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'''Philitas of Cos''' ([[ancient Greek]] Φιλίτας; also '''Philetas of Cos''' or Φιλήτας) was the most important intellectual in the early years of [[Hellenistic civilization]], and was the first major writer who was both a poet and a scholar.<ref name=Bulloch/> A Greek associated with [[Alexandria]], he flourished in the second half of the 4th century&nbsp;BC, and was appointed as tutor to the heir of the royal throne of [[Ptolemaic Egypt]].<ref name=Bulloch/> Caricatured as a frail old academic so consumed by his studies that he forgot to eat and drink, his reputation continued for centuries, based on his pioneering lexical study and his [[elegiac]] verse; almost all of his work has since vanished.<ref name=Bing/>
'''Philitas of Cos''' ([[ancient Greek]] Φιλίτας; also '''Philetas of Cos''' or Φιλήτας), the most important intellectual in the early years of [[Hellenistic civilization]], was the first major writer who was both a poet and a scholar.<ref name=Bulloch/> A Greek associated with [[Alexandria]], he flourished in the second half of the 4th century&nbsp;BC, and was appointed as tutor to the heir of the royal throne of [[Ptolemaic Egypt]].<ref name=Bulloch/> Caricatured as a frail old academic so consumed by his studies that he forgot to eat and drink, his reputation continued for centuries, based on his pioneering lexical study and his [[elegiac]] verse; almost all of his work has since vanished.<ref name=Bing/>


==Life==
==Life==

Revision as of 18:14, 3 September 2008

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]
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]
Occupationscholar and poet
NationalityGreek
GenreElegiac, Epigram, Epyllion
SubjectGlossary, Homer
Notable worksDisorderly Words (Ἂτακτοι γλῶσσαι, Ataktoi glôssai)

Philitas of Cos (ancient Greek Φιλίτας; also Philetas of Cos or Φιλήτας), the most important intellectual in the early years of Hellenistic civilization, was the first major writer who was both a poet and a scholar.[5] A Greek associated with Alexandria, he flourished in the second half of the 4th century BC, and was appointed as tutor to the heir of the royal throne of Ptolemaic Egypt.[5] Caricatured as a frail old academic so consumed by his studies that he forgot to eat and drink, his reputation continued for centuries, based on his pioneering lexical study and his elegiac verse; almost all of his work has since vanished.[6]

Life

The Ptolemaic Kingdom, c. 300 BC, was centered on Alexandria in ancient Egypt; Cos was on its northwest frontier.

Little is known of Philitas' life. Ancient sources always refer to him as a Coan, that is, a native or long-time inhabitant of Cos,[4] a Dodecanese island just off the coast of Anatolia. His father was called Telephos (Τήλεφος) and his mother, perhaps, Euctione (Εὐκτιόνη).[7] From a comment about Philitas in the Suda it is estimated he was born c. 340 BC, and that he might have established a reputation in Cos by c. 309/8 BC. He was preceptor to Ptolemy II Philadelphus, which suggests he moved to Alexandria c. 297/6 BC[3] and moved back to Cos in the later 290s, where he seems to have died sometime in the 280s.[4] Later tutors of Ptolemaic royal offspring generally headed the Library of Alexandria, but it is unknown whether Philitas held that position.[5]

Philitas taught the poets Hermesianax and Theocritus and the grammarian Zenodotus. After he returned to Cos 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 Philadelphus had been born there in 308; it was a favorite retreat for men of letters weary of Alexandria.[8]

Philitas' 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.[9] His pupil Hermesianax wrote that a statue of him was erected by the people of Cos, depicting him as "frail with all the glosses"; his contemporary 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."[6]

Philitas' life was said to be shortened by over-study of subtleties of the Megarian dialectic, which cultivated and studied paradoxes such as the liar paradox: if someone says "I am lying", is what he says true or false? According to St. George Stock's analysis of the story in the Deipnosophistae (9.401e) of Athenaeus of Naucratis, Philitas worried so much over the liar paradox that he wasted away and died of insomnia, as, according to Athenaeus, his epitaph recorded:

ξεῖνε, Φιλίτας εἰμί· λόγων ὁ ψευδόμενός με
ὥλεσε καὶ νυκτῶν φροντίδες ἑσπέριοι.

Philetas of Cos am I,
'Twas the Liar who made me die,
And the bad nights caused thereby.[10]

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.[11]

Works

Philitas wrote Disorderly Words (Ἂτακτοι γλῶσσαι, Ataktoi glôssai), a vocabulary explaining the meanings of rare and obscure poetic words, including words peculiar to certain dialects. The vocabulary has been lost, with only a few fragments quoted in later authors. One example, quoted in Athenaeus 9.495e, is that the word πέλλα (pella) meant "wine cup" in Boeotia; this was evidently contrasted to the same word meaning "milk pail" in Homer's Iliad 16.642.[6]

Five poetical works by Philitas are known to have existed. His most famous was Demeter (elegiacs);[12] the others were Hermes (hexameters), Telephus, paegnia (elegiacs), and epigrams. These works were mentioned or briefly quoted by his rival Callimachus and by other ancient authors.[13] Philitas' elegies, chiefly of an amatory nature and singing the praises of his mistress Battis (or Bittis), were much admired by the Romans. He was frequently mentioned by Ovid and Propertius, the latter of whom imitated him and preferred him to 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.[14]

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

At most fifty verses of Philitas survive. Here are two that are known because they were quoted in the Collection of Paradoxical Stories, whose putative author Antigonus (often identified with Antigonus of Carystus[15]) does not say which work they came from; indirect evidence suggests the elegiac Demeter.[16] These two verses show the confluence of Philitas' 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.[6]

According to Antigonus, 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."[6]

Influence

3rd century BC coin depicting Ptolemy II Philadelphus (left), patron and ex-pupil of Philitas.

