PFORZHEIM, a town of Germany, in the grand duchy of Baden, at the confidence of the Nagold and the Enz, on the northern margin of the Black Forest, 19 m. S E. of Karlsruhe by rail, and at the junction of lines to Wildbad and Ettlingen. Pop (1895), 33,345, (1905), 59,395, most of whom are Protestants. Its most interesting buildings are the old palace of the margraves of Baden, and the Schlosskirche, the latter an edifice of the 12th–15th centuries, containing the tombs and monuments of the margraves. Pforzheim is the chief centre in Germany for the manufacture of gold and silver ornaments and jewelry, an industry which gives employment to about 22,000 hands, besides which there are iron and copper works, and manufactures of chemicals, paper, leather, machinery, &c. A brisk trade is maintained in timber, cattle and agricultural produce. Pforzheim (Porta Hercyniae) is of Roman origin. From about 1300 to 1565 it was the seat of the margraves of Baden. It was taken by the troops of the Catholic League in 1624, and was destroyed by the French in 1689. The story of the 400 citizens of Pforzheim who sacrificed themselves for their prince after the battle of Wimpfen in May 1622 has been relegated by modern historical research to the domain of legend.
See Coste, Die 400 Pforzheimer (1879), Brombacher, Der Tod der 400 Pforzheimer (Pforzheim, 1886); Stolz, Geschichte der Stadt Pforzheim (Pforzheim, 1901).
PHAEDO, Greek philosopher, founder of the Elian school, was
a native of Elis, born in the last years of the 5th century B.C. In
the war of 401–400 between Sparta and Elis he was taken
prisoner and became a slave in Athens, where his beauty brought
him notoriety. He became a pupil of Socrates, who conceived
a warm affection for him. It appears that he was intimate with
Cebes and Plato, and he gave his name to one of Plato's dialogues.
Athenaeus relates, however, that he resolutely declined responsibility
for any of the views with which Plato credits him, and that
the relations between him and Plato were the reverse of friendly
Aeschines also wrote a dialogue called Phaedo. Shortly after
the death of Socrates Phaedo returned to Elis, where his disciples
included Anclupylus, Moschus and Pleistanus, who succeeded
him. Subsequently Menedemus and Asclepiades transferred
the school to Eretria, where it was known as the Eretrian school
and is frequently identified (e.g. by Cicero) with the Megarians.
The doctrines of Phaedo are not known, nor is it possible to
infer them from the Platonic dialogue. His writings, none of
which are preserved, were in the form of dialogues. As to their
authenticity nothing is known, in spite of an attempt at selection
by Panaetius (Diog Laert. ii. 64), who maintains that the
Zopyrus and the Simon are genuine. Seneca has preserved one
of his dicta (Epist. 94. 41), namely that one method of acquiring
virtue is to frequent the society of good men.
See Wilamowltz, Hermes, xiv. 189 seq.
PHAEDRA, in Greek legend, daughter of Minos and Pasiphae. With her sister Ariadne she was carried off by Theseus to Athens, and became his wife. On the way to Eleusis she met Hippolytus, son of Theseus by a former wife (Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons, or her sister Antiope), and fell in love with him. Finding her advances rejected, she hanged herself, leaving behind a letter in which she accused Hippolytus of having made dishonourable
proposals. The same story, in the main, is told of
Bellerophon and Anteia. It formed the subject of tragedies by Sophocles, Euripides (two, one of which is extant), Seneca and Racine.
PHAEDRUS, Roman fabulist, was by birth a Macedonian and lived in the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius and Claudius. According to his own statement (prologue to book iii.), not perhaps to be taken too literally, he was born on the Pierian Mountain, but he seems to have been brought at an early age to Italy. for he mentions that he read a verse of Ennius as a boy at
school According to the heading of the chief MS. he was a
slave and was freed by Augustus. He incurred the wrath of
Sejanus, the powerful minister of Tiberius, by some supposed
allusions in his fables and was brought to trial and punished.
