Pnytagoras
- a king of Cyprus, an ally of Alexander the Great, Curt. 4, 8, 9.
(Πνυταγόρας). * 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.
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.)
2. King of Salamis in Cyprus, in which position he probably succeeded Nicocles, though we have no account of his accession, or his relation to the previous monarchs. But we find him in possession of the city in B. C. 351, when he was besieged there by the younger Evagoras, at the head of an armament destined to reduce Cyprus for the Persian king. Pnytagoras, however, while he held out successfully against the invaders, sent an embassy with offers of submission to the king of Persia, and thus obtained the confirmation of his power. (Diod. 16.46.) From this time he appears to have retained the virtual sovereignty unmolested until the conquest of Phoenicia by Alexander (B. C. 332), when he submitted, together with the other petty princes of Cyprus, to the Macedonian monarch. He commanded, in person, the fleet with which he assisted the conqueror in the siege of Tyre, and rendered important services. In one of the naval actions before that city his own quinquereme was sunk, but he himself escaped, and was rewarded by Alexander after the siege with rich presents, and an extension of territory. (Arr. Anab. 2.20, 22; Curt. 4.3.11; Duris, apud Athen. iv. p. 167c.) His son Nithadon accompanied Alexander throughout his campaigns, and was appointed to the command of a trireme in the descent of the Indus. (Arrian Ind. 18.) Borrell, in his Essai sur les Médailles des Rois de Chypre (p. 48-50), has confounded this Pnytagoras with the preceding: and the same error has inadvertently been committed in the article Evagoras, No. 2. Vol. II. p. 55a. [E.H.B]