Phemonoe

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In Greek mythology, Phemonoe was said to have been the daughter of Apollo, and his first priestess at Delphi,^[1] and the inventor of the hexameter verses, a type of poetic metre.^[2] In some studies, attributed to the phrase "know thyself" (nosce te ipsum) found inscribed at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. A mythical Greek poetess of the ante-Homeric period, some writers seem to have placed her at Delos instead of Delphi;^[3] and Servius identifies her with the Cumaean Sybil.^[4] The tradition which ascribed to her the invention of the hexameter, was by no means uniform; Pausanias, for example, as quoted above, calls her the first who used it, but in another passage^[5] he quotes an hexameter distich, which was ascribed to the Pleiades, who lived before Phemonoe: the traditions respecting the invention of the hexameter are collected by Fabricius.^[6] There were poems which went under the name of Phemonoe, like the old religious poems which were ascribed to Orpheus, Musaeus, and the other mythological bards. Melampus, for example, quotes from her in his book Peri Palmon Mantike ("On Twitches") §17, §18;^[7] and Pliny quotes from her respecting eagles and hawks, evidently from some book of augury, and perhaps from a work which is still extant in MS., entitled Orneosophium.^[8] There is an epigram of Antipater of Thessalonica, alluding to a statue of Phemonoe, dressed in a pharos.^[9]

[edit] References

[edit] Sources

• Darius Del Corno. Graecorum de re Onirocritica Scriptorum Reliquiae. No. 26, 1969.
• This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).

[edit] External links

• The Ancient Library - Phemonoe