We learn this from the prologue to the third book, which is
dedicated to Eutychus, who has been identified with the famous
charioteer and favourite of Gaius. The fourth book is dedicated
to Particulo, who seems to have dabbled in literature. The dates
of their publication are unknown, but Seneca, writing between
A.D. 41 and 43 (Consol. ad Polyb. 27), knows nothing of Phaedrus,
and it is probable that he had published nothing then. His work
shows little or no originality; he simply versified in iambic
trimesters the fables current in his day under the name of “Aesop,”
interspersing them with anecdotes drawn from daily life, history
and mythology. He tells his fable and draws the moral with
businesslike directness and simplicity; his language is terse and
clear, but thoroughly prosaic, though it occasionally attains a
dignity bordering on eloquence. His Latin is correct, and,
except for an excessive and peculiar use of abstract words,
shows hardly anything that might not have been written in the
Augustan age. From a literary point of view Phaedrus is
inferior to Babrius, and to his own imitator, La Fontaine, he
lacks the quiet picturesqueness and pathos of the former, and
the exuberant vivacity and humour of the latter. Though he
frequently refers to the envy and detraction which pursued him,
Phaedrus seems to have attracted little attention in antiquity.
He is mentioned by Martial (iii. 20, 5), who imitated some of his
verses, and by Avianus. Prudentius must have read him, for
he imitates one of his lines (Prud. Cath. vii. 115; cf. Phaedrus,
iv. 6, 10).
The first edition of the live books of Phaedrus was published by Pithou at Troyes in 1596 from a manuscript now in the possession of the marquis of Rosanbo. In the beginning of the 18th century there was discovered at Parma a MS. of Perotti (1430–1480), archbishop of Siponto, containing sixty-four fables of Phaedrus, of which some thirty were new. These new fables were first published at Naples by Cassitto in 1808, and afterwards (much more correctly) by Jannelli in 1809. Both editions were superseded by the discovery of a much better preserved MS. of Perotti in the Vatican, published by Angelo Mai in 1831. For some time the authenticity of these new fables was disputed, but they are now generally accepted, and with justice, as genuine fables of Phaedrus. They do not form a sixth book, for we know from Avianus that Phaedrus wrote five books only, but it is impossible to assign them to their original places in the live books. They are usually printed as an appendix.
In the middle ages Phaedrus exercised a considerable influence through the prose versions of his fables which were current, though his own works and even his name were forgotten. Of these prose versions the oldest existing seems to be that known as the “Anonymus Nilanti,” so called because first edited by Nilant at Leiden in 1709 from a MS. of the 13th century. It approaches the text of Phaedrus so closely that it was probably made directly from it. Of the sixty-seven fables which it contains thirty are derived from lost fables of Phaedrus. But the largest and most influential of the prose versions of Phaedrus is that which bears the name of Romulus. It contains eighty-three fables, is as old as the 10th century, and seems to have been based on a still earlier prose version, which, under the name of “Aesop,” and addressed to one Rufus, may have been made in the Carolingian period or even earlier. About this Romulus nothing is known. The collection of fables in the Weissenburg (now Wolfenbuttel) MS is based on the same version as Romulus. These three prose versions contain in all one hundred distinct fables, of which fifty-six are derived from the existing and the remaining forty-four presumably from lost fables of Phaedrus. Some scholars, as Burmann, Dressler and L. Muller, have tried to restore these lost fables by versifying the prose versions. The collection bearing the name of Romulus became the source from which, during the second half of the middle ages, almost all the collections of Latin fables in prose and verse were wholly or partially drawn. A 12th-century version of the first three books of Romulus in elegiac verse enjoyed a wide popularity, even into the Renaissance. Its author (generally referred to since the edition of Névelet in 1610 as the “Anonymus Neveleti”) was long unknown, but Hervieux has shown grounds for identifying him with Walther of England, chaplain to Henry II and afterwards archbishop of Palermo.
Another version of Romulus in Latin elegiacs was made by Alexander Neckam, born at St Albans in 1157. Amongst the collections partly derived from Romulus the most famous is probably that in French verse by Marie de France. About 1200 a collection of fables in Latin prose, based partly on Romulus, was made by the Cistercian monk Odo of Sherrington; they have a strong medieval and clerical tinge. In 1370 Gerard of Minden wrote a poetical version of Romulus in Low German.
Since Pithou's edition in 1596 Phaedrus has been often edited and translated; among the editions may be mentioned those of Burmann (1718 and 1727), Bentley (1726), Schwabe (1806), Berger de Xivrey (1830), Orelli (1832), Eyssenhardt (1867), L Muller (1877), Rica (1885), and above all that of L. Havet (Paris, 1895). For the
