User:Paul August/Philoxenus of Cythera

Philoxenus of Cythera

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Life

[Rewrite EB11]: The great popularity of Philoxenus is attested by a complimentary resolution passed by the Athenian Senate in 393 BC. A character in a comedy by Antiphanes spoke of him as "a god among men"; Alexander the Great had his poems sent to him in Asia; the Alexandrian grammarians received him into the canon; and down to the time of Polybius his works were regularly learned and annually performed by the young men of Arcadia.

• Campbell, p. 7

Philoxenus of Cythera is the last important figure in the group. He was born in 435/4 and died in 380/79 (test. 2). He is said to have been a slave and to have had Melanippides as his second owner (test. 1). He spent time in Syracuse, where he had an uneasy relationship with the tyrant Dionysius (testt. 3, 4), and he died in Ephesus (test. 1). He was famous for his dithyrambs and for his experimental composition (test. 5, frr. 819, 820, 826, Timotheus test. 10). Like his predecessors he indulged in kampai, ‘twists’ or modulations (test. 12, Timotheus test. 1 nn. 4, 5); yet Philodemus saw his style as Pindaric (test. 7). Unusually for a dithyrambic poet he won high praise from a comic poet, Antiphanes, soon after his death (test. 12).

Poetry

According to the Suda, Philoxenus composed twenty-four dithyrambs, and a lyric poem on the descendants of Aeacus. His most important dythyramb was the Cyclops a pastoral burlesque on the love of the Cyclops Polyphemus for the nymph Galatea. It was parodied by Aristophanes in the Plutus.

Another popular poem, the Deipnon (Dinner Party), is also sometimes attributed to Philoxenus (though more usually to another poet of the same name, Philoxenus of Leucas). Several fragments of the poem, which described a lavish banquet in minute detail, were preserved by Athenaeus.

• Brooks, p. 163

Considerable fragments remain of what was the most popular of his poems, one giving a minute account of a banquet, but it is impossible to regard it as possesing the cahacteristic of the lyric.

• Encyclopædia Britannica (1911), s.v. Philoxenus of Cythera

PHILOXENUS, of Cythera (435–380 B.C.), Greek dithyrambic poet. According to Suïdas, Philoxenus composed twenty-four dithyrambs and a lyric poem on the genealogy of the Aeacidae. ... His masterpiece was the Cyclops, ... Another work of Philoxenus (sometimes attributed to Philoxenus of Leucas, a notorious parasite and glutton) is the Δεῖπνον (Dinner), of which considerable fragments have been preserved by Athenaeus. This is an elaborate bill of fare in verse, probably intended as a satire on the luxury of the Sicilian court.

• Smith, s.v. Philoxenus

Respecting the works of Philoxenus, Suidas relates that he wrote twenty-four dithyrambs, and ai genealogy of the Aeacidae. The latter poem is not mentioned by any other writer; but another poem, which Suidas does not mention, and which it is hardly likely that he reckoned among the twenty-four dithyrambs, is the Δεῖπνον already mentioned, which appears to have been the most popular of his works, and of which we have more fragnimets than of any other.

Of the dithyrambs of Philoxeims, by far the most important is his *κύκλωψ ἡ Γαλάτεια,

• Dalby, 1996

Sources

Ancient

Aelian

Historical Miscellany [= V.H = Varia Historia]

12.44 [Hodern, p. 446]

The Sicilian quarries were at Epipolae, one stade long and two furlongs wide. Men remained in them long enough to marry and have children; and some of those children, having never seen a city before, when they came to Syracuse and saw horses harnessed and cattle being driven, ran away screaming because they were so frightened. The finest of the caves there was named after the poet Philoxenus,⁵⁰ where (they say) he lived while composing the best of his poems, Cyclops, in utter disregard of the vengeance and punishment imposed by Dionysius; in the midst of disaster Philoxenus [fr. 4d P.] devoted himself to the Muses.

⁵⁰ Philoxenus of Cythera (435/4–380/79 b.c.) was the author of many dithyrambic poems, the most famous being Cyclops or Galatea, which was parodied by Aristophanes in his Plutus. Ancient sources give differing accounts of the reason for his punishment.

Aristophanes

Plutus

284–287

CARIO

All right, I won’t keep you in the dark any longer. Gentlemen, my master’s brought Wealth home with him, and he’s going to make you wealthy.

CHORUS LEADER

You mean it’s really possible for us to be wealthy?

CARIO

So help me god, you’ll be Midases if you can find a pair of ass’s ears!

288–289

CHORUS LEADER

I’m so happy and so glad, I want to dance for joy, if what you’re saying is really true.

290–301

CARIO ²⁰

As for me, I’m ready—ta dum da dum—to do a takeoff on the Cyclops

and lead you in dance, hopping with both feet like this!

Hey now, kids, sing out after me loud and clear:

bleating songs of little lambs and stinky goats,

follow me with pricks unsheathed:

you goats will have your breakfast.

CHORUS

Now it’s our turn—ta dum da dum—to pull

something on the Cyclops

(that’s you): bleating away, we’ll find you feeling famished,

toting a pouch of fresh wild herbs, hung over

as you lead your little lambs;

then as you carelessly curl up somewhere,

we’ll hoist a big burning

stake and put out your eye.

²⁰ A parody of a dithyramb by Philoxenus of Cythera, Cyclops or Galateia (frs. 815–24 Campbell), composed after he had fled the court of Dionysius of Syracuse, who came to power in 406. Cario sings the role of the Cyclops, the Chorus the role of Odysseus and his companions (cf. Odyssey 9.105–566).

Aristotle

Poetics

1448a

It is the same in dithyrambic and nomic poetry, for instance . . . a writer might draw characters like the Cyclops as drawn by Timotheus and Philoxenus.⁴ It is just in this respect that tragedy differs from comedy. The latter sets out to represent people as worse than they are to-day, the former as better.

⁴ Both famous dithyramhic poets. There is evidence that Philoxenus treated Polyphemus in the vein of satire: Timotheus may have drawn a more dignified picture.

Politics

8.1342b

for example the dithyramb is admittedly held to be a Phrygian meter, and the experts on this subject adduce many instances to prove this, particularly the fact that Philoxenus when he attempted to compose a dithyramb, The Mysians, in the Dorian mode was unable to do so, but merely by the force of nature fell back again into the suitable harmony, the Phrygian.

Athenaeus

1.6–7a = Philoxenus fr. 816 Campbell = PMG 816 = Phaenias fr. 13 Wehrli

Phaenias (fr. 13 Wehrli) reports that Philoxenus the poet from Cythera (PMG 816) had strong feelings about [cont.] seafood and was dining once with the tyrant Dionysius.⁶⁴ When he saw that Dionysius had been served a large red mullet, whereas he had been served a small one, Philoxenus took his fish in his hands and held it up to his ear. Dionysius asked him why he was doing this, and Philoxenus said that he was writing about Galateia⁶⁵ and wanted to ask the fish about some matters involving Nereus; but that when it was questioned, the fish responded that it had been too young when it was caught and therefore was not part of Nereus’ circle, although the mullet Dionysius had been served was older and therefore well-informed about everything Philoxenus wanted to know. So Dionysius laughed and sent him the mullet he had been served himself. Dionysius enjoyed getting drunk with Philoxenus. But when Philoxenus was caught trying to seduce Dionysius’ mistress Galateia, he was thrown into the stone-quarries. He wrote his Cyclops there, connecting the story with the trouble he had gotten into by portraying Dionysius as the Cyclops, the pipe-girl as Galateia, and himself as Odysseus.⁶⁶

⁶⁴ Dionysius I, who controlled Syracuse from the end of the 5th century until his death in 367 bce.

⁶⁵ One of the sea- nymphs and thus a daughter of Nereus (Il. 18.45 ~ Hes. Th. 250), the Old Man of the Sea (cf. 3.107b with n.); but supposedly also the name of Dionysius’ mistress (see below), although that may be an ancient scholarly error.::⁶⁶ Cf. 13.564e, citing a fragment of the Cyclops (PMG 821) in which the monster praises Galateia’s beauty.

• Hordern, pp. 445–446

Diodorus Siculus

14.46.6

6. Ctesias¹¹ the historian ended with this year his History of the Persians, which began with Ninus and Semiramis. And in this year the most distinguished composers of dithyrambs were in their prime, Philoxenus of Cythera, Timotheüs of Miletus, Telestus of Selinus, and Polyeidus, who was also expert in the arts of painting and music.

15.6 = Philoxenus test. 3 Campbell

1 In Sicily Dionysius, the tyrant of the Syracusans, now that he was relieved of wars with the Carthaginians, enjoyed great peace and leisure. Consequently he devoted himself with much seriousness to the writing of poetry, and summoning men of repute in this line, he accorded them special honours and resorted to them, making use of them as instructors and revisers of his poems. Elated by the flattering words with which these men repaid his benefactions, Dionysius boasted far more of his poems than of his successes in war. 2 Among the poets in his company was Philoxenus⁴ the writer of dithyrambs, [p. 341] who enjoyed very high repute as a composer in his own line. After dinner, when the compositions of the tyrant, which were wretched, had been read, he was asked what was his judgement of the poetry. When he replied with a good deal of frankness, the tyrant, offended at his words, found fault with him that he had been moved by jealousy to use scurrilous language and commanded his servants to drag him off forthwith to the quarries. 3 On the next day, however, when Philoxenus' friends made petition for a grant of pardon, Dionysius made up with him and again included the same men in his company after dinner. As the drinking advanced, again Dionysius boasted of the poetry he had written, recited some lines which he considered to be happily composed, and then asked, "What do you think of the verses?" To this Philoxenus said not a word, but called Dionysius' servants and ordered them to take him away to the quarries. 4 Now at the time Dionysius, smiling at the ready wit of the words, tolerated the freedom of speech, since the joke took the edge off the censure. But when some time later his acquaintances and Dionysius as well asked him to desist from his untimely frankness, Philoxenus made a paradoxical offer. He would, he said, in his answer both respect the truth and keep the favour of Dionysius. Nor did he fail to make his word good. 5 For when the tyrant produced some lines that described harrowing events, and asked, "How do the verses strike you?", he replied, "Pitiful!", keeping his double promise by the ambiguity. For Dionysius took the word "pitiful" as [p. 343] signifying harrowing and deeply moving, which are successful effects of good poets, and therefore rated him as having approved them; the rest, however, who caught the real meaning, conceived that the word "pitiful" was only employed to suggest failure.

