Philitas of Cos

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Philitas of Cos

Ancient bronze bust, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca, conjectured by archaeologist Edoardo Brizio (1846–1907) to be a portrait of Philitas of Cos.[1] More recent scholars conjecture it to be an imaginative portrait of Hesiod.[2]
Born c. 330 BC
Died c. 270 BC
Occupation scholar and poet
Nationality Greek
Genres Elegiac, Epigram, Epyllion
Subjects Glossary, Homer
Notable work(s) Ἂτακτοι γλῶσσαι (Ataktoi glôssai, or Disorderly Words)
Influenced

Philitas of Cos (also, Philetas of Cos) was an Alexandrian poet and critic who flourished in the second half of the 4th century BC. Appointed as tutor to the heir of the royal throne of Egypt, he was the most important intellectual in the early years of the Hellenistic world, and he was the first major writer who was both a poet and a scholar.

Contents

[edit] Life

He was preceptor to Ptolemy II Philadelphus, and also taught the poets Hermesianax and Theocritus and the grammarian Zenodotus. About 292 he returned to Cos, where he seems to have led a brotherhood of poets including Theocritus and Aratus. Cos had been captured from Antigonus I Monophthalmus by Ptolemy I Soter in 310, and Philadelphius had been born there in 308; it was a favorite retreat for men of letters weary of Alexandria.[3]

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.[4] Hermesianax wrote that a statue of him was erected by the people of Cos, depicting him as "frail with all the glosses"; Posidippus wrote that a bronze of Philitas in old age was commissioned from the sculptor Hecataeus of Lesbos by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, and that it "included nothing from the physique of heroes. No,… he cast the old man full of cares."[5]

Over-study of Megarian dialectic subtleties is said to have shortened his life. If we are to believe St. George Stock's analysis of the story in Athenaeus of Naucratis's Deipnosophists IX.401e, Philitas worried so much over the Liar paradox that he wasted away and died of insomnia, as, according to Athenaeus, his epitaph recorded:

ξεῖνε, Φιλητᾶς εἰμί· λόγων ὁ ψευδὁμενὁς με
ὥλεσε καὶ νυκτῶν φροντίδες ἑσπέριοι.

Philetas of Cos am I
’Twas The Liar who made me die,
And the bad nights caused thereby.[6]

A more literal translation suggests that the fictitious funerary epigram merely pokes fun at Philitas' literary exactitude:

Stranger, I am Philitas. The word wrongly used and
nights' evening-thoughts destroyed me.[7]

[edit] Works

His reputation continued for centuries, and Roman poets identified his name with great elegaic writing. Almost all that he wrote seems to have disappeared within two centuries, though, so it is unlikely that any writer later than the second century BC read any but a few of his lines.[8]

Other ancient authors mention five poetical works by Philitas: Hermes (hexameters), Demeter (elegiacs), Telephus, paegnia (elegiacs), and epigrams.[9] 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. Propertius linked together the rival poets with the following well-known couplet:

Callimachi manes et Coi sacra Philetae,
in vestrum, quaeso, me sinite ire nemus.[10]

Callimachus's spirit, and shrine of Philitas of Cos,
let me enter your sacred grove, I beseech you.

Philitas wrote Ἂτακτοι γλῶσσαι (Ataktoi glôssai, or Disorderly Words), a vocabulary explaining the meanings of rare and obscure poetic words, including words peculiar to certain dialects.[5] He also wrote notes on Homer, severely criticized by Aristarchus of Samothrace.

At most fifty verses of Philitas survive. Here are two, showing the confluence of his interests in poetry and obscure words:

γηρύσαιτο δὲ νεβρὸς ἀπὸ ζωὴν ὀλέσασα
ὀξείης κάκτου τύμμα φυλαξαμένη

The deer can sing when it has lost its life
if it avoids the prick of the sharp kaktos.[5]

According to Antigonus of Carystus, the kaktos was a thorny plant from Sicily, and "When a deer steps on it and is pricked, its bones remain soundless and unusable for flutes. For that reason Philitas spoke of it."[5]

Fragments edited by Spanoudakis (2002), by C. P. Kayser,[11] by N. Bach,[12] and Theodor Bergk, Poetae lyrici graeci; see also Ernst Maass, De tribus Philetae carminibus.[13]

[edit] Name

The Ancient Greek spelling of his name is uncertain; Φιλίτας (Philitas) is ancient and was common in Cos but the Doric Greek color Φιλήτας (Philetas) is also ancient; the accentuation Φιλητᾶς (Philetâs) did not exist before Imperial times.[14]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Ethel Ross Barker (1908). Buried Herculaneum. London: Adam & Charles Black, 147–150. OCLC 3426554. 
  2. ^ Erika Simon (1975). Pergamon und Hesiod (in German). Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. OCLC 2326703. 
  3. ^ John Edwin Sandys (1903). A History of Classical Scholarship: from the Sixth Century B.C. to the End of the Middle Ages. London: Cambridge University Press, 118–119. OCLC 163481809. 
  4. ^ Alan Cameron (1991). "How thin was Philitas?". The Classical Quarterly 41 (2): 534–8. 
  5. ^ a b c d Peter Bing (2003). "The unruly tongue: Philitas of Cos as scholar and poet". Classical Philology 98 (4): 330–48. doi:10.1086/422370. 
  6. ^ Athenaeus ix. 401 C, tr. St. George Stock
    • St. George Stock (1908). Stoicism. London: Archibald Constable, 36. OCLC 1201330. 
    • Paul Vincent Spade (2005). "Insolubles", in Edward N. Zalta: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved on 2007-06-30. 
  7. ^ Alexander Sens (2002). The new Posidippus, Asclepiades, and Hecataeus' Philitas-statue (PDF). The Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association. Retrieved on 2007-09-21.
  8. ^ A. W. Bulloch (1989). "Hellenistic poetry", in P.E. Easterling and Bernard MacGregor Walker Knox (eds.): The Hellenistic Period and the Empire, The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, 1–81. ISBN 0-521-35984-8. 
  9. ^ Spanoudakis. Philitas of Cos, 85–346. 
  10. ^ Propertius. Elegies III.1 (Latin). Retrieved on 2007-06-30. Allen argues that Philetae is a corruption of poetae, alluding to rather than naming Philitas. Archibald Allen (1996). "Propertius and 'Coan Philitas'". The Classical Quarterly 46 (1): 308–309. 
  11. ^ Carol. Phil. (Karl Philipp) Kayser (1793). Philetae Coi Fragmenta, quæ reperiuntur (in Latin). Göttingen: Typis Barmeierianis. OCLC 79432710. 
  12. ^ Nicolaus Bachius (Bach) (1829). Philetae Coi, Hermesianactis Colophonii, atque Phanoclis Reliquiae (in Latin). Halle: Libraria Gebaueria. OCLC 165342613. 
  13. ^ Ernestus (Ernst) Maass (1895). De tribus Philetae carminibus (in Latin). Marburg: N. G. Elwertum. OCLC 9861455. 
  14. ^ Spanoudakis. Philitas of Cos, 19–22. 

[edit] Bibliography

  • Martine Cuypers (2007-09-09). Philetas. A Hellenistic Bibliography. Retrieved on 2008-01-04.
  • Konstantinos Spanoudakis (2002). Philitas of Cos, Mnemosyne, bibliotheca classica Batava. Supplementum 229. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-12428-4. 

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.