Phrynon of Athens (;

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

; before 657 BC – 606 BC) was a general of ancient Athens, and a winner in

ancient Olympic Games The ancient Olympic Games (, ''ta Olympia''.), or the ancient Olympics, were a series of Athletics (sport), athletic competitions among representatives of polis, city-states and one of the Panhellenic Games of ancient Greece. They were held at ...

.'' Great Greek Encyclopedia'', Pavlos Drandakis, ed., vol. 24, p. 231.

Biography

Phrynon was born in

before 657 BC. In 636 BC, he won the stadion or pentathlon in the Olympic Games (36th Olympiad). Later, he became a general of Athens. In the period 608–606 BC, a war was conducted by Athens against

Mytilene Mytilene (; ) is the capital city, capital of the Greece, Greek island of Lesbos, and its port. It is also the capital and administrative center of the North Aegean Region, and hosts the headquarters of the University of the Aegean. It was fo ...

over control of Sigeum. Phrynon was the general of the Athenians. In order to end the conflict quickly, Phrynon accepted the invitation to duel made by the Mytilenean general Pittacus (one of the Seven Sages of Greece). Phrynon was defeated at the duel because Pittacus had a hidden net beneath his shield and with it caught and killed him.''Philosophes de Diogène Laërce'' (in French)
Chapter IV (Pittacus), p. 74
Pittacus thus won the war for his homeland. The aristocrat and poet Alcaeus of Mytilene wrote several poems about this conflict. The Athenian soldiers received the corpse of their general and, withdrawing from Mytilene, carried it back to Athens, where Phrynon was buried with honors. Herodotus mentions the struggle between Athens and Mytilene in the context of Peisistratos and does not restrict himself to the time of Peisistratos, but freely goes back to an earlier stage of what he says was a protracted struggle. Theodore Wade-Gery notes Phrynon as founder of colonies at Sigeum and Elaious—instead of Achilleion by tradition—and accepting the emendation which produces Phrynon's name at Ps. ''Skymnos'' 707f.

Biography

References

See also