Though Syracuse, after it fell into the hands of Gelo, about 485 B. C., became the most powerful city in Sicily, yet in the preceding century Gela and Agrigentum, on the south side of the island, had been its superiors. The latter, within a few years of its foundation, fell under the dominion of one of its own citizens, named Phalaris; a despot energetic, warlike, and cruel. An exile from Astypalæa near Rhodes, but a rich man, and an early settler at Agrigentum, he contrived to make himself despot, seemingly, about the year 570 B. C. He had been named to one of the chief posts in the city, and having undertaken at his own cost the erection of a temple to Zeus Polieus in the acropolis (as the Athenian Alkmæônids rebuilt the burnt temple of Delphi), he was allowed on this pretence to assemble therein a considerable number of men; whom he armed, and availed himself of the opportunity of a festival of Dêmêtêr to turn them against the people. He is said to have made many conquests over the petty Sikan communities in the neighborhood: but exaction and cruelties towards his own subjects are noticed as his most prominent characteristic, and his brazen bull passed into imperishable memory. This piece of mechanism was hollow, and sufficiently capacious to contain one or more victims inclosed within it, to perish in tortures when the metal was heated: the cries of these suffering prisoners passed for the roarings of the animal. The artist was named Perillus, and is said to have been himself the first person burnt in it, by order of the despot. In spite of the odium thus incurred, Phalaris maintained himself as despot for sixteen years; at the end of which period a general rising of the people, headed by a leading man named Telemachus, terminated both his reign and his life.[417] Whether Telemachus became despot or not, we have no information: sixty years afterwards, we shall find his descendant Thêron established in that position. [417] Everything which has ever been said about Phalaris is noticed and discussed in the learned and acute Dissertation of Bentley on the Letters of Phalaris: compare also Seyffert, Akragas und sein Gebiet, pp. 57-61, who, however, treats the pretended Letters of Phalaris with mere consideration than the readers of Dr. Bentley will generally be disposed to sanction. The story of the brazen bull of Phalaris seems to rest on sufficient evidence: it is expressly mentioned by Pindar, and the bull itself, after having been carried away to Carthage when the Carthaginians took Agrigentum, was restored to the Agrigentines by Scipio when he took Carthage. See Aristot. Polit. v, 8, 4; Pindar, Pyth. i, 185; Polyb. xii, 25; Diodor. xiii, 90; Cicero in Verr. iv, 33.