Philetas of Cos
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Philetas of Cos, Alexandrian poet and critic, flourished in the second half of the 4th century BC.
He was tutor to the son of Ptolemy I of Egypt, and also taught the poet Theocritus and the grammarian Zenodotus. His thinness made him an object of ridicule; according to the comic poets, he carried lead in his shoes to keep himself from being blown away. Over-study of Megarian dialectic subtleties is said to have shortened his life. If we are to believe the story in Athenaeus of Naucratis's Deipnosophists IX.401e, Philetas worried so much over the Liar paradox that he wasted away and died of insomnia, as, according to Athenaeus, his epitaph recorded:
Philetus of Cos am I
’Twas The Liar who made me die,
And the bad nights caused thereby.[1]
His elegies, chiefly of an amatory nature and singing the praises of his mistress Battis (or Bittis), were much admired by the Romans. He is frequently mentioned by Ovid and Propertius, the latter of whom imitated him and preferred him to his rival Callimachus, whose superior mythological lore was more to the taste of the Alexandrian critics. Philetas was also the author of a vocabulary called "Aro/cra, explaining the meanings of rare and obscure words, including words peculiar to certain dialects; and of notes on Homer, severely criticized by Aristarchus of Samothrace.
Fragments edited by N. Bach (1828), and Theodor Bergk, Poetae lyrici graeci; see also E. W. Maass, De tribus Philetae carminibus (1895).
[edit] Reference
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
