A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

PHILETAS. PHILEUMENOS. 267
Stat. Silve. i. 2. 252; Hertzberg, de Imitatione Besides his poems, Philetas wrote in prose on
Poetarum, Alexandrinorum, in his Properties, vol. grammar and criticism. He was one of the comlmeni. pp. 186-210). The elegies of Philetas were tators on Homer, whom he seems to have dealt with
chiefly amatory, and a large portion of them was very freely, both critically and exegetically; and in
devoted to the praises of his mistress Bittis, or, as this course he was followed by his pupil Zenodotus.
the Latin poets give the name, Battis (Herme- Aristarchus wrote a work in opposition to Philetas
sianax, 1. c.; Ovid, Trist. i. 6. 1, ex Ponto, iii. 1. (Schol. Venzet. ad II. ii. 111). But his most im57; Hertzberg, Quaest. Propert. p. 207; the form portant grammatical work was that which AtheBL-rT also occurs, Corp. Inscrip. Nos. 2236, 2661, naeus repeatedly quotes under the title of"A'afcTa,
b., or in Latin Batto, according to Lachmann's in- and which is also cited by the titles a'TaKTc' eyAto'genious emendation of Propertius, ii. 34, 31, Tu oaL (Schol. ad Apol. Rhod. iv. 989), and simply
Battus memnoreint, &c.). It seems very probable yAc~ooaL (Etym. 3lag. p. 330. 39). The importthat he wrote a collection of poems specially in ance attached to this work, even at the time of its
praise of Bittis, and that this was the collection production, is shown by the fact that the comic
which was known and is quoted by Stobaeus under poet Straton makes one of his persons refer to it
the name of Ilaiyvia (Jacobs, Animadv. ad A2th. (Ath. ix. p. 383; Meineke, Fray. Comn. Grac.
Graec. vol. i. pars i. pp. 388, fol.; Bach, Frag. vol. iv. p. 546), and by the allusions which are
Philet. p. 39; Hertzberg, Quaest. Propert. p. 208). made to it by Hermesianax (I. c.), and by Crates
It is natural to suppose that the epigrams of Phile- of Mallus, in his epigram on Euphorion (Brunck,
tas, which are mentioned by Suidas, and once or Anal. vol. ii. p. 3, Anth. Pal. ix. 318). Nothing
twice quoted by Stobaeus, were the same collection is left of it, except a few scattered explanations of
as the ilaiyvLa; but there is nothing to determine words, from which, however, it may be inferred
the question positively. There are also two other that Philetas made great use of the light thrown
poems of Philetas quoted by Stobaeus, the subjects on the meanings of words by their dialectic varieties.
of which were evidently mythological, as we see It is very possible that-all the grammatical writings
from their titles, A771,ar7qp and'Ep/t~s. As to the of Philetas, including his notes on Homer, were
former, it is clear from the three fragments quoted comprised in this one collection.
by Stobaeus (Flor. civ. 11, cxxiv. 26), that it was The fragments of Philetas have been collected by
in elegiac metre, and that its subject was the lamen- C. P. Kayser, Philetae Coi Fragnmezta, quae repetation of Demeter for the loss of her daughter. In riuntur, Gotting. 1793, 8vo.; by Bach, Pitiletac
the case of the'Epr/is there is a difficulty respecting Coi, Hermesianactis Colophonii, atqzue Pisanoclis Rethe exact form of the title, and also respecting the liquiae, Halis Sax. 1829, 8vo.; and in the editions
metre in which it was written. Stobaeus three times of the Greek Anthology (Brunck, Anal. vol. i. p.
quotes from the poem, in one place three lines (Flor. 189, ii. p. 523, iii. p. 234; Jacobs, An4th. GCaec.
civ. 12), in another three (Eclog. Phys. v. 4), and in vol. i. pp. 121-123). The most important fi'aganother two (Flor. cxviii. 3), all in hexameters; ments are also contained in Schneidewin's DIelelas
while, on the other hand, Strabo (iii. p. 168) quotes Poesis Graecorum, vol. i. pp. 142-147. (Reiske,
an elegiac distich from Philetas, Ey'EpeAeVia, which Notitia Epiqlrammnatorsma, p. 266; Schneider, A2nal.
most critics have very naturally supposed to be a C}rit. p. 5; Heinrich, Observ. in Auzct. Vet. pp. 50 —
corruption of Ev'Epurf, or, as some conjecture, ev 58; Jacobs, Animadv. ie Anth. Gsvaec. vol. i. pt. i'Epjr iEAeyeia. Meineke, however, has suggested pp. 387-395, vol. iii. pt. iii. p. 934; Preller, in
quite a new solution of the difficulty, namely, that Ersch and Gruber's Enlc/klopiidie.)
the'EpitS was entirely in hexameters, and that the 2. Of Samos, the author of two epigrams in the
lines quoted by Strabo are from an entirely different Greek Anthology, which are distinguished in the
poem, the true title of which cannot be determined Vatican MS. by the heading 4bLTa - auepov. Ill
with any approach to certainty by any conjecture the absence of any further information, we must
derived from the corrupt reading 4,'Ep/ueveLs regard him as a different person fron Philetas of
(Analecta Alexandrina, Epim. ii. pp. 348-351). Cos, who, though sometimes called a Rhodian (proWhat was the subject of the Hesrmzes we learn bably on account of the close connection which
from Parthenius, who gives a brief epitome of it subsisted between Cos and Rhodes), is never spoken
(Erot. 2). It related to a love adventure of of as a Samian.
Ulysses with Polymele in the island of Aeolus. 3. Of Ephesus, a prose writer, from whom the
Another poem, entitled NalaKad, has been ascribed scholiasts on Aristophanes quote a statement reto Philetas, on the authority of Eustathius (Ad specting the Sibyls, but who is otherwise unknown.
Homrn. p. 1885. 51); but Meineke has shown that (Schol. ad Aristoph. Pac. 1071, Av. 963; Suid.
the name of the author quoted by Eustathius was s. n. Bdctis; Vossius, de Hist. Graec. p. 485, ed.
Philteas, not Philetas. (Anal. Alex. Epim. ii. pp. Westermann.) [P. S.351-353.) PHILE'TES (q4tnA'r'rs), a Greek physician, who
There ardealso a few fragments from the poems of lived probably in the fifth century B. c., as he is
Philetas, which cannot be assigned to their proper mentioned by Galen as a contemporary of some of
places: among them are a few Iambic lines, which the most ancient medical men. He was one of the
are wrongly ascribed to him in consequence of the persons to whom some ancient critics attributed the
confusion between names beginning with the syl- treatise rIpl sitaiarts, De Victus Ratione, which
lable Phil, which has been already referred to under forms part of the Hippocratic Collection. (Galen, I)e
PHILEMON: Philetas has also been erroneously Aliment. Facult. i. 1, vol. vi. p. 473.) [W. A. G.]
supposed to have written bucolic poems, on the PHILEU'MENOS (,;evUxEyvos), a sculptor,
authority of the passage of Theocritus, above re- whose name was for the first time discovered in
ferred to, which only speaks of the beauty of his 1808, in an inscription on the support of the left
poetry in general; and also on the authority of foot of a statue in the Villa Albani, where there is
some verses in Moschus (Idyll. iii. 94, foll.), which also another statue evidently by the same hand
are known to have been interpolated by Musaeus. Zoega, to whom we owe the publication of the