greece, ed. 1888, IV. p. 65; cp. ibid. p. 296, n. 1.