Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/366

Rh 852 HARPALUS. in India, he gave himself up to the most extravor gant luxury and profusion, squandering the trea- sures entrusted to him, at the same time that he alienated the people subject to his rule, by his lustful excesses and extortions. Not content with compelling the native women to minister to his pleasures, he sent to Athens for a celebrated courtesan named Py thionice, whom he received with the most extravagant honours, and to whom, after her death, he erected two costly monuments, one at Babylon, the other at Athens, where it is men- tioned by Pausanias as one of the most splendid in all Greece. (Pans. i. 37. § 5.) Py thionice was succeeded by Glycera, to whom he compelled all those subject to his authority to pay honours that were usually reserved for a queen. The indigna- tion of Greeks, as well as barbarians, was now loud agahist Harpalus : among others, Theopompus the historian wrote a letter of complaint to Alex- ander, some extracts from which are still preserved. (Athen. xiii. pp. 586, 594, 596 ; Diod. xvii. 108.) Harpalus had probably thought that Alexander would never return from the remote regions of the East into which he had penetrated ; but when he at length learnt that the king was on his march back to Susa, and had visited with unsparing rigour those of his officers who had been guilty of any excesses during his absence, he at once saw that his only resource was in flight. Collecting together all the treasures which he could, amounting to a sum of 5000 talents, and assembling a body of 6000 mercenaries, he hastened to the coast of Asia, and from thence crossed over to Attica. He had previously sent to Athens a magnificent present of corn, in return for which he had received the right of citizenship (Athen. xiii. pp. 586, 596) ; and he probably reckoned on a favourable reception in that city; but the Athenians refused to allow him to land, and he, in consequence, repaired toTaenarus, where he left his mercenaries, and himself returned to Athens. Being now admitted within the cit}', he employed the treasures that he had brought with him in the most unsparing manner, in order to gain over the orators and public men at Athens, and induce the people to undertake the support of his cause against Alexander and his vicegerent, Antipater. Among those whom he thus corrupted are said to have been Demades, Charicles, the son- in-law of Phocion, and even, as is well known. Demostlienes himself. Into the various questions connected with the conduct of these statesmen, and especially the last (see Demosthenes, and Thirl wall's Greece, vol. vii. pp. 153 — 161), it is impossible here to enter : but it should be men- tioned that, after the death of Harpalus, one of his slaves, who had acted as his steward in the ad- ministration of his treasures, having fallen into the power of Philoxenus, the Macedonian governor of Caria, gave a list of all those persons at Athens who had received any simis of money from Har- palus, and in this list the name of Demosthenes did not appear. (Pans. ii. 33. § 4.) But to what- ever extent Harpalus may have succeeded in bribing individuals, he failed in his general object, for Antipater, having demanded his surrender from the Athenians, it was resolved to place him in confine- ment until the Macedonians should send for him. He, however, succeeded in making his escape from prison, and rejoined his troops at Taenarus, from whence he transported his mercenary force and the remainder of his treasures to Crete, with what ulto- HARPOCRATION. rior designs we know not ; but soon after his arrival in that island he was assassinated by Tliim- bron, one of his own officers ; or, according to another account, by a Macedonian named Pausa- nias. (Diod. xvii. 108 ; Paus. ii. 33. § 4 ; Arr. ap. Phot. p. 70 a; Plut. Dem. 25; Flioc. 21, Vit. X. Oratt p. 363, 364, ed. Reiske ; Curt. x. 2.) Plutarch tells us {Alex. 35) that Harpalus, during his residence at Babylon, endeavoured to introduce there the most valuable of the plants and shrubs, natives of Greece — perhaps the first instance on record of an attempt at exotic gardening. 2. The chief of the ambassadors sent by Perseus to Rome in B.C. 172, to answer the complaints of Eumenes, king of Pergamus. Harpalus gave great offence to the Romans by the haughty and vehe- ment tone that he assumed, and exasperated the irritation already existing against Perseus. (Li v. xiii. 14, 15 ; Appian, Maced. 9. § 2.) [E.H.B.] HA'RPALUS is mentioned by Censorinus (c. 18), and alluded to by Festus Avienus, as having either introduced an octa'cteris, or altered the mode of intercalation practised in that of Cleostratus. [Cleostratus.] It is also mentioned that he in- troduced an Ileccaedecaiteris, or cycle of sixteen years. But how far either was adopted is not very clear, and it would not be worth while to give a special account of one of the obscure points of the Antemetonic calendar. (Plin. //. N. xvi. 34. s. 32 ; Weidler, Hist. Astron. ; Dodwell, de Veterihus Cyclis, dissert, iii. § 30—32.) [A. De M.] HARPALYCE ('ApTraAuKT?). 1. A daughter of Harpalycus, king of the Amymnaeans in Thrace. As she lost her mother in her infancy, she was brought up by her father with the milk of cows and mares, and was trained in all manly exercises. After the death of her father, whom she had once delivered from the hand of the Myrmidones, she spent her time in the forests as a robber, being so swift in running that horses were unable to over- take her. At length, however, she was caught iu a snare by shepherds, who killed her. (Serv. ad Virg. Aen. i. 321 ; Hygin. Fab. 193.) 2. A maiden who died because her love of Iphi- clus was not returned. In commemoration of her fate, a contest in songs ((iJStjs dyuu) was celebrated by maidens. (Aristoxenus, ap. Atlien. xiv. p. 619.) For a third personage of this name, see Cly- MENUS, No. 2.. [L.S.] HARPINN A ('ApTTij/i/a), a daughter of Asopus, from whom the town of Harpina or Harpinna in Elis was believed to have derived its name. (Paus. vi. 21. § 6.) She became by Ares the mother of Oenomaus. (v. 22. §5.) [L. S.] HA'RPOCRAS {'AfnroKpas), an iatralipta, who attended the younger Pliny, with great care and assiduity, about the beginning of the second cen- tury after Christ. He was originally a slave, was afterwards manumitted, and lastly, at the especial request of Pliny, presented by the emperor Trajan with the freedom of the cities of Rome and Alex- andria. (Plin. Ep. X. 5, 6.) He is not the same person whose prescriptions are several times quoted by Andromachus (ap. Galen. De Compos. Me- dicam. sec. Gen. vol. xiii. pp. 729, 838, 841, 978), and who must have lived about a hundred years earlier. [W. A. G.] HARPOCRATES. [Horus.] HARPOCRA'TION ('ApTro/cpartW). 1. Of Argos, a Platonic philosopher and a friend of J. Caesar. He wrote a Commentary on Plato in