PHLEGETHON, in the Greek mythology a river in the lower world which flowed in torrents of fire athwart it, and which scorched up everything near it.

PHLOGISTON, a name given by the old chemists to an imaginary principle of fire, latent in bodies, and which escaped during combustion.

PHOCAS, a common soldier who raised himself by the aid of a faction to the throne of the East, and for twenty years defied attempts to dethrone him, but, being deserted by his party, was taken, subjected to torture, and beheaded in 610.  “His reign,” says Gibbon, “afflicted Europe with ignominious peace, and Asia with desolating war.”

PHOCION, a distinguished Athenian general and statesman, a disciple of Plato and Xenocrates; was wise in council as well as brave in war; opposed to the democracy of Athens, led on by Demosthenes in the frantic ambition of coping with Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander; and pled for a pacific arrangement with them; but having opposed war with Antipater, the successor of the latter, he was accused of treason, and condemned to drink hemlock; the Athenians afterwards repented of the crime, raised a bronze statue to his memory, and condemned his accuser to death.

PHOCIS, a province of ancient Greece, W. of Boeotia, and N. of the Gulf of Corinth; was traversed by the mountain range of Parnassus, and contained the oracle of Apollo at Delphi; allied to Athens in the Peloponnesian War, the Phocians were crushed in the “Sacred War” after ten years’ fighting by Philip of Macedon, 346 B.C.

PHOEBUS (i. e. the radiant one), an epithet originally applied to Apollo for his beauty, and eventually to him as the sun-god.

PHOENICIA, a country on the E. shore of the Levant, stretching inland to Mount Lebanon, at first extending only 20 m.  N. of Palestine, but later embracing 200 m. of coast, with the towns of Tyre, Zarephath, Sidon, Gebal, and Arvad.  The country comprised well-wooded hills and fertile plains, was rich in natural resources, richer still in a people of remarkable industry and enterprise.  Of Semitic stock, they emerge from history with Sidon as ruling city about 1500 B.C., and reach their zenith under Tyre 1200-750, thereafter declining, and ultimately merging in the Roman Empire.  During their prosperity their manufactures, purple dye, glass ware, and metal implements were in demand everywhere; they were the traders of the world, their nautical skill and geographical position making their markets the centres of exchange between East and West; their ships sailed every sea, and carried the merchandise of every country, and their colonists settled all over the Mediterranean, AEgean, and Euxine, and even beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in Africa, in Britain, and the countries on the Baltic.  Her greatest colony was Carthage, the founding of which (823 B.C.) sapped the strength of the mother-country, and which afterwards usurped her place, and contended with Rome for the mastery of the world.  But Phoenicia’s greatest gift to civilisation was the alphabet, which she herself may have developed from Egyptian hieroglyphics, and which, with its great merit of simplicity, has, slightly altered, at length superseded among civilised nations every other system.