Philetas gained instant recognition in both poetry and literary scholarship. As tutor to Philadelphus he is assumed to have had great influence on the development of the Musaeum at Alexandria, including its famous Library. A statue was erected of him, and his work was explicitly acknowledged as a classic by both Theocritus and Callimachus.[5]

His reputation for scholarship endured for at least a century. In Athens, the comic playwright Strato made jokes that assumed audiences knew about Philitas' vocabulary, and the vocabulary was severely criticized more than a century later by the influential Homeric scholar Aristarchus of Samothrace in his Against Philitas (Πρὸς Φιλίταν).[6]

He is the first writer whose works represent the combination of qualities now regarded as Hellenistic, and he directly influenced the major Hellenistic poets Callimachus and Apollonius of Rhodes. His poetic reputation endured for at least three centuries, as Augustan poets identified his name with great elegiac writing.[5] His influence has been found or suspected in a wide range of ancient writing.[12] 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.[5]

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.[17]

Bibliography

Philitas' fragments were edited by Spanoudakis with commentary in English:

  • Konstantinos Spanoudakis (2002). Philitas of Cos. Mnemosyne, bibliotheca classica Batava. Supplementum 229. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-12428-4. Reviewed by Hopkinson[12] and by Sens.[18]

and also by Dettori (for vocabulary) and by Sbardella (for poetry) with commentary in Italian:

  • Emanuele Dettori (2000). Filita grammatico: Testimonianze e frammenti: introduzione, edizione e commento (in Italian). Rome: Quasar. ISBN 978-8871401850.
  • Livio Sbardella (2000). Filita: Testimonianze e frammenti poetici: introduzione, edizione e commento (in Italian). Rome: Quasar. ISBN 978-8871401829.

Earlier editions of the fragments include Kayser,[19] Bach,[20] and Kuchenmü̈ller;[21] see also Maass.[22]

References

  1. ^ Ethel Ross Barker (1908). Buried Herculaneum. London: Adam & Charles Black. pp. 147–50. OCLC 3426554.
  2. ^ Erika Simon (1975). Pergamon und Hesiod (in German). Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. OCLC 2326703.
  3. ^ a b Spanoudakis. Philitas of Cos. p. 23.
  4. ^ a b c Spanoudakis. Philitas of Cos. p. 24.
  5. ^ a b c d e f A. W. Bulloch (1985). "Hellenistic poetry". In P.E. Easterling and Bernard M.W. Knox (eds.) (ed.). Greek Literature. The Cambridge History of Classical Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 541–621. ISBN 0-521-21042-9. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help) doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521210423.019 (inactive 2008-07-29). Reprinted The Hellenistic Period and the Empire. 1989. pp. 1–81. ISBN 0-521-35984-8.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Peter Bing (2003). "The unruly tongue: Philitas of Cos as scholar and poet". Classical Philology. 98 (4): 330–48. doi:10.1086/422370.
  7. ^ Spanoudakis. Philitas of Cos. p. 26.
  8. ^ 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. pp. 118–9. OCLC 2759759.
  9. ^ Alan Cameron (1991). "How thin was Philitas?". The Classical Quarterly. 41 (2): 534–8.
  10. ^ Athenaeus 9.401c, tr. St. George Stock
    • St. George Stock (1908). Stoicism. London: Archibald Constable. p. 36. OCLC 1201330.
    • Paul Vincent Spade (2005). "Insolubles". In Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ Alexander Sens (2002). "The new Posidippus, Asclepiades, and Hecataeus' Philitas-statue" (PDF). The Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association. Retrieved 2007-09-21.
  12. ^ a b c N. Hopkinson (2003). "Coi sacra Philitae". The Classical Review. 53 (2): 311–2. doi:10.1093/cr/53.2.311.
  13. ^ Spanoudakis. Philitas of Cos. pp. 85–346.
  14. ^ Propertius. "Elegies III.1" (in Latin). Retrieved 2007-06-30. Allen argued 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): 308–9. doi:10.1093/cq/46.1.308. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |doi_brokendate= ignored (|doi-broken-date= suggested) (help)
  15. ^ Kathryn Gutzwiller (2007). A Guide to Hellenistic Literature. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 166–7. ISBN 978-0-631-23321-3.
  16. ^ Spanoudakis. Philitas of Cos. pp. 209–13.
  17. ^ Spanoudakis. Philitas of Cos. pp. 19–22.
  18. ^ Alexander Sens (2003). "Review of K. Spanoudakis (ed.), Philitas of Cos". Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2003.02.38). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |quotes= ignored (help) • Konstantinos Spanoudakis (2003). "Author's response". Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2003.03.32). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |quotes= ignored (help)
  19. ^ Carol. Phil. (Karl Philipp) Kayser (1793). Philetae Coi Fragmenta, quæ reperiuntur (in Latin). Göttingen: Typis Barmeierianis. OCLC 79432710.
  20. ^ Nicolaus Bachius (Bach) (1829). Philetae Coi, Hermesianactis Colophonii, atque Phanoclis Reliquiae (in Latin). Halle: Libraria Gebaueria. OCLC 165342613.
  21. ^ Wilhelm Kuchenmü̈ller (1928). Philetae Coi Reliquiae (in Latin). Borna: Typis Roberti Noske. OCLC 65409641.
  22. ^ Ernestus (Ernst) Maass (1895). De tribus Philetae carminibus (in Latin). Marburg: N. G. Elwertum. OCLC 9861455.

Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

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