(or rather more) of the lower surface, by the presence of a gland
on the chest, and by the soles of the hind feet being hairy. In the
skull the upper canine is separated from the outermost incisor,
instead of close to it as in the cuscuses (fig. 1). The best-known
species is the brush-tailed phalanger, or brush-tailed opossum
(T. vulpecula), of Australia, an animal of the size of a small fox,
represented in Tasmania by the brown phalanger (T. vulpecula
fuliginosus). The short-eared phalanger (T. canina) represents the
group in Southern Queensland and New South Wales. The dental
formula in both is i. 32, c. 10, p. 33, m. 33. These animals are wholly
arboreal and mainly nocturnal in their habits; and it is these which
form the chief game in “opossum-shooting” among the gum-trees
by moonlight.
The long-snouted phalanger is referred to under Marsupialia) (R. L.)
PHALANX (Gr. φάλαγξ, of unknown origin), the name, in Greek history of the arrangement of heavy-armed infantry in a single close mass of spearmen (see Army: History). In anatomy, the Latin plural phalanges is the term applied to the bones of the finger and toe, and in botany to a group of united stamen clusters. The term “phalanx” was adopted by F. C. M. Fourier (q.v.) as the name of the socialistic community living in a “phalanstery.”
PHALARIS, tyrant of Acragas (Agrigentum) in Sicily, c. 570–554 B.C. He was entrusted with the building of the temple of Zeus Atabyrius in the citadel, and took advantage of his position to make himself despot (Aristotle, Politics, v. 10). Under his rule Agrigentum seems to have attained considerable prosperity. He supplied the city with water, adorned it with fine buildings, and strengthened it with walls. On the northern coast of the island the people of Himera elected him general with absolute power, in spite of the warnings of the poet Stesichorus (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii. 20). According to Suidas he succeeded in making himself master of the whole of the island. He was at last overthrown in a general rising headed by Telemachus, the ancestor of Theron (tyrant c. 488–472), and burned in his brazen bull.
After ages have held up Phalaris to infamy for his excessive cruelty. In his brazen bull, invented, it is said, by Perillus of Athens, the tyrant's victims were shut up and, a fire being kindled beneath, were roasted alive, while their shrieks represented the bellowing of the bull. Perillus himself is said to have been the first victim. There is hardly room to doubt that we have here a tradition of human sacrifice in connexion with the worship of the Phoenician Baal (Zeus Atabyrius) such as prevailed at Rhodes; when misfortune threatened Rhodes the brazen bulls in his temple bellowed. The Rhodians brought this worship to Gela, which they founded conjointly with the Cretans, and from Gela it passed to Agrigentum. Human sacrifices to Baal were common, and, though in Phoenicia proper there is no proof that the victims were burned alive, the Carthaginians had a brazen image of Baal, from whose downturned hands the children slid into a pit of fire; and the story that Minos had a brazen man who pressed people to his glowing breast points to similar rites in Crete, where the child-devouring Minotaur must certainly be connected with Baal and the favourite sacrifice to him of children.
The story of the bull cannot be dismissed as pure invention. Pindar (Pythia, i. 185), who lived less than a century afterwards, expressly associates this instrument of torture with the name of the tyrant. There was certainly a brazen bull at Agrigentum, which was carried off by the Carthaginians to Carthage, whence it was again taken by Scipio and restored to Agrigentum. In later times the tradition prevailed that Phalaris was a naturally humane man and a patron of philosophy and literature. He is so described in the declamations ascribed to Lucian, and in the letters which bear his own name. Plutarch, too, though he takes the unfavourable view, mentions that the Sicilians gave to the severity of Phalaris the name of justice and a hatred of crime. Phalaris may thus have been one of those men who combine justice and even humanity with religious fanaticism (Suidas, s.v.; Diod. Sic. ix. 20, 30, xiii: 90, xxxii. 25; Polybius vii. 7, xii. 25; Cicero, De Officiis, ii. 7, in. 6).
