Polyaenus cannot be decisively confirmed. But still less can he be decisively discredited. The story itself suggests that its source was the temple of Zeus Polieus, and a temple founded in the sixth century may well have kept some record, oral or written, of the days of its foundation. There is of course the possibility of forgery, but forgeries generally have some motive, such as gain or glory or love of the sensational. No such motive can easily be imputed to this narrative of Polyaenus, whose picture of Phalaris is borne out by notices in various other writers. Lucian for instance makes the tyrant a great builder and great financier and a great patron of the common people[1401]. Lucian’s Phalaris is represented as defending himself at Delphi against the charge of cruelty: he certainly utters many paradoxes in so doing; but the point of the picture is that it is based on the received tradition, and it may fairly be used as evidence on a question such as that which is being here considered. Aristotle classes Phalaris among the tyrants who owed their position to some high office that they had previously held[1402], a statement which is good evidence for Phalaris as a historical personage and as far as it goes accords with Polyaenus. “When the Agrigentines were rid of Phalaris they decreed that nobody should wear a blue-grey cloak: for the servants of the tyrant wore aprons (περιζώματα) of blue-grey[1403].” The prohibition of these blue-grey aprons makes it look as if the men who overthrew the tyranny of Phalaris thought it necessary to disband his army of uniformed employees. Further the part of the narrative of Polyaenus that most concerns us here can claim a certain probability from what is known of an early namesake and fellow-townsman of the Syracusan tyrant Agathocles. According to Diodorus[1404] this earlier Agathocles, who lived while Syracuse was still under a landed aristocracy called γεωμόροι, probably about 700 B.C.[1405], Being chosen to have charge of the building of the temple of Athena, picked out the finest of the stones that were being quarried and met the expense out of his own pocket (τὴν μὲν δαπάνην ἐκ τῆς ἰδίας οὐσίας ἐποιεῖτο), but misused the stones and built a costly house. At this they say the divine power gave forth a sign: Agathocles was struck by lightning and consumed by fire along with all his house. The Geomoroi confiscated his property to the state, although the kleronomoi (the financial officials) showed that he had taken nothing of the monies of the temple or of the state. They devoted his house to the gods and forbade those who came there to set foot in it, and to this day it is called the embrontaion (_i.e._ the place struck by lightning).