⁴ Of Cythera.

Hermesianax

fr. 7 = Philoxenus fr. 815 Campbell = PMG 815

Campbell, pp. 154, 155

Parian Marble

Marm. Par. Ep. 69 (p. 18 Jacoby) = Philoxenus test. 2 Campbell

Campbell

From the time when Philoxenus the dithyrambic poet died at the age of fifty-five 116 years²; Pytheas was archon at Athens.

² In 424 B.C. The mss. read ‘by the Spartans’.

Phaenias (fl. 320 BC)

fr. 13 Wehrli = Athenaeus, 1.6–7a = Philoxenus fr. 816 Campbell = PMG 816

Philoxenus

Testimonia

test. 1 Campbell = Sud. Φ 393 = PMG 814

1 Sud. Φ 393 (iv 728s. Adler)

1 Suda

Philoxenus, son of Eulytides, from Cythera, lyric poet. He wrote 24 dithyrambs, and he died in Ephesus. When Cythera was enslaved by the Athenians,² he was bought³ by a certain Agesylus, brought up by him, and known as Myrmex (‘Ant’).⁴ After the death of Agesylus he received his education when he was bought by Melanippides the lyric poet. Callistratus wrote that he belonged to Pontic Heraclea.⁵ He wrote a lyric poem, The Genealogy of the Aeacids.

² In 424 B.C. The mss. read ‘by the Spartans’.

³ Hesychius Δ 2261 says that someone (a comic poet? See fr. anon. CXXII Meineke, 74 Kock) called him Doulon because he had been a slave (doulos).

⁴ Cf. Τimotheus test. 1 n. 3, Ar. Thesm. 100 (the ‘ant-paths’ of Agathon).

⁵ Wrongly, it seems. Domitius Callistratus (1st c. B.C.?) wrote an account of Pontic Heraclea (F.Gr.H. 433).

test. 2 Campbell

2 Marm. Par. Ep. 69 (p. 18 Jacoby)

2 Parian Marble

From the time when Philoxenus the dithyrambic poet died at the age of fifty-five 116 years²; Pytheas was archon at Athens.

² In 424 B.C. The mss. read ‘by the Spartans’.

test. 3 Campbell = Diodorus Siculus, 15.6

3 Diod. Sic. 15. 6 (iii 366ss. Vogel)

3 Diodorus Siculus, World History

In Sicily² Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, no longer embroiled in the wars against Carthage, was enjoying peace and leisure. He began writing poetry with great enthusiasm, sending for the famous poets, spending his time with them and showering honours on them, and using them as supervisors and reviewers of his poetry. His generosity led to flattery on the part of these grateful critics, and removed from reality by it he bragged more of his poetry than of his military successes. One of the poets at his court was Philoxenus, the composer of dithyrambs, who had a high reputation for his own style of composition, and at the drinking-party when the tyrant’s wretched poems were read he was asked his opinion of them; he gave a rather frank reply, and the tyrant took offence, faulted him for slandering him out of envy, and told his attendants to take him off at once to the quarries. Next day his friends begged him to pardon Philoxenus, so he made it up with him and invited the same company to the drinking-party. As the drinking progressed, Dionysius again began to brag of his poetry and cited some lines which he regarded as particularly successful; but when he asked Philoxenus what he thought of them, his only response was to summon [cont.] the attendants and tell them to take him off to the quarries.³ At the time Dionysius smiled at the wittiness of the reply and put up with his frankness: laughter took the edge off fault-finding; but soon after when the friends of each party asked Dionysius to excuse his untimely frankness, Philoxenus made the strange offer that his answer would preserve both the truth and Dionysius’ reputation; and he kept his promise, because when the tyrant cited some lines which described lamentable events⁴ and asked what he thought of them, Philoxenus said, ‘Tragic’, using the ambiguity to preserve the truth together with the tyrant’s reputation: Dionysius took ‘tragic’ to mean ‘lamentable and full of pathos’, and knowing that good poets excelled in such writing accepted it as praise from Philoxenus; but the rest of the company picked up the true meaning and saw that the term ‘tragic’ had been used only to brand a failure.

² Diod. sets the incident in 386 B.C., probably a few years too late.

³ 'Take me off to the quarries’ became proverbial: Suda A 2862, EI 291, Stob. 3. 13. 31, App. Prov. 2. 26.

⁴ Lucian, Adv. Indoct. 15, referring to the story, says D. wrote tragedy; cf. also Eust. Od. 1691. 32, test. 4.

test. 4 Campbell

4 Sud. Φ 397 (iv 729s. Adler)

4 Suda

‘The letter of Philoxenus’: applied to those who do not accept the terms of an invitation but refuse it. Philoxenus of Cythera on escaping the Syracusan quarries into which he had been thrown for refusing to praise the tragedies of the tyrant Dionysius was [cont.] living in Tarentum¹ in Italy. When Dionysius wrote asking him to return, Philoxenus decided not to give a direct answer, but instead took a scroll and wrote on it the letter οὖ (omicron) several times over,² thus indicating that he rejected the request.³

¹ Croton, according to the scholiast on Aristides 46. 309 Dindorf. Plut. Vit Aer. Al. 8 says he had a farm In a Sicilian colony’.

² Concentric o’s according to the scholiast, who explains that Phil. meant, ‘I don’t care about you,’ ‘I don’t wish to come to you,’ ‘Go to hell!’ etc., omicron being the first letter of these expressions and οὐ being also the negative, ‘not’.

³ See also Apostol. 6. 68, Diogen. 8. 54, App. Prov. 5.16.

test. 5 Campbell

5 [Plut.] Mus. 30. 1142a (p. 125 Lasserre, vi 3.26 Ziegler)

5 ‘Plutarch’, On Music

Further, Aristophanes the comic poet mentions Philoxenus and says he introduced songs² into his cyclic choruses.³ Music speaks as follows: ‘. . . exharmonic etc’.

² Perhaps this can mean that he introduced solo songs into his (choral) dithyrambs. Editors propose ‘monodic songs’ or ‘the songs of sheep and goats’ (see frr. 819, 820) or ‘tasteless’ or ‘strange’ or ‘superfluous songs’.

³ The sentence, which seems misplaced, follows the long excerpt from Pherecrates: see Timotheus test. 1 with n. 4.

test. 6 Campbell

6 [Plut.] Mus. 31. 1142bc (p. 126 Lasserre, vi 3. 26s. Ziegler)

6 ‘Plutarch’, On Music

That training and teaching are responsible for the proper practice or the perversion of music was made clear by Aristoxenus, who says that among his contemporaries Telesias¹ of Thebes was brought up in his youth on the most beautiful music and learned the works of the distinguished poets, in particular Pindar, Dionysius of Thebes, Lamprus,² Pratinas and all the other lyric poets who composed good music for the lyre; in addition, he was a fine piper and was well instructed in all the other branches of a complete musical education; but when he left his youth behind him he was so completely seduced by the elaborate music of the theatre that he came to despise the fine composers on whom he had been brought up and began learning by heart the works of Philoxenus and Timotheus—and the most elaborate and innovative works at that; but when he tried his hand at composition and attempted both styles, the Pindaric and the Philoxenean, he failed to achieve success in the Philoxenean, simply because of the fine training he had had since his boyhood.

¹ Unknown.

² Lamprus test. 1. All four composed in the 5th c

test. 7 Campbell = Philodemus, On Music 1.23

7 Philod. Mus. 1. 23 (IX 67 fr. 5) (p. 133 Rispoli)

7 Philodemus, On Music

If the dithyrambic styles of Pindar and Philoxenus are compared, it will be found that there is a great difference in the characters represented, but the style is the same.

test. 8 Campbell

8 Athen. 8. 352c (ii 272 Kaibel)

8 Athenaeus, Scholars at Dinner

In the matter of these witticisms Stratonicus tried to emulate the poet Simonides,1 as Ephorus says in book 2 of his work On Inventions, alleging that Philoxenus of Cythera had the same ambition.2

test. 9 Campbell

9 (a) Stob. 2. 31 (περὶ ἀγωγῆς καὶ παιδείας) 86 (ii 216 Wachsmuth)

(b) Flor. Mon. 260 (iv 289 Meineke, Stobaeus)

9 (a) Stobaeus, Anthology (on training and education)

The musician Philoxenus, asked what is the greatest aid to education, said ‘Time’.

(b) Munich Anthology

(i) Philoxenus used to advise men to honour their teachers more than their parents, since parents are responsible only for life, teachers for a good life.

(ii) To a youth who had crimsoned Philoxenus said, ‘Cheer up! That is virtue’s colour.’

test. 10 Campbell

10 Athen. 8. 341e (ii 250 Kaibel)

10 Athenaeus, Scholars at Dinner²

The parodist Sopater³ says of Philoxenus, ‘Between two courses of fish he sits gazing at the lookout half-way up Etna.’

² Diogenes Laertius gives an example (4. 6. 11): Phil. found brickmakers singing one of his songs badly, trampled on their bricks and said, ‘As you destroy my work, so I destroy yours.’

