Pixo'darus
2. Prince or king of Caria, was the youngest of the three sons of Hecatomnus. all of whom successively held the sovereignty of their native country. Pixodarus obtained possession of the throne by the expulsion of his sister ADA, the widow and successor of her brother IDRIEUS, and held it without opposition for a period of five years, B. C. 340-335.
He cultivated the friendship of Persia, gave his daughter in marriage to a Persian named Orontobates, whom he even seems to have admitted to some share in the sovereign power during his own lifetime.
But he did not neglect to court the alliance of other powers also, and endeavored to secure the powerful friendship of Philip king of Macedonia, by offering the hand of his eldest daughter in marriage to Arrhidaeus, the bastard son of the Macedonian monarch.
The discontent of the young
Alexander at this period led him to offer himself as a suitor for the Carian princess instead of his natural brother -- an overture which was eagerly embraced by Pixodarus, but the indignant interference of Philip put an end to the whole scheme. Pixodarus died-- apparently a natural death -- some time before the landing of
Alexander in Asia, B. C. 334 : and was succeeded by his son-in-law Orontobates. (
Diod. 16.74 ;
Arr. Anab. 1.23.10; Strab. xiv. pp. 656, 657 ;
Plut. Alex. 10.)
The name is very variously written in the MSS. and editions of Arrian and Plutarch : the latter, for the most part, have
Πηξόδωρος (Sintenis,
ad Piut. l.c. ; Ellendt.
ad Arr. l.c.), but the correctness of the form
Πιξώδαρος is attested both by his coins, which resemble those of his predecessors Maussolus and Idrieus in their type and general design, and by a fragment of the contemporary comic poet Epigenes (apud
Athen. xi. p. 472 f.), from which we learn that the penultima is short.
It would appear from this fragment, that Pixodarus had been sent on an embassy to Athens during the lifetime of his father Hecatomnus.
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E.H.B]
