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Pnyta'goras

*Pnutago/ras). 1

1. The eldest son of Evagoras, king of Salamis in Cyprus, who served under his father during the war carried on by the latter against the king of Persia [EVAGORAS], and contributed essentially to his successes. Isocrates speaks of him in terms of praise not inferior to those which he bestows upon the father. (Isocrat. Evag. p. 201; Diod. 15.4.) The circumstances of the conspiracy which led to the assassination of Evagoras are not very clearly known to us: but it is certain that Pnytagoras also was involved in his fate, and perished together with his father by the machinations of the eunuch Thrasydaeus. (Theopomp. apud Phot. p. 120a. b. ed. Bekk., Fragm. 111, ed. Didot.)

1 * There is much confusion in regard to this name. Our MSS. of Diodorus and Isocrates give in some cases Pythagoras, in others Protagoras. But Theopompus, Arrian, Athenaeus, and Q. Curtius, concur in the true form Pnytagoras, which has been judiciously restored by the later editors both of Diodorand Isocrates. Borrell (Sur les Médailles des Rois de Chypre, p. 48) endeavours to defend the reading Pythagoras on the authority of coins, but their evidence is inconclusive.

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