Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/166

92 both Phalaris and Perilaus said to be natives of Agrigentum, while in the Epistles, Phalaris is said to come from Crete, and the other from Athens? These are the reasons why I do not attribute these Epistles to Lucian. There are other reasons which make me doubt whether they are really the work of Phalaris.

It was hardly possible that letters so perfect in their kind, and written by so renowned a man, should have remained unknown for more than a thousand years: and since the Sicilians always preferred the Doric dialect, the tyrant of Agrigentum, a Doric colony, ought not to have used any other. The style of the Epistles is in no way unworthy of a king except that it is too antithetical and sometimes rather frigid. I have noticed also (albeit this is possibly an accident) that, occasionally, the names which the Epistles bear, seem to have been invented to suit their contents. As to history, the ravages of time have rendered uncertain what was the condition of Sicily and the commonwealths in it, at the time of Phalaris, what wars were waged, and what alliances were formed; and the men to whom the Epistles are written are mostly obscure, except Stesichorus, Pythagoras, and Abaris, who are of the same