Pharos
Pharos, an island near Alexandria, with a famous light-house
Efario, Egyptum
sunt alii pre mente crucis vexilla tenentes, / qui jam proponunt longius ire Pharon
ingens ‥ miraculum est farum Alexandrinum, quomodo iiij cancros vitreos in mari fundatum est
quasi praecelsa farus [gl.: turris est maxima, ] in edito rupis promontorio posita splendescitherebecn
habitabant ‥ intra vallum ‥ quod civitates, farus [v. l. faros ], pontes, et stratae ibidem factae usque hodie testantur
farus, cenaculum altum juxta mare, utilis [sic ] navigantibus, per quot diriguntur errantes naves
hoc altare farum supra suspenderat altum / qui tenet ordinibus tria grandia vasa novenis
farus,beacanstan , in promontoria rupis posita ‥fyrtor
item a fos hic farus ‥ visio ignis quo nomine vocabant montem quemlibet juxta portum positum super quem igne incenso designabant navigantibus portum inesse
eminet ex alto montis cacumine farus
usque ad summam virtutis farum [gl.: celsitudinem ] ‥ conscenderit
inter quas [lucernas ] duae maximae ‥ fari suis quaeque suspensae ad laquearia catenis
“hac” dixere, “pharo mundi rudis arsit origo, / nec deerit rabula quo mens veneranda nitebit”
in loco quo Dominus crucifigi pro nostra est salute dignatus pendente magno faro desuper, id est aerea rota cum lampadibus quae ipsam crucem debita lucis veneratione coronent
hoc altare farum supra suspenderat altum
- an island near Alexandria, with a famous light-house, Cs., O., Iu.—The lighthouse at Pharos, Cs.—A light-house: Tyrrhena, Iu.
PHAROSor PHARUS(φάρος), a lighthouse. The most celebrated lighthouse of antiquity was that situated at the entrance to the port of Alexandria. It was built by Sostratus of Cnidos on an island, which bore the same name, by command of one of the Ptolemies, and at an expense of 800 talents (Plin. Nat.36.83; Steph. Byz. s. v. Φάρος; Achill. Tat. 5.6). It was square, constructed of white stone, and with admirable art; exceedingly lofty, and in all respects of great dimensions (Caesar, Bell. Civ. 3.112). It contained many stories (πολυόροφον, Strabo, 17. p. 791), which diminished in width from below upwards (Herodian, 4.3). The upper stories had windows looking seawards, and torches or fires were kept burning in them by night in order to guide vessels into the harbour (Val. Flacc.; see Bartoli, Luc. Ant. 3.12).
Pliny (l. c.) mentions the lighthouses of Ostia and Ravenna, and says that there were similar towers at many other places. They are represented on the medals of Apamea and other maritime cities. The name of Pharos was given to them in allusion to that of Alexandria, which was the model for their construction (Herodian, l. c.; Sueton. Claud. 20). The Pharos of Brundusium, for example, was, like that of Alexandria, an island with a lighthouse upon it. (Mela, 2.7.13; Steph. Byz. l. c.). Suetonius (Tiber. 74) mentions another pharos at Capreae. Trajan's breakwater at Centum Cellae (Civita Vecchia) had a lighthouse at each end (Plin. Ep. 6.31), to which Merivale (Hist. 7.253) seems to refer the Pharos Tyrrhena in Juven. 12.75. This is, however, probably the lighthouse at the Portus Romanus or Portus Augusti formed by Claudius two miles N. of Ostia and improved by Trajan (Suet. Cl. 20; Dio Cass.; Mayor's note ad Juv. l. c.).
The annexed woodcut shows two phari remaining in Britain. The first is within the precincts of Dover Castle. It is about 40 feet high, octagonal externally, tapering from below upwards, and built with narrow courses of brick and much wider courses of stone in alternate portions. The space within the tower is square, the sides of the octagon without and of the square within being equal, viz., each 15 Roman feet. The door is seen at the bottom (Stukeley, Itin. Curios. p. 129). A similar pharos formerly existed at Boulogne, and is supposed to have been built by Caligula (Sueton. Calig. 46; Montfaucon, Supplem. vol. 4.50.6.3, 4). The round tower here introduced is on the summit of a hill on the coast of Flintshire (Pennant, Par. of Whiteford and Holywell, p. 112).