³ C. 300 B.C.

test. 11 Campbell

11 Athen. 8. 341 a—d (ii 249s. Kaibel)

11 Athenaeus, Scholars at Dinner

Of the dithyrambic poet Philoxenus of Cythera Machon, the comic poet,¹ writes as follows: They say that Philoxenus, the composer of dithyrambs, was an excessively enthusiastic fish-eater. Once in Syracuse he bought an octopus three feet wide, prepared it and ate nearly all of it except the head. Seized by dyspepsia, he was very seriously ill, and a doctor arrived, who on seeing his poor condition said, “If any of your affairs are not in order, Philoxenus, see to them at once, since you will die before the seventh hour.” Philoxenus replied, “Everything is complete, doctor, and has been in order for a long time. By the gods’ grace I leave my dithyrambs behind grown to manhood and crowned with garlands, all of them, and I dedicate them to the Muses with whom I was brought up; Aphrodite and Dionysus as their guardians—my will makes all this clear. But since Timotheus’ Charon, the one in his Niobe,² does not let me dally but shouts that the ferry-boat is leaving, and gloomy Fate, who must be obeyed, is summoning me³—so that I may have all my belongings with me when I run off down below, fetch me the remains of that octopus!” ’ Elsewhere he writes, ‘Philoxenus of Cythera, they say, once [cont.] prayed to get a throat four feet long “so that I may have the longest possible time for swallowing and my foods may give me pleasure all at the same time.”’

¹ C. 250 B.C.

² Fr. 786.

³ According to the Suda Phil. died in Ephesus. The tale is likely to be apocryphal.

test. 12 Campbell

12 Athen. 14. 643de (iii 422 Kaibel)

12 Athenaeus, Scholars at Dinner

These² are the lines of Philoxenus of Cythera, in praise of whom Antiphanes³ says in his Third Actor: Tar superior to all other poets is Philoxenus. In the first place, he always uses new words of his own, and, secondly, what a fine blend his songs are of modulations and chromatics! A god among men he was, and he knew true poetry and music. But poets nowadays compose ivy-twined, fountain stuff, flower-flitting, wretched songs with wretched words, into which they weave other men’s melodies.’

² Athen. has cited fr. 836(e) from the Banquet (by Phil. of Leucas).

³ Prolific comic poet, first play produced in 385 B.C.

Fragments

fr. 814 Campbell = test. 1 Campbell = Sud. Φ 393

fr. 815 Campbell = PMG 815 = Hermesianax fr. 7

815 Hermesianax fr. 7. 69ss. Powell (Coll. Alex. p. 100) (ap. Athen. 13. 598e)

815 Hermesianax, Leontium²

And you know how the man from Cythera, whom the Muses reared as his nurses, taught to be the most trusty steward of Bacchus and the pipe,³ Philoxenus, came through this city⁴ after a great battering in Ortygia⁵; for you have heard of his passionate longing, which Galatea ranked lower than the very first-born lambs.

¹ See also Timotheus 782, Oeniades 840, P.M.G. 966, Aelian V.H. 12. 44 (Phil. composed the dithyramb in the quarries). Pap. Rainer n.s. 1932 p. 140 fr. bIII seems to be a commentary on a Cyclops.

² Herm. is listing for his mistress Leontium the loves of poets and philosophers.

³ As dithyrambic composer.

⁴ Presumably Colophon, Herm.’s city.

⁵ I.e., battered by his love for Galatea in Syracuse. Text uncertain.

fr. 816 Campbell = Athenaeus, 1.6e = Phaenias fr. 13 Wehrli = PMG 816

816 Athen. 1. 6e—7a (i 13s. Kaibel)

816 Athenaeus, Scholars at Dinner¹

Phaenias² says that the poet Philoxenus of Cythera, who was extremely fond of fish, was dining once with Dionysius when he saw that a large mullet had been served to the tyrant and a small one to himself. He took the fish and put it to his ear; and when Dionysius asked why he was doing that, he replied that he was writing his Galatea and wanted some information about Nereus³ from the mullet, but she had replied that she was too young when she was caught and so could not follow what he said, but that the fish that had been served to Dionysius was older and had a clear understanding of all he wanted to know; at which the tyrant laughed and sent him the mullet that was at his place. Dionysius used to enjoy getting drunk with Philoxenus; but when the poet was caught in the act of seducing the tyrant’s mistress Galatea, he was thrown into the quarries. There he wrote his Cyclops and adapted the plot to his own unhappy fate, making Dionysius the Cyclops, the pipe-girl Galatea and himself Odysseus.

¹ Cf. Suda Φ 395 (s.v. Philoxenus, son of Leucadius).

² Presumably in his work On the Sicilian Tyrants; floruit 320 B.C.

³ Sea-god, father of the nymph Galatea.

fr. 817 Campbell = Scholiast on Theocritus 6 = PMG 817

817 Schol. Theocr. 6(f) (p. 189 Wendel)

817 Scholiast on Theocritus 6

Duris¹ says that Polyphemus built a shrine to Galatea near Mount Etna in gratitude for the rich pasturage for his flocks and the abundant supply of milk, but that Philoxenus of Cythera when he paid his visit and could not think of the reason for the shrine invented the tale that Polyphemus was in love with Galatea.

¹ Tyrant of Samos and historian, c. 340–c. 260 B.C.

fr. 818 Campbell

818 ...

fr. 819 Campbell

819 Ar. Plut. 290ss.

819 Aristophanes, Plutus

Cario. Now then, I want to imitate the Cyclops—

threttaneló—

and lead you along, swaying like this on my two feet:

come on, my children, shout again and again

and bleat the songs of sheep and stinking goats, and follow me, foreskins drawn back, and you’ll breakfast like billy-goats.

Scholiast on the passage: (1) Aristophanes is mocking the tragic poet¹ Philoxenus, who introduced Polyphemus playing the lyre. The word ‘threttaneló’ is a kind of musical sound representing a stringed instrument. The phrase ‘come on, my children, shout again and again’ is from the Cyclops of Philoxenus. He is mocking the dithyrambic or tragic poet Philoxenus, who wrote of the love of the Cyclops for Galatea; and to imitate the sound of the cithara in his writing he uses this expression ‘threttaneló’, for in that work he introduces the Cyclops playing the cithara and challenging Galatea. . . . (2) Philoxenus the dithyrambic poet was in Sicily with Dionysius. They say that he once assaulted Galatea, a mistress of Dionysius, and when the tyrant heard of it he sent him off to the quarry. But in his exile he went from there to the hills of Cythera and there composed his play Galatea, in which he introduced the Cyclops in love with Galatea. This was a riddling reference to Dionysius, whom he likened to the Cyclops since the tyrant’s own eyesight was poor.

¹ An error for ‘the dithyrambic poet’: cf. the reference to ‘the play Galatea’ below.

fr. 820 Campbell

820 Ar. Plut. 296ss.

820 Aristophanes, Plutus (continued)

Chorus. No, we’ll try to catch you while we bleat—threttaneló—you filthy old Cyclops

with your leather bag and its dewy wild herbs,

leading your sheep drunk, and when you’ve tumbled down somewhere for a sleep we’ll get a great burning wedge and blind you.

Scholiast on the passage: (1) ‘with your leather bag’: this expression too is introduced from Philoxenus. (2) Here the poet playfully attacks the passage in Philoxenus where he says that the Cyclops carries a leather bag and eats herbs, for that is how he equipped the actor who played the part of the Cyclops. Aristophanes mentions the blinding too, since it was in the poem. All this he said to mock Philoxenus for not telling the truth: for the Cyclops, as Homer tells, ate meat,¹ not herbs; and what Philoxenus said in his poem the chorus now repeats on the stage.

¹ Regularly? The meat at Od. 9. 295 is the flesh of Odysseus’ companions.

fr. 821 Campbell

821 Athen. 13. 564ef (iii 245 Kaibel)

821 Athenaeus, Scholars at Dinner

But when the Cyclops of Philoxenus of Cythera is in love with Galatea and is praising her beauty, he praises everything else about her but makes no mention of her eyes, since he has a premonition of his own blindness. He addresses her as follows:

Fair-faced, golden-tressed, Grace-voiced offshoot of the Loves.

This praise is blind and not in the least like the famous words of Ibycus (fr. 288).

fr. 822 Campbell

822 Plut. Quaest. Conviv. 1. 5. 1 (iv 25 Hubert)

822 Plutarch, Table-talk

At Sossius’ house when some lines of Sappho had been sung the question arose as to where Philoxenus says that the Cyclops tries to cure his love

with the tuneful Muses.

Scholiast on Theocritus 11

Philoxenus makes the Cyclops console himself for his love of Galatea and tell the dolphins to report to her that he is healing his love with the Muses.¹

¹ Cf. Plut. Amator. 18, Callimachus Epigr. III. 1 ff. Gow-Page, Philodemus, Mus. 4. xv. 1 ff. (p. 58 Neubecker) (the line acceptable if Phil. meant not music but poetry!).

fr. 823 Campbell

823 Sud. E 336 (ii 211s. Adler)

823 Suda

You sacrificed: you shall be sacrificed in turn.

The Cyclops says this to Odysseus in Philoxenus. They misinterpret Homer’s ‘Then we lit a fire and sacrificed’ (Od. 9. 231) as a reference to the lambs instead of taking it as ‘We made burnt offering.’¹

¹ I.e. Homer’s verb means not that they slit the throats of the Cyclops’ lambs (as Philoxenus and others take it), but that they burned his cheeses. See also Timotheus 783.

fr. 824 Campbell

824 Zenob. 5. 45 (i 139 Leutsch-Schneidewin)

824 Zenobius, Proverbs

With what a monster has God imprisoned me!