The letters hearing the name of Phalaris (148 in number) are now chiefly remembered for the crushing exposure they received at the hands of Richard Bentley in his controversy with the Hon. Charles Boyle, who had published an edition of them in 1695. The first edition of Bentley's Dissertation on Phalaris appeared in 1697, and the second edition, replying to the answer which Boyle published in 1698, came out in 1699. From the mention in the letters of towns (Phintia, Alaesa and Tauromenium) which did not exist in the time of Phalaris, from the imitations of authors (Herodotus, Democritus, Euripides, Callimachus) who wrote long after he was dead, from the reference to tragedies, though tragedy was not yet invented in the lifetime of Phalaris, from the dialect, which is not Dorian but Attic, nay, New or Late Attic, as well as from absurdities in the matter, and the entire absence of any reference to them by any writer before Stobaeus (c. A.D. 500), Bentley sufficiently proved that the letters were written by a sophist or rhetorician (possibly Adrianus of Tyre, died c. A.D. 192) hundreds of years after the death of Phalaris. Suidas admired the letters, which he thought genuine, and in modern times, before their exposure by Bentley, they were thought highly of by some (e.g. Sir William Temple in his Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning), though others, as Politianus and Erasmus, perceived that they were not by Phalaris. The latest edition of the Epistles is by R. Hercher, in Epistolographi graeci (1873), and of Bentley's Dissertation by W. Wagner (with introduction and notes, 1883); see especially R. C. Jebb, Life of Bentley (1882).
PHALLICISM, or Phallism (from Gr. φαλλός), an anthropological term applied to that form of nature worship in which adoration is paid to the generative function symbolized by the phallus, the male organ. It is common among primitive peoples, especially in the East, and had been prominent also among more advanced peoples, e.g. the Phoenicians and the Greeks. In its most elementary form it is associated with frankly orgiastic rites. This aspect remains in more advanced forms, but gradually it tends to give place to the joyous recognition of the principle of natural reproduction. In Greece for example, where phallicism was the essence of the Dionysiac worship and a phallic revel was the origin of comedy (see also Hermes), the purely material and the symbolical aspects no doubt existed side by side; the Orphic mysteries had to the intellectual Greeks a significance wholly different from that which they had to the common people. Phallic worship is specially interesting as a form of sympathetic magic: observing the fertilizing effect of sun and rain, the savage sought to promote the growth of vegetation in the spring by means of symbolic sexual indulgence. Such were the rites which shocked Jewish writers in connexion with the worship of Baal and Astārōth (see Baal, and cf. Atargatis, Ishtar). The same principle is at the root of the widespread nature worship of Asia Minor, whose chief deity, the Great Mother of the Gods (q.v.), is the personification of the earth's fertility: similarly in India worship is paid to divine mothers. Generally it should be observed that phallic worship is not specially or perhaps primarily paid to male deities, though commonly the more important deity is accompanied by a companion of the other sex, or is itself androgynous, the two symbols being found together.
In the Dionysiac rites the emblem was carried at the head of the processions and was immediately followed by a body of men dressed as women (the ithyphalli). In Rome the phallus was the most common amulet worn by children to avert the evil eye: the Latin word was fascinum. (cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xix. 50, satyrica signa; Varro, Ling. Lat. vii. 97, ed. Müller). Pollux says that such emblems were placed by smiths before their forges. Before the temple of Aphrodite at Hierapolis (q.v.) were two huge phalli (180 ft. high), and other similar objects existed in all parts of the ancient world both in statuary and in painting. Among the Hindus (see Hinduism) the phallus is called linga or lingam, with the female counterpart called yoni; the linga symbolizes the generative power of Siva, and is a charm against sterility. The rites classed together as Sakti puja represent the adoration of the female principle. In Mexico, Central America, Peru and other parts of America phallic emblems are found. The tendency, however, to identify all obelisk-like stones and tree-trunks, together with rites like circumcision, as remains of phallic worship, has met with much criticism (e.g. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed., pp. 456 sqq.).
For authorities see works quoted under Religion: §§ A and B ad fin.
PHALTAN, a native state of India, in the central division of Bombay, ranking as one of the Satara jagirs. Area, 397 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 45,739, showing a decrease of 31% in the decade. The estimated revenue is £13,000, and the tribute £640. The chief, whose title is nimbalkar, is a Mahratta, tracing his descent to a grantee from a Delhi emperor in the 14th century. The town of Phaltan is 37 m. north-east of Satara; pop. (1901), 9512.