Baumeister (Denkmäler, fig. 1688) shows a relief from the Torlonia Museum of the lighthouse at the Roman Port, a round tower at the edge of the quay with beacon flames rising from its summit. A tower without flames is shown on a denarius of Sext. Pompeius as the lighthouse at Messina (Id. ib. p. 957).
[J.Y] [G.E.M]PHAROS (Φάρος, Ephorus, ap. Steph. B., Fr. 151; Scyl. p. 8; Scymn. p. 427 ; Diod. 15.13; Strab. 7. p. 315), an island off the coast of Illyricum, which was colonised by Greek settlers from Paros, who, in the first instance, gave it the name of their own island, which was afterwards changed to Pharos. In this settlement, which took place B.C. 385, they were assisted by the elder Dionysius. When the Romans declared war against the Illyrians B.C. 229, Demetrius, a Greek of Pharos, betrayed his mistress, Queen Teuta, for which he was rewarded with the greater part of her dominions. (Plb. 2.11.) The traitor, relying on his connection with the court of Macedon, set the Romans at defiance ; he soon brought the vengeance of the republic upon himself and his native island, which was taken by L. Aemilius in B.C. 219. (Plb. 3.16; Zonar. 8.20.) Pliny (Plin. Nat. 3.30) and Ptolemy (Ptol. 2.17.14) speak of the island and city under the same name, PHARIA (Φαρία), and Polybius (l. c.) says the latter was strongly fortified. The city, the ancient capital, stood at Stari Grad or Citta Vecchia, to the N. of the island, where remains of walls have been found, and coins with the legend ΦΑΡΙΩΝ. After the fall of the Roman Empire the island continued for a long time in the hands of the Narentine pirates. Its Slavonic name is Hvar, a corruption of Pharos; and in Italian it is called Lésina or Liesina. For coins of Pharos see Eckhel, vol. 2. p. 160 ; Sestini, Monet. Vet. p. 42; Mionnet, vol. 2. p. 46. (Wilkinson, Dalmatia, vol. i. pp. 243--251; Neigebaur, Die Sud-Slaven, pp. 107--111.)
[E.B.J]PHAROS (Φάρος, Strab. 17. p. 791, seq.; Steph. B. s. v.: Eth. Φάριος), a long narrow strip of rock lying off the northern coast of Aegypt, having the New Port of Alexandreia E. and the Old Harbour SW. [ALEXANDREIA Vol. 1. p. 97.] Its name is said to have been derived from a certain pilot of Menelaus, who, on his return from the Trojan War, dial there from a serpent's bite. Pharos is mentioned in the Odyssey (4.355), and is described as one day's sail from Aegypt. This account has caused considerable perplexity, since Pharos is actually rather less than a mile from the seaboard of the Delta; and it is not probable that the land, in the course of centuries, has advanced or the sea receded materially. It is perfectly intelligible, however, if we suppose the author of the Odyssey to mean by Aegyptus, not the country itself but its river, since the Pharos is even now nearly a day's sail from the Canopic arm of the Nile. Any other theory is untenable; for this portion of the coast of the Delta consists of rocky bars and shelves, which remain unchanged, and, though its surface has been heightened, its superficial area has not been materially enlarged since the country was peopled. Pharos was inhabited by fishermen under the Pharaohs of Aegypt; but it first became a place of importance under the Macedonian kings. During his survey of the coast, B.C. 332, Alexander the Great perceived that the island would form, with the help of art, an excellent breakwater to the harbour of his projected capital. He accordingly caused its southern extremity to be connected with the mainland by a stone mole seven stadia, or about an English mile, in length, which from this circumstance was called the Heptastadium or Sevenfurlong Bridge. At either end the mole was left open for the passage of ships, and the apertures were covered by suspension bridges. In later times a street of houses, erected on the mole itself, converted the island of Pharos into a suburb of Alexandreia, and a considerable portion of the modern city stands on the foundations of the old Heptastadium.