The proverb is used of people who are distressed by some vexatious circumstance: the Cyclops is a play¹ by the poet Philoxenus in which Odysseus speaks the words after being shut in the Cyclops’ cave.

¹ See fr. 819 n. l.

fr. 825 Campbell

825 Sud. A 2657 (i 235 Adler)

825 Suda

Antigenides, son of Satyrus, Theban musician, pipe-singer of Philoxenus.¹ He was the first to wear Milesian shoes and wore a yellow cloak in The Reveller.² He wrote songs.

¹ See also P.M.G. 840 (Oeniades).

² Berglein suggested that this was a dithyramb by Philoxenus.

fr. 826 Campbell

826 Aristot. Pol. 8. 7. 1342b (p. 290 Immisch)

826 Aristotle, Politics

Composition shows how the dithyramb is generally agreed to be a Phrygian form. The experts in the field give many examples and in particular tell how Philoxenus tried to compose his dithyramb The Mysians¹ in the Dorian harmonia but failed: nature herself forced him back to the appropriate harmonia, the Phrygian.

¹ The title is the result of an emended text. See also ‘Plutarch’ Mus. 33. 1142 f for a possible reference to the harmoniai of this dithyramb.

fr. 827 Campbell

827 Hsch. M 900 (ii 651 Latte) (Hdn. ii 550 Lentz)

827 Hesychius, Lexicon

μεσαύχενες (‘mid-neck’): Aristophanes uses the expression ‘mid-neck corpses’ of wineskins. It should be written with the μ, μεσαύχενες, since the middle of the wine-skin’s neck is squeezed by the cord they used to put round it. Aristophanes is parodying the words in the Syrus of Philoxenus.¹ Some write δεσαύχενες (‘tied-neck’) with the δ, wrongly.

¹ Did Phil. apply the adjective to corpses hung by the neck? Editors emend Syrus (‘The Syrian’) to Satyrus, Sisyphus or Scirus.

Plutarch

Moralia, On Music

30 1142a

Further, Aristophanes^a the comic poet mentions Philoxenus^b and says that he introduced this kind of music into the cyclic choruses.^c Music speaks as follows^d:

. . . damnable and off-key treble quavers

Infecting me with wrigglers like a cabbage.^e

^a Frag. 641 (ed. Kock). Weil and Reinach suppose that the allusion is to Plutus, 293–294.

^b Frag. a 15 (ed. del Grande).

^c For these see A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy (Oxford, 1927), pp. 48–49.

^d This seems to mean (if the text is sound our author is an unskilful excerptor) that Music (in the fragment of Pherecrates) speaks as follows (of Philoxenus).

^e Kampôn are either “turns” (modulations) in music or “cabbage-worms,” named from the bend they make in crawling (cf. “bend-worms,” “loopers”).

31 1142bc

31. “That success or failure in music depends on one’s training and instruction is shown by Aristoxenus.^g Thus he says that of his contemporaries Telesias^h of Thebes had in youth been brought up on the finest kind of music, and had been taught among other approved compositions those of Pindar, Dionysiusⁱ of Thebes, Lamprus,^j Pratinas, and those other lyric poets who had shown themselves excellent composers for the cithara; and that he also performed well on the auloi, and had laboured to good purpose in the other branches of the musical art; but when past his prime he had been so taken in by the elaborate music of the theatre that he lost interest in the noble works on which he had been reared, and set to [cont.] earning by heart the works of Philoxenus and Timotheüs, and even of these choosing the pieces most complex and full of innovation. Yet when he set out to compose music and tried his hand at both manners of composition, Pindar’s and Philoxenus’, he found himself unable to achieve success in the latter; and the reason was his excellent training from boyhood.

^g Frag. 76 (ed. Wehrli); Testimonium 26 (ed. da Rios).

^h Otherwise unknown.

ⁱ Probably the celebrated musician who taught Epaminondas the playing of the cithara and singing to it (Nepos, Epam. 2. 1).

^j Mentioned by Plato (Menexenus, 236 a).

33 1142f

33. “This will become clear if we pass in review the various disciplines and note the province of each. Thus take harmonics. It is evident that it studies the genera of movement in pitch, its intervals, its sets of tetrachords, its notes and modes and the modulations from one set of tetrachords to another; and further than this harmonics cannot proceed. Hence we may not go on to ask it to determine whether the composer (in the Mysians^c for instance) acted with propriety in taking the Hypodorian mode for the overture of the piece or the Mixolydian and Dorian for the finale or the Hypophrygian and Phrygian for the central part. For the science of harmonics does not extend to such questions but requires many supplements, since it is blind to the significance of propriety. ...

^c Cf. Aristotle, Politics, vii. 7 (1342 b 7–12): “Thus the dithyramb is admittedly held to belong to the Phrygian mode. Of this the experts in the subject give many examples, among them telling how Philoxenus attempted to compose a dithyramb, the Mysians [Μυσοὺς Schneider; μύθους], in the Dorian mode, and was unable to do so, the very nature of the genre forcing him back into the suitable mode, the Phrygian.”

Suda

Φ 393 (iv 728s. Adler) = Philoxenus test. 1 Campbell = PMG 814

Campbell

Philoxenus, son of Eulytides, from Cythera, lyric poet. He wrote 24 dithyrambs, and he died in Ephesus. When Cythera was enslaved by the Athenians,² he was bought³ by a certain Agesylus, brought up by him, and known as Myrmex (‘Ant’).⁴ After the death of Agesylus he received his education when he was bought by Melanippides the lyric poet. Callistratus wrote that he belonged to Pontic Heraclea.⁵ He wrote a lyric poem, The Genealogy of the Aeacids.

² In 424 B.C. The mss. read ‘by the Spartans’.

³ Hesychius Δ 2261 says that someone (a comic poet? See fr. anon. CXXII Meineke, 74 Kock) called him Doulon because he had been a slave (doulos).

⁴ Cf. Τimotheus test. 1 n. 3, Ar. Thesm. 100 (the ‘ant-paths’ of Agathon).

⁵ Wrongly, it seems. Domitius Callistratus (1st c. B.C.?) wrote an account of Pontic Heraclea (F.Gr.H. 433).

Suda On Line

Son of Eulytides, from Cythera, a lyric poet. He wrote twenty-four dithyrambs[1] and ended his days in Ephesus. At the time when the people of Cythera were enslaved by the Lacedaemonians[2] he was purchased by a certain Agesylus and raised by him and was called Myrmex [?Ant?].[3] After Agesilaus[4] died he was educated by the lyric poet Melanippides, who had bought him.[5] Callistratus wrote that he was a native of Heraclea on the Black Sea. [6] He wrote in melic verse a Genealogy of the Aeacids.

c.435-380 BCE; OCD(4) s.v. Philoxenos(1). See also sigma 1192 note 2, distinguishing him from others of the same name and habits (cf. Campbell pp. 177-79). For his proverbial "Take me back to the quarries" see alpha 2862, delta 1178, epsiloniota 291, phi 397.

[1] For entries on the intricate style of the "new dithyramb", of which he was a representative, see delta 1029, kappa 2647, and the Notes and bibliography there. On their "fearless" innovations see Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Comp. 19, cf. sigma 1192 n. 3). His Cyclops was parodied in Aristophanes, Plutus, 290ff.; his style was described by Antiphanes in the Tritagonistes (fr. 207 PCG vol. 2). For his famous piper, Antigenides, see alpha 2657.

[2] Read 'Athenians' for 'Lacedaemonians'. Cythera was captured by Athens in 424. See Thucydides 4.53-54 (web address 1).

[3] Perhaps referring to the intricacy of his music. Cf. Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae 100 (web address 2). Discussed by Pickard-Cambridge pp.46-47.

[4] Read 'Agesylus' for 'Agesilaus'.

[5] Melanippides of Melos, active after c.480 BCE. The testimonia and fragments are collected in Campbell pp.14-29. See mu 454.

[6] Probably Domitius Callistratus [C1 BCE]. RE Bd.5.1 col. 1419 s.v. Kallistratos 39. See Campbell p.139 n.5.

Φ 397 (iv 729s. Adler) = Philoxenus test. 4 Campbell

Suda On Line

[sc. A proverbial phrase] in reference to those who do not obey a summons but rather decline it; for Philoxenus of Cythera, after escaping from the Syracusan stone-quarries into which he had been thrown because he had not praised the tragedies of the tyrant Dionysius, was living at Taras in Sicily when Dionysius sent after him and in a letter asked him to return.[1] Philoxenus did not know [how] to reply, but taking a sheet of papyrus he wrote on it repeatedly the single letter o.[2] In this way he showed unequivocally that he rejected the summons.

See on this subject under "Take me away to the stone-quarries".[3]

For grammation see under gamma 419. For slightly different proverbial phrases generated by the same story see Appendix Proverbiorum 5.16, Apostolius 17.5.

[1] Philoxenus of Cythera (c.435-380 BCE), dithyrambic poet (phi 393, delta 1029); see generally OCD4 1137-8, under Philoxenus(1). While he was resident at the court of Dionysius I, he slighted the bad verses of the tyrant and for this reason was sent to the quarries. The story is told by Diodorus Siculus 15.6.2-5. Taras (the Roman Tarentum, cf. tau 112 and tau 113) is actually in southern Italy. (In the scholia to Aelius Aristides -- see next note -- the equivalent phrase reads "at Kroton in Italy".)

[2] The letter o stood for the negative ou). According to the scholia to Aristides 46.309 b/ Philoxenus wrote a series of concentric os, filling the whole page. See J.M. Edmonds, Lyra Graeca (LCL, 1967) v.3 p.373 for a translation of the scholia.

[3] alpha 2862; see also delta 1178, epsiloniota 291.

