Antiphemus

Antiphemus (Ancient Greek: Ἀντίφημος) was a man from ancient Greece from Rhodes who was the founder of Gela, around 690 BCE. The colony was composed of Rhodians and Cretans, the latter led by Entimus the Cretan,[1][2] the former chiefly from Lindus,[3] and to this town Antiphemus himself belonged.[4]

From the Etymologicum Magnum[5] and Aristaenetus in Stephanus of Byzantium[6] it appears the tale ran that Antiphemus and his brother Lacius, the founder of Phaselis, were, when at Delphi, suddenly bid to go forth, one eastward, one westward; and from his laughing at the unexpected response, the city took its name. From Pausanias we hear of his taking the Sicanian town of Omphace as an oikistes,[7] and carrying off from it a statue made by the legendary Daedalus.[8][9][10][11][12]

The 19th century scholar Karl Otfried Müller considered Antiphemus a mythical person.[13]

Notes

  1. ^ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 6.4
  2. ^ Scholiast, On Pindar's Olympian 2.14
  3. ^ Herodotus, Histories 7.153
  4. ^ Philostephanus, apud Athen. vii. p. 297f.
  5. ^ Etymologicum Magnum, s.v. Γέλα
  6. ^ Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Γέλα
  7. ^ Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.46.2
  8. ^ August Böckh, Comm. ad Pind. p. 115
  9. ^ Clinton, Fasti Hellenici. B. C. 690
  10. ^ Hermann, Pol. Antiq. § 85
  11. ^ Göller, de Orig. Syracus. p. 265
  12. ^ Morris, Sarah P. (1995). Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art. Princeton University Press. pp. 200–202. ISBN 9780691001609. Retrieved 2016-01-30.
  13. ^ Karl Otfried Müller, Die Dorier 1.6. §§ 5, 6

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Clough, Arthur Hugh (1870). "Antiphemus". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 205.


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