abulist, of the age of Augustus, born in
Macedonia, and settled in Rome; originally a slave, was manumitted by
Augustus; his fables, 97 in number, were written in verse, and are mostly
translations from AEsop, the best of them such as keep closely to the
original.

PHAETHON (i. e. the shining one, and so called from his father),
the son of HELIOS (q. v.); persuaded his father to allow him for
one day to drive the chariot of the sun across the heavens, but was too
weak to check the horses, so that they rushed off their wonted track and
nearly set the world on fire, whereupon Zeus transfixed him with a
thunderbolt, metamorphosed his sisters who had yoked the horses for him
into poplars and their tears into amber.

PHALANSTERY, a body of people living together on the Communistic
principle of Fourier; also the building they occupy.

PHALANX, among the Greeks a body of heavy infantry armed with long
spears and short swords, standing in line close behind one another,
generally 8 men deep, the Macedonian being as much as 16; its movements
were too heavy, and it was dashed in pieces before the legions of Rome to
its extinction; it was superseded by the Roman legion.

PHALARIS, a tyrant of Agrigentum, in Sicily, in the 6th century, who
is said, among other cruelties, to have roasted the victims of his
tyranny in a brazen bull which bears his name; the "Letters of Phalaris,"
at one time ascribed to him, have been proved to be spurious.

PHALLUS, a symbol of the generative power of nature, being a
representation of the male organ of generation, and associated with rites
and ceremonies of nature-worship in the early stages of civilised life,
and the worship of which was supposed to have a magic influence in
inducing fertility among the flocks and herds, as well as in the soil of
the earth.

PHARAMOND, a Knight of the Round Table, and the reputed first king
of the Franks.

PHARAOH, a name, now proper, now common, given in the Old Testament
to the kings of Egypt, identified with that of the sun-god Phra, and
applied to the king as his representative on earth; some 10 of the name
occur in the Bible, and it is matter of difficulty often to distinguish
one from another.

PHARISEES (i. e. Separatists), a sect of the Jews who adopted or
received this name because of the attitude of isolation from the rest of
the nation which they were compelled to assume at the time of their
origin. This was some time between the