Modern

Britannica 1911

s.v. Philoxenus of Cythera

PHILOXENUS, of Cythera (435–380 B.C.), Greek dithyrambic poet. On the conquest of the island by the Athenians he was taken as a prisoner of war to Athens, where he came into the possession of the dithyrambic poet Melanippides, who educated him and set him free. Philoxenus afterwards resided in Sicily, at the court of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, whose bad verses he declined to praise, and was in consequence sent to work in the quarries. After leaving Sicily he travelled in Greece, Italy and Asia, reciting his poems, and died at Ephesus. According to Suïdas, Philoxenus composed twenty-four dithyrambs and a lyric poem on the genealogy of the Aeacidae. In his hands the dithyramb seems to have been a sort of comic opera, and the music, composed by himself, of a debased character. His masterpiece was the Cyclops, a pastoral burlesque on the love of the Cyclops for the fair Galatea, written to avenge himself upon Dionysius, who was wholly or partially blind of one eye. It was parodied by Aristophanes in the Plutus (290). Another work of Philoxenus (sometimes attributed to Philoxenus of Leucas, a notorious parasite and glutton) is the Δεῖπνον (Dinner), of which considerable fragments have been preserved by Athenaeus. This is an elaborate bill of fare in verse, probably intended as a satire on the luxury of the Sicilian court. The great popularity of Philoxenus is attested by a complimentary resolution passed by the Athenian senate in 393. The comic poet Antiphanes spoke of him as a god among men; Alexander the Great had his poems sent to him in Asia; the Alexandrian grammarians received him into the canon; and down to the time of Polybius his works were regularly learned and annually acted by the Arcadian youth.

Brooks

p. 163

Philoxenus of Cythera (435-380) was a pupil of Melanippides, and introduced still further changes into dithyrambic composition. He lived at Athens, and aftererwards under the protection of Dionysius the elder at Syracuse. The following fragments are from his Cyclops. The second is the address of the Cyclops to Galetea, the third the exclamation of Ulysses in the Cyclops' cave, and the fourth is adressed by the Cyclops to Ulysses in reference to the slaughter of sheep. Considerable fragments remain of what was the most popular of his poems, one giving a minute account of a banquet, but it is impossible to regard it as possesing the cahacteristic of the lyric.

p. 164

Campbell

p. 1

Pherecrates in his Cheiron provided an amusing list of offenders against Music (fr. 155 K.-A.: see testimonia of the various poets): he names four, perhaps five, of them in a sequence which purports to represent both chronological order and an [cont.]

p. 2

increse in viciousness: Melanippides, Cinesias, Phrynis, Timotheus, worst of them all, and perhaps Philoxenus (see Timotheus test. 1 n. 4). The jokes are based on the musical innovations of the poets: the increased number of notes on the cithara, due either to a greater number of strings, twelve on the instruments of Melanippides and Timotheus, or in the case of Phrynis to the use of a device for the rapid altering of pitch; the associated kampai, ‘twists’ or ‘bends’, modulations from one harmonia to another, ascribed to Cinesias, Phrynis and Timotheus (or Philoxenus); and the ‘ant-runs’ of Timotheus, which were probably his wandering melodies.

The poets also altered the triadic structure of the dithyramb, for which see Bacchylides 15–17, 19, by introducing anabolai, long solo-songs, in place of passages with strophic responsion: see Melanippides test. 4, Cinesias test. 2 n. 6. This was perhaps intended to add greater realism and variety; Bacchylides himself had composed his Theseus (18) in which Aegeus answered a chorus or chorus-leader, but his poem is in four strophes of identical metre. The Cyclops of Philoxenus wore a costume and sang a solo to the cithara (frr. 819, 820), although the dithyramb was traditionally a choral song accompanied by the pipes; see D. F. Sutton, ‘Dithyramb as Δρᾶμα᾿, Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 13 (1983) 37 ff.

p. 3

Although the nome differed completely from the dithyramb in its performance, being sung by a soloist to his cithara accompaniment, its language was no different. Many of the new poets composed both nomes and dithyrambs—Melanippides, Phrynis, Timotheus and Philoxenus—and it is not always possible to ascribe a given fragment to one genre or the other. The poets’ diction was florid. They relished the compound words which were a feature of earlier choral poetry: a drowning Persian can address the sea as ‘gadfly-crazed ancient-hate, unfaithful darling of the dash-racing wind’ (Timotheus 791.79 ff.), or the Cyclops his beloved Galatea as ‘fair-faced, golden-tressed, Grace-voiced offshoot of the Loves’ (Philox. 821). Novelties abound: ‘the emerald-haired sea’ (791.31), ‘mantic, frantic, Bacchic, fanatic’ Artemis (778 (b)), ‘the flashing-winged breath’ of Athena (Telestes 805 (c). 2). Periphrasis is in vogue: wine and water are ‘the blood of the Bacchic god’ and ’the fresh-flowing tears of the Nymphs’ (Tim. 780. 4 f.), oars are ‘firwood arms’ or ‘the sailing device of the noisy pine’ or ‘the ship’s mountain feet’ (791. 5 f., 12 f., 90 f.). The aim was to excite and astonish.

p. 7

Philoxenus of Cythera is the last important figure in the group. He was born in 435/4 and died in 380/79 (test. 2). He is said to have been a slave and to have had Melanippides as his second owner (test. 1). He spent time in Syracuse, where he had an uneasy relationship with the tyrant Dionysius (testt. 3, 4), and he died in Ephesus (test. 1). He was famous for his dithyrambs and for his experimental composition (test. 5, frr. 819, 820, 826, Timotheus test. 10). Like his predecessors he indulged in kampai, ‘twists’ or modulations (test. 12, Timotheus test. 1 nn. 4, 5); yet Philodemus saw his style as Pindaric (test. 7). Unusually for a dithyrambic poet he won high praise from a comic poet, Antiphanes, soon after his death (test. 12).

p. 139

PHILOXENUS OF CYTHERA

LIFE AND WORK¹

¹ See also Melanippides test. 1 n. 5.

CHRONOLOGY¹

¹ See also Melanippides test. 1 n. 5.

p. 141

PHILOXENUS AND DIONYSIUS¹

¹ See also frr. 816, 819, Cicero, Att. 4. 6. 2, Plut. Tranq. 12, Paus. 1. 2. 3, Lucian, Cal. 14, Aelian, V.H. 12. 44, schol. Ar. Plut. 179, Tzetz. Chil. 5. 23. 152 ff.

p. 145

MUSIC¹

¹ See also frr. 825, 826, Melanippides test. 6, Timotheus testt. 8, 10, Aelian H.A. 2. 11.

Creese

p. 562

It has been suggested, in fact, that by the time Euripides presented Polyphemus on stage in his satry play Cyclops (c. 408), the story had come [cont.]

p. 563

to be regarded as 'primarily comic'.³ That this should have been the case even before the composition of Philoxenus' dithyramb Cyclops or Galatea (c. 400),⁴ in which, possibly for the first time,⁵ Polyphemus was given a female love object, only serves to show what a wealth of possibility the myth already contained in its original Homeric version. ...

Euripides had created humour out of the image of an intoxicated and aggressively amorous Cyclops, whp calls Silenus his 'Ganymede', declares his general preference for boys, styles himself Silenus' ἐραστής, and hauls the protesting satyr into his cave (thankfully offstage) to bugger him there (Cyc. 581-9). If Polyphemus' Euripidean transformation was from confirmed bachelor to the [cont.]

⁵ Hopkinson (n. 1), 36 thinks that Philoxenus' was 'the first literary treatment of the Cyclops in love'; so does Hordern, 'Cycopea: Philoxenus, Theocritus, Callimachus and Bion', CQ 54 (2004), 285-92, at 285. Hunter (n. 2), 216 cites Silenus' oath to the Cyclops by 'the daughters of Nereus' (of which Galatea was one, in the Homeric and Hesiodic accounts: Il. 18.45, Theog. 250) at Eur. Cyc. 264 as possible evidence for a pre-existing tradition which linked Polyphemus and Galatea, but regards it as an uncertain question.

p. 564

pederast,⁶ then his Philoxenian transformation involved a change of sexual preference. A testimonium of Phaenias claims that Philoxenus composed his dithyramb after being sent to the quarries by Dionysius I of Syracuse for attempting to seduce his αὐλητρίς, one Galatea.⁷

⁶ There were female Cyclopes in the Homeric version (Od. 9.115), but none lived with Polyphemus.

⁷ Phaenias fr. 13 Wehrli (= PMG 816); see n. 4 above.

Farmer

[In folder]

pp. 213–219

p. 213

the parados of Wealth takes the form of a parody of a dithyramb by Philoxenus;

...

The Δρᾶμα of Philoxenus: Dithyramb in the Parados of Wealth

... [Arion] quickly returns leading a chorus of old farmers ...

p. 214

The chorus does give, however, a rousing opening number quite unlike any other parados in extant Greek drama. ... At this point, however the parados takes a new turn: Carion announces his intention to lead the chorus in a dance of celebration, and rather unexpectedly, this takes the form of a singing competition between Carion and the chorus parodying a contemporary dithyramb, the Cycolps (or Galatea) of Philoxenus.³⁶

Philoxenus' dithyramb seems to have been a somewhat radical innovation in the genre. In citing passages from Philoxenus' Cyclops that Aristophanes has parodied here, the scholiasts call the poem a δρᾶμα, refer to entrances and exits, and describe the Cyclops as placed by an actor.³⁷ The Suda refers to Pindar's dithyrambs as δρἀματα (π1617), and there are a handful of references to δρἀματα by Arion,³⁸ but Philoxenus' Cyclops or Galatea is the only dithyramb that in our evidence is consistently described with dramatic terminolgy, the only dithyramb that is ever described as having entrances, exits, or actors. At one point the scholiast seems unsure what sort of poet Philoxenus even was (Σ Ar. Plut. 290):

[Greek text]

He is ridiculing Philoxenus the dithyrambist (or tragedian?).