Yet, long after its junction with the Delta, Pharos was spoken of as an island (ἡ πάλαι νῆσος, Aelian, H. An. 9.21; τὸ πρότερον νῆσος, Zonar. 4.10). The southern portion of this rocky ledge. (χοιράς) was the more densely populated; but the celebrated lighthouse, or the Tower of the Pharos, stood at the NE. point, directly in a line with point Pharillon, on the eastern horn of the New Port. The lighthouse was erected, at a cost of 800 talents, in the reign of Ptolemy I., but was not completed until that of his successor Philadelphus. Its architect was Sostratus of Cnidus, who, according to Pliny (Plin. Nat. 36.12. s. 18), was permitted by his royal patron to inscribe his own name upon its base. There is indeed another story, in which it is related that Sostratus, being forbidden to engrave his name on his work, secretly cut it in deep letters on a stone of the building, which he then adroitly covered with some softer and perishable material, on which were inscribed the style and titles of Ptolemy. Thus a few generations would read the name of the king, but posterity would behold the authentic impress of the architect. (Strab. 17. p. 791; Suidas, s. v. Ladpos; Steph. B. s. v.; Lucian, de Conscrib. Hist. 100.62.) Pharos was the seat of several temples, the most conspicuous of which was one dedicated to Hephaestos, standing near the northern extremity of the Heptastadium.
That Pharos, in common with many of the Deltaic cities, contained a considerable population of Jews, is rendered probable by the fact that here the translators of the Hebrew Scriptures resided during the progress of their work. (J. AJ.) Julius Caesar established a colony at Pharos, less perhaps to recruit a declining population than with a view to garrison a post so important as regarded the turbulent Alexandrians. (Caesar, B. Civ. 3.112.) Subsequently the island seems to have been comparatively deserted, and inhabited by fishermen alone. (Montfaucon, Supr le Phare d'Alexandrie, Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscript. 9. p. 285.)
[W.B.D]Situated in the deep, elongated bay on the longest Adriatic island, Pharos was founded by Ionian Greeks from Paros in 385 B.C. They were helped by Dionysios the Elder of Syracuse. It is the only Ionic settlement in the Adriatic, the others being Doric. Not long after its foundation, native Illyrians with help from the mainland attacked the settlers but were defeated by the fleet of Dionysios' governor from Issa (Diod. 15.13.1). It is the first recorded naval battle in what is now the Croatian part of the Adriatic. In the Illyro-Roman wars in 229 and 219 B.C. Pharos was the stronghold of Demetrius of Pharos, commander of the Illyrian army, and the husband of their queen, Teuta. When the Romans captured and destroyed the town in 219 B.C., Demetrius escaped to Macedonia. The town was rebuilt but lost its autonomy; and after the founding of the colony at Salona, it was administered as its praefectura. The fertile valley E of town was centuriated and settled by veterans.
During its period of autonomy Pharos was the only known Greek foundation in the Adriatic to mint coins that included silver pieces. The inscriptions confirm the relations of the polis of Pharos with its metropolis on Paros. The cyclopean parts of the city walls are still preserved. From the Roman period are fine mosaics covered by modern streets. In the environs of the city are remains of several villae rusticae.
The finds, mainly the inscriptions and coins, are preserved in the archaeological museums at Zagreb and Split and in the local collection in the Domenican Monastery at Stan Grad.
BIBLIOGRAPHYG. Novak, Prethistorijski Hvar, Grapčeva špilja (English summary) (1955); id., Hvar (1960); L. Robert, “L'inscription hellénistique de Dalmatie,” Hellenica 11-12 (1960) 505-41; N. Duboković-Nadalini, “Ager Pharensis,” Vjesnik za arheologiju i historiju dalmatinsku 63-64 (1961-62) 91-97; D. Rendić-Miočević, “Ballaios et Pharos,” Archaeologia Iugoslavica 5 (1964) 83-92.
M. ZANINOVIĆ- Paus. 5.7.4, Paus. 6.23.6