Pholus

, one of the Centaurs, son of Silenus and Melia, or, according to others, of Ixion and the cloud. He kindly entertained Hercules when he was going against the boar of Erymanthus, but he refused to give him wine, as that which he had belonged to the rest of the Centaurs. Hercules, upon this, without ceremony, broke the cask and drank the wine. The smell of the liquor drew the Centaurs from the neighbourhood to the house of Pholus, but Hercules stopped them when they forcibly entered the habitation of his friend, and killed the greatest part of them. Pholus gave the dead a decent funeral, but he mortally wounded himself with one of the arrows which were poisoned with the venom of the hydra, and which he attempted to extract from the body of one of the Centaurs. Hercules, unable to cure him, buried him when dead, and called the mountain where his remains were deposited by the name of Pholoe . Apollo dor us , bk. 1 .— Pausanias , bk. 3 .— Virgil , Georgics , bk. 2 , li. 456 ; Æneid , bk. 8 , li. 294 .— Diodorus , bk. 4 .— Silius Italic us , bk. 1 .— Lucan , bks. 3, 6 & 7.— Statius Thebaid , bk. 2 .――One of the friends of Æneas, killed by Turnus. Virgil , Æneid , bk. 12 , li. 341 .