... but it seems likely that Aristophanes has singled [cont.]

p. 215

the Cyclops out for parody in part because Philoxenus was beginning to blur the boundary between dithyramb and drama.

That it was the line particularly between dithyramb and comic drama the Poloxenus had transgressed is suggested by Aristotle's discussion of the Cyclops in his Poetics (1448a). Just as tragedy shows men better and comedy worse than they are, Aristotle explains, so other genres of poetry can show better or worse men; despite certain textual difficulties in this passage, it is clear that among the various examples he cites Aristotle presents Philoxenus' Cyclops as a poem that depicts the worse type characters, a typology that aligns Cyclops with comedy.³⁹ Aristophanes would not have parodied the poem so extensively if he had not been able to rely on his audience, or at least some portion of it, to recognize his distortion of Philoxenus' work; as with the comic poets' parodies of tragedy, Aristophanes' parody of Cyclops here can be fully appreciated only by audience members who recognize the original text, and several critics have concluded that the dithyramb must have been performed or even premiered at Athens.⁴⁰

Carion's song takes the form of a contest between himself and the chorus to control the very song they are performing.⁴¹ As a single performer leading a dancing chorus, he takes on the position of the ὲξἀρχων, recreating the structure of a dithyrambic presentation. Carion begins by assigning himself the role of Polyphemus and the chros that of his sheep(290-95):

[Greek text]

And now I wish—threttanello!—to imitate the Cyclops and, swinging my feet to and fro like this, to lead you in the dance. But come on, children, shout and shout again the songs of bleating sheep and smelly goats and follow with your cocks skinned—for you’re going to eat the goat’s breakfast!

³⁹ See Zimmermann 1984: 59; Kugelmeier 1996: 258; Hordern 1999: 448-50; Rosen 2007: 155-59; Fongoni 2014: 102-3; Power 2014: 252.

⁴⁰ Hordern 1999: 445; Power 2014: 238.

⁴¹ On the parados of Wealth as a singing contest, see Merkelbach 1956: 102; Zimmermann 1948: 168.

p. 216

Carion attempts to seize control of the performance at its outset by distributing parts and directing the action. He provides musical accompaniment of a sort with his onomatopoetic imitation of the sound of a lyre, which the scholiasts identify as a reference to Philoxenus' staging of Polyphemus performing on a lyre.⁴² He concludes his first entry in the song with an obscene joke: to "eat a goat's breakfast" meant to fellate oneself, a particularly disgraceful sexual act to be accused of performing.⁴³

The chorus, however, respond with a rather different vision of the performance (296–301):

[Greek text]

But we in turn will try—threttanello!—while we bleat to catch you as the Cyclops, still hungry, holding a sack of damp wild greens, and hung over to boot! Then while you happen to take a nap while leading your sheep, we’ll pick up a great half-burnt stake and blind you!

...

Athenaeus cites an account of the fourth-century philosopher Phaenias od Eresus claiming that Philoxenus wrote his Cyclops as an allegory on his relationship [cont.]

p. 217

with the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius and a mutual love interest named Galatea (Phaen. F 13 Wehrli = Ath. 1.6e-7a); the scholia to this scene in Aristophanes' Wealth tell the same tale.⁴⁶ Whatever the truth of the love-intrigue narrative these sources provide, it remains plausable that the dithyramb did use—or was perceived as using—mythollogical allegory to depict Dionysius' court.⁴⁷

⁴⁶ See Sutton 1983:73-74; Hordern 1999; Rosen 2008: 155-59; Power 2014: 253; Fongoni 2014: 97-99.

⁴⁷ C.f. Fongoni 2014: 99 n. 2: "It is very interesting to note how the dithyramb of Philoxenus becomes a political tool in the same manner as comedy, the genre to which it is assimilated in Aristotle's Poetics."

p. 218

Repeatedly in the course of this negotiation Crion and the chorus employ the verb μιμεῑσθαι.⁵¹ ... by the time of Wealth's performance in 388 BCE, it is considerably more probable that Aristophanes' use of this term reflects contemporary discussions of the nature of art and its relationship to reality. Carion and the chorus' repeated claims to "imitate" the roles they perform call attention to their status as performers: even within the play, the Cyclops dance is a performance. The song is thus differentiated from the rest of the play: Carion claims to begin the play spontaneously as a display of his joy, but it actually takes the form of a carefully structured, balanced, even schematic performance. In earlier plays Aristophanes presented entire comedies as if they were being improvised before the audience's very eyes, despite all the evidence of meter, costume, music, allusion, rhetoric to the contrary; here he presents this process in miniature, calling attention to the performance's artificiality even as the performers insist on its spontaneity.

p. 219

Aristophanes thus gives a comic rebuttal to a dithyramb that strayed too far into the territory of drama, separated off from the rest of Wealth as a highly marked performance. Philoxenus attempted to borrow elements of drama in his dithyramb Cyclops; Aristotle's comments on the poem and the testimonia portraying it as satire of the tyrant Dionysius suggest that comedy, in particular, provided the model for Philoxenus' generic hybrid.

Hordern

[In folder]

p. 445

THE CYCLOPS OF PHILOXEMUS

Philoxenus of Cythera'a dithyramb, Cyclops or Galatea, was a poem famous in antiquity as the source for the story of Polyphemus' love for the sea-nymph Galatea. The exact date of composition is uncertain, but the poem must pre-date 388 B.C., when it was parodied by Aristophanes in the parados of Plutus (290-301), and probably, as we shall see below, post-dates 406, the point at which Dionysius I became tyrant of Syracuse (D.S. 13.95-6). The Aristophanic parody of the work may well point to a recent performance in Athens, perhaps the first, and it is hard to identify any more significant reason for mentioning the poem.²

I. COMPOSITION

In its earliest version, the ancient tradition which suggests that the Cyclops was conceived as a piece of court satire can be found in Athenaeus (1.7a):

Dionysius enjoyed getting drunk with Philoxenus. But when he was caught seducing his [sc. Dionysius'] mistress Galatea ...

P. 446

Other sources also tell us that Philoxenus was for some time cour-poet to Dionysius in Sicily,⁴ and several of these authorities know of his imprisonment in the Syracusan quarries, or of some conflict with Dionysius. Thus Diodorus, for instance, connects Philoxenus' imprisonment with his criticisms of Dionysius' own verse.

⁴ Cf. D.S. 15.6; Machon fr. 9 Gow; Sopater fr.23 Kaibel; Cicero, Att. 4.6.2; Plu. Tranq. 12; Paus. 1.2.1; Lucian. Cal. 14; Σ Ar. Pl. 179; Suda φ 397; Joh. Tzetz.^{II,/sup> in} Pl. 290 pp. 83-4 Positano, etc.

p. 447

A different story is told by Douris, the tyrant of Samos and pupil of Theophrastus (c.340-260 B.C.):

Hopkinson [in folder]

p. 36

In about 400 CB the Sicilian Philoxenus composed a lyric poem in which he invented an episode set before Odysseus' arrival. He made Polyphemus a lover of the sea-nymph Galatea; Odysseus, too had a role. This poem, now lost (see PMG 815-24), was the first literary treatment of the Cyclops in love. Contradictory accounts were current in antiquity about Philoxenus' inspiration for the poem (PMG 816, 817, 819). However, it was widely believed that he had had an affair with a certain Galatea, mistress of Dionysius tyrant of Syracuse, that he had been punished by imprisonment in stone quarries, and that he had composed his poem as an allegory, Dionysius being represented as the unperceptive Cyclops, Galatea as the sea-nymph of that name, and himself as the wily Odysseus. All this may have been fabrication; but the poem was famous in antiquity, and widely imitated. Several writes of comedies treated the story at roughly the same time, but only a few fragments survive.¹³²

Jackson

[In Folder]

p. 124

4.2 Wealth

The process of textual transmission has been even more unkind to Aristophanes' Wealth in removing nearly all of its choral odes. All that remains of the choral contribution to the play is its entrance (257-89) and a lyric exchange with the slave Cario (290-321). Something that has been recognized by many scholars is that this lyric exchange is clearly parodying an apparently famous dithyramb by the poet Philoxenus, Cyclops or Galatea.³⁶ Such literary interaction is significant. Here we see Aristophanes' in his last extant play [cont.]

³⁶ See PMG 815-24 for Philoxenus' poem. Sommerstein (2001: 156) list three furhter works by comic poets that may have parodied this particular dythyramb (Nicochares' Galatrea, Antiphanes' The Cyclops, and Alexis' Galatea).

p. 125

...this ode also passes comment, and perhaps even challenges, the musico-political developments in the air at the beginning of the fourth century. ... the ideological and status-related issues raised by the choral performance prepare for and contour themes that will continue to run for the rest of the play.

p. 126

Early commentators on the Wealth were able to identify lines and phrases in this choral exchange lifted from Philoxenus' dithyramb. The refrain ...

As Timothy Power has noted, it must have been somewhat startling for Philoxenus to have made his central figure, the Cyclops, 'act' the role of the sophisticated and fashionable citarode, as indictaed by the Cyclops' use of the onomatapoetic 'threttanelo' (imitating the sound of the cithara), and this seems to have signalled some kind of genericcontest between nome and dithyramb.

LeVen

p. 71

2 | New Music and its myths

Every era has its new music, and late classical Athens was no exception. Although the neither the term "New Music" nor "musical revolution" was used in antiquity, modern scholars employ both expressions in referring to a moment of musical history mostly associated with the late fifth-century musicians Melanippides, Phrynis, Cineasias, Telestes, Timotheus, and Philoxenus, and with the tragedians Agathon and Euripides.¹ Ancient sources depict these poets as having introduced a series of tonal, instrumental, and formal innovations in dithyrambs and nomes, as well as in the sol and choral lyric parts of drama, changes apparently so dramatic that they caused the "demise of mousikė" or even, more dramaticlly, the end of an era.² But there is surprising continuity across the vocabulary used by [cont.]

¹ On the term "New Music," Csapo 2011: 66: "written as a proper noun, [it] is useful but misleading." D'angour 2006a: 267: "[the terms 'revolution' and 'New Music'] are unapologetically applied by modern scholars to inventions in the late fifth century." What modern scholars refer to as "New Music" was called by the ancients "theator music" ...

² Σ Ar. Nub. 333d specifically describes the "demise of mousikė" ... to the dithyrambs.

p. 72

these ancient critics—comic poets, musical and political theorists, and later authors writing musical histories—to describe the New Music of the late fifth century BC, and the vocabulary used by the music critics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to describe music of their contempoaries, ...

p. 113

When some brick makers were singing some of his songs out of tune, Philoxenus came upon them and trampled their bricks under foot, saying, "as you spoil my work, so I will spoil yours."

Diogenes Laertius, Life of Arcesilaus 4.6.11

anecdotes staging Philoxenus' love of food are a reading of the gastronomically themed Dinner Party (PMG 836). Even if one treats biographical anecdotes as fiction because they are a form of early reception of [cont.]

p. 114

of the poet's production and a creative engagement with the poetic corpus, they also inform us about the meaning and significance of a poet for specific audiences and about his or her lasting popularity. Whether Philoxenus ever trampled bricks, as the epigraph for this chapter recounts, is less important than the fact that brick makers are depicted as singing one of Philoxenus' hits while on the job and that Philoxenus sets a parallel between his song and the product of another craft.

p. 115

Tradition distiguishes between, on the one hand, a Philoxenus of Cythera, a notorious gourmand and author of dithyrambs that included the famous Cyclops or Galatea, and, on the other hand, a homonymous poet from Leucas, the alleged author of a poem on food, of undetermined genre, the Deipnon (PMG 836). In four of the five passages where Athenaeus quotes the Deipnon (Dinner Party), he uses the phrase ... ("in the work entitled the Dinner Paety) and attributes the piece to Philxenus of Cythera (frr. d and e), or simply to ... ("Philoxenus, the composer of dithyrambs") (ffr. a and c);¹⁰ in the fifth instance, however, he intoroduces some doubt as regards the identity of the Dinner Party's author by attributing it thus:

Philoxenus of Cythera in the work entilted Dinner Party—if indeed the one the comic poet Plato refers to in his Phaon ( ...), and not Philoxenus of Leucas—describes the following dinner preparation [thus: PMG fr. b].

Ath. 4.146f

Modern editors and critics, including Bergk, Smyth, Diehl, Wilamowitz, PAge, and Campbell, take Athenaeus' hesitation seriously and attribute the Deipnon to Philoxenus of Leucas.¹¹ But given the scanty evidence about [cont.]

¹⁰ Ath. 11.476e, 11.487a-b, 14.642f-643d (...), 15.685d.

¹¹ For skeptical positions on the existence of two separate Philoxeni: ...

p. 124

Philoxenus apparently had several names throughout his life: according to the Suda, he was called Myrmex, or Mr. Ant, a name that reflects the characteristics of New Music's tortuous melodies called ... ("ant paths").⁴⁰ Hesychius als reports that Philoxenus was called Doulon, Mr Slave, because he had been a slave, first of Afesylus, then of the poet Melanippides.⁴¹ But the entry under which the Suda give these details, Philoxenus (Mr. Hospitable, or lover of xenia), is itself loaded with conotations and encapsulates a problem: that of the status of the poet in a social network. Starting with Demodocus of the Odyssey, the arcaic and early classical poet-singer is linked to the community to which he belongs through xenia (hospitality, guest-friendship, or ritual friendship); as Carson notes, "poets...participated in the gift economy of their communities as xenoi of the people who enjoyed their poetry."⁴² Philoxenus' name itself collapses literary criticism and sociao-political categories and captures the complexities of the poet's societal status: most of the anecdotes told about Philoxenus also revolve around this very issue, as if enactments of his loaded name.

p. 127

Philoxenus' fishy tyrant: Dionysius and Galatea

A second ancedote, staging Philoxenus and another tyrant, Dionysius of Sicily ...

Philoxenus the poet of Cythera, a lover of delicacies (...), was once having dinner with Dionysius when a large red mullet had been ...

p. 128

Dionysius also used to like getting drunk with Philoxenus. But when the poet was caught making advances to Dionysius' mistress Galatea he was thrown to the quarries, where, working on his Cyclops ... casting Dionysius in the role of the Cyclops, the flute girl in that of Galataeia, and himself as Odysseus.

Phaenias, fr. 13 Wehrli

p. 233

Two specific features of Philoxenus' Cyclops on which critics have focused are its performance scenario, especially the significance of the scholiast's remarks that the Cyclops played the cithara, and the thematic [cont.]

p. 234

innovation it introduced in the Homeric naraative, that the love-interest of the Cyclops. This latter element resonates with the "romantic" features I highlighted above and was recuperated by Hellenistic poets, not only Theocritus, in two Idylls (6 and 11), but also Callimachus, Hermeesianx, and Bion.⁸⁷

⁸⁷ Callim. HE 1047-52,Hermesianax, fr. 7.69-74, CA p. 100(= PMG 815), and Bion (fr. 16 Reed). Anello 1984 argues that Philoxenus' plot might have been inspired by the Sicilian tradition. On the Hellenistic compositions see Hordern 2004. On the changed nature of the Cyclops in the Hellenistic period, Payne 2007, 70-82.

p. 237

Moreover, another important element in this characterization of the Cyclops is that, unlike the fantastic Homeric cave dweller, Philoxenus' Polyphemus sees the world in the same terms as Odysseus and is every bit as good and bad as a man: the Cyclops is presented not as a dense brute ignorant of gods and laws, but as a man who has a weakness (his love for his "aquatic darling"), who sees through people, ...

Rocha

BMRC 2015.05.32

The past decades have witnessed an increasing scholarly interest in the poets of the so-called “New Dithyramb” or “New Music,” a style that developed at the end of 5th century and in the first decades of 4th century B.C.¹

According to the Marmor Parium, Philoxenus died at the age of 55 in 380/79 B.C. Sometime around the year 390 he resided the court of Dionysius I, in Syracuse, and, because of his frankness towards Dionysius’ poetical ambitions or after a dispute with the tyrant over an aulos player called Galatea, he is alleged to have been made prisoner in the quarries, where he may have composed his Cyclops, a dithyramb about Polyphemus’ love sickness for the nymph Galatea.

...

Philoxenus was one of the most important poet-musicians of his time, along with Melanippides, Timotheus and Telestes. He and his colleagues promoted great changes in musical paractices, introducing melodies with many notes and with large interval leaps, increasing the number of strings on the cithara, and employing metabole, modulation between different harmonies or rhythms whithin one composition. As a consequence these poets were accused of having caused the degradation of music with their inovations. Philoxenus' style eventually was compared, by Aristoxenus to that of Pindar, the most famous representative of the old music, with its simple melodies, relatively few notes and easy-to-sing intervals.

...

Yet even revolutionaries can enter the canon, and that was what happened with Philoxenus and Timotheus, according to Polybius.

...

myth of Cyclops and Galatea, whose first occurrence is to be found here. The inroduction of Galatea originated from a popular tale the post had heard during his stay in Syracuse. According to Phainias (fr. 2), he adapted the plot to his personal situation: behind the characters of Polyphemus, Odysseus and Galatea he disguised, respectively, the tyrant Dionysius, Philoxenus, and the female aulos-player with whom both Dionysius and Philoxenus had fallen in love. This competition for that woman would have been the reason for the imprisonment of Philoxenus in the quarries of Syracuse.

Philoxenus transformed the myth of the Cyclops and the Nereis in the story of an unhappy love with parodic and satiric purposes regarding the tyrant. This aspect is emphasized by the description of Polyphemus (Dionysius) like the traditional Cyclops, anthropophagus and ferine (frr. 8; 11; 12), but capable of transforming himself for love into a grotesque shepherd poet, herbivorous and unloved by Galatea. Philoxenus’ lovestruck Cyclops was favoured by the poets of the Middle Comedy and in Hellenistic and Roman literature most famously the Cyclops of Theocritus.

Another dithyramb attributed to Philoxenus was the Mysians, which is very important for our understanding of Philoxenus’ poetry because it is a concrete example of the dithyrambographer’s ability in using modulations, though its exact content is obscure. Plutarch in chapter 33 of De musica (fr. 16) provides us with the harmonic plan of Mysians: Hypodorian tonos at the beginning, Hypophrygian and Phrygian in the middle, Mixolydian and Dorian at the end.

¹ Important books published on these poets in recent years include J. H. Hordern’s The Fragments of Timotheus of Miletus (Oxford, 2002) and Pauline LeVen’s The Many Headed Muse (Cambridge, 2014), on late Classical Greek Lyric Poetry.

Smith

s.v. Philoxenus

（*Filo/cenos). Among several literary persons of this name, by far the most important is Philoxenus of Cythera, who was one of the most distinguished dithyrambic poets of Greece. The accounts respecting him are, however, strangely confused, owing to the fact that there was another Philoxenus, a Leucadian, living at Athens about the same time or a little earlier : both these persons are ridiculed by the poets of the Old Comedy; both seem to have spent a part of their lives in Sicily; and it is evident that the grammarians were constantly confounding the one with the other. In order to exhibit the subject as clearly as possible, it is best to begin with the younger, but more important of these two persons. Philo'xenus

1. Philoxenus, the son of Euletidas, was a native of Cythera, or, as others said, of Heracleia on the Pontus (Suid. s. v.); but the former account is no doubt the correct one. We learn from the Parian Marble (No. 70) that he died in Ol. 100. B. C. 380, at the age of 55; he was, therefore, born in Ol. 86. 2, B. C. 435. The time when he most flourished was, according to Diodorus (14.46), in Ol. 95. 2, .100.398. The brief account of his life in Suidas involves some difficulties; he states that, when the Cythereans were reduced to slavery by the Lacedaemonians, Philoxenus was bought by a certainly Agesylas, by whom he was brought up, and was called Μύρμηξ : and that, after the death of Agesylas, he was bought by the lyric poet Melanippides, by whom he was also educated. Now there is no record of the Lacedaemonians having reduced the Cythereans to slavery; but we know that the island was seized by an Athenian expedition under Nicias, in B. C. 424 (Thuc. 4.53, 54; Diod. 12.65; Plut. Nic. 6); and therefore some critics propose to read Ἀθηναίων for Λακεδαιμονίων(Meineke, Fragm. Com. Graec. vol. iv. p. 635). This solution is not quite satisfactory, and another, of much ingenuity, is proposed by Schmlidt (Dithyramb. pp. 5. 6); but it is not worth while here to discuss the question further, since the only important part of the statement, namely, that Philoxenus was really a slave in his youth, is quite sustained by other testimonies, especially by the allusions to him in the comic poets (see Hesych. s. υ. Δούλωνα ; Meineke, I. c.). Schmidt (pp. 7, 8) very ingeniously conjectures that there is an allusion to Philoxenus in the Frogs of Aristophanes (Frogs 1506), in the name Μύρμηκι, which we have seen that Suidas says to have been given to him by his first master, and which belongs to a class of words which seem to have been often used for the names of slaves. Others, however, suppose the name to have been a nicknamne given to him by the comic poets, to express the intricacy of his musical strains, the ε᾽κτραπέλους μυρμηκιάς, as Pherecrates calls them (see below).

He was educated, says Suidas, by Melanippides, of course in that poet's own profession, that of dithyrambic poetry, in which, if the above interpretation of the allusion in the Frogs be correct, he had already attained to considerable eminence before B. C. 408; which agrees very well with the statement of Diodorus (i. c.), according to which he was at the height of his fame seven years later. Pherecrates also attacked him in his Cheiron, as one of the corruptors of music; at least Plutarch applies to him a part of the passage; and if this application be correct, we have another allusion to his name Μύρμηξ, in the mention of ε᾽κτραπέλους μυρμηκιάς ( Pllt. de Mus. 30, p. 1146, as explained and corrected by Meineke, Frug. Com Graec. vol. ii. pp. 326-335). In the Daitales of Aristophanes, which was also on the prevalent corruptions of poetry and music, and which seems to have been acted some little time after the Frogs, though Philoxenus is not mentioned by name, there are passages which are, to all appearance, parodies upon his poem entitled Δεῖπνον (Fr. xii. xiii. ed. Bergk, ap. Meineke, Frag. Com. Graec. vol. ii. pp. 1009, 1010). In the Ecclesiazusae also, B. C. 392, there is a passage which is almost certainly a similar parody (vv. 1167-1178; Bergk, Comment. de Reliq. Comoed. Att. Antiq. p. 212). There is also a long passage in the Phaon of the comic poet Plato, which seems to have been acted in the year after the Ecclesiazusae, B. C. 391, professing to be read from a book, which the person who has it calls Φιλοξένου καινή τις ο᾽ψαρτυσία which is almost certainly a pairody on tice same poem, although Athenaeus and some modern critics suppose the allusion to be to a poem by Philoxenus, the Leucadian, on the art of cookery. It is true that the latter was known for his fondness of luxurious living; but the coincidence would be too remarkable, and the confusion between the two Philoxeni utterly hopeless, if we were to suppose, with Schmidt and others, that they both wrote poems of so similar a character about the same time. (Meineke, Frag Com. Grauc. vol. ii. pp. 72-674; Bergk, Comment. pp. 211, 212 Schmidt, Dithgratmb. p. 11, &c.)

These testimonies all point to the very end of the fifth and the beginning of the fourth centuries B. C., as the time when Philoxenus flourished. There is, indeed, a passage in the Clouds (332), which the scholiast explains as referring to him, but which must allude to Philoxenus the Leucadian, if to either, as Philoxenus of Cythera was only in his 11th year at the time of the first exhibition of the Clouds, and in his 15th at the time of the second. Possibly, however, the comment results from a mere contusion in the mind of the scholiast. who, seeing in the text of Aristophanes a joke on the voracity of the dithyrambic poets of his day, and having read of the gluttony of Philoxenus of Leucadia, identified the latter with Philoxenus the dithyrambic poet, and therefore supposed him to be referred to by Aristophanes.

At what time Philoxenus left Athens and went to Sicily, cannot be determined. Schmidt (p. 15) supposes that he went as a colonist, after the first victories of Dionysius over the Carthaginians, B. C. 396; that he speedily obtained the favour of Dionysius, and took up his abode at his court at Syracuse, the luxury of which furnished him with the theme of his poem entitled Δεῖπνον. However this may be, we know that he soon offended Dionysius, and was cast into prison; an act of oppression which most writers ascribe to the wounded vanity of the tyrant, whose poems Philoxenus not only refused to praise, but, on being asked to revise one of them, said that the best way of correcting it would be to draw a black line through the whole paper. Another account ascribes his disgrace to too close n intimacy with the tvrant's mistress Galateia; but this looks like a fiction, arising out of a misunderstanding of the object of his poem entitled Cyclops or Galateia. It appears that, after some time, he was released from prison, and restored outwardly to the favour of Dionysius; buteither in consseqiuence of some new quarrel, or because he had a distrust of the tyrant's feelings towards him, he finally left his court: other accounts say nothing of his reconciliation, but simply that he escaped from prison, andx went to the country of the Cythereans, where he composed his poem Galateia (Schol. ad Aristoph. Plut. 290)' According to Suidas he went to Tarentum (s. i. Φιλοξένοι γραμμα.τιον). There is a curious story related by Plutarch, that he gave up his estate in Sicily, and left the island, in order that he might not be seduced, by the wealth he derived from it, into the luxury which prevailed around hiln (Plut. de Vit. Aer. alien. p. 831). Schmidt endeavours to reconcile this statement with the former, by supposing that, after he left the court of Dionysius. he resided for some time on his Sicilian estate, and afterwards gave it up, in the way mentioned by Plutarch, and then departed finally from the island. It is doubtful where the last years of his life were spent whether in his native island, whither the scholiast just qupted says that he fled, or at Ephesus, where Suidas states that he died, and whither Schmidt thinks it likely that he may have gone, as the worship ot Dionysus prevailed there. In this point, however, as in so many others, we encounter the difficulty arising from the confusion of the two Philoxeni, for the Leucadian is also said to have spent the latter part of his life in Ephesus.

It is time to dismiss these doubtful questions; but still there is one tradition respecting Philoxenus, which passed into a proverb, and which must not be omitted. It is said that, after his quarrel with Dionysius at Syracuse, and during his subsequent residence at Tarentum or Cythera, he received an invitation from the tyrant to return to his court, in reply to which he wrote the single letter O, that is, either as the ancient mode of writing ου, or, as some think, what Philoxenus wrote was 8, as the contracted sign for ου᾽. Hence a flat refusal was proverbially called Φιλοξένον γραμμάτιον (Suid. s.v. Schmidt, p. 17).

Respecting the works of Philoxenus, Suidas relates that he wrote twenty-four dithyrambs, and ai genealogy of the Aeacidae. The latter poem is not mentioned by any other writer; but another poem, which Suidas does not mention, and which it is hardly likely that he reckoned among the twenty-four dithyrambs, is the Δεῖπνον already mentioned, which appears to have been the most popular of his works, and of which we have more fragnimets than of any other. These fragments, which are almost all in Athenaeus, are so corrupted, owing to the very extraordinary style and phraseology, which the poet purposely adopted, that Casaubon gave up the emendation of them as hopeless (Animnad. in Ath. iv. p. 470). Contributions to their restoration have, however, been made by Jacohs, Schweighauser, and Fiorillo, in their respective annotations upon Athenaeus, and by Bergk, in thie Act. Soc. Gr. Lips. for 1836; and recently most of the fragments have been edited by Meineke (Fra. Com. Graec. vol. iii. Epimetrumn de Philoxeni Cgticrii Convivio, pp. 635-646, comp. pp. 146, 637, 638, 639, and vol. ii. p. 306), and thle whole by Bergk (Poet. Lyr. Graec. pp. 851-860), and by Schmidt (Dithyramb. pp. 29-51), who has also added a discussion onl the metre, dialect, and style of the poem (pp. 52-54). The poem is a most minute and satirical description of a banquet, written in a style of language of which no idea can bie formed without reading it, but of which the following specimen may convey some slight notion (5.9.):-- “παντεπαλέΞ,λιπαροΥ τ̓ εΞ ἐγχελΩνΟς ἀρίστων”, with which a line from the parody of it by Aristophanes, in the lecl&csiatzusue may be compared (5.1170):--

λεπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεο -- and so on through six lines, forming but one word.

Of the dithyrambs of Philoxeims, by far the most important is his *κύκλωψ ἡ Γαλάτεια, the occasion of his composing which is variously related, but the most probable account has been alread by given. Aelian (Ael. VH 12.44) calls it thle most beautiful of his poems, and Hermiesianax refers to it in terms of the highest praise (Ath. xiii. p. 598e.; Fr. l, ed. Bach). Its loss is greatly to be lamented. The few fragments which remain are collected by Bergk (Poet. Lyr. Graec. L. c.) and by Schmidt, who has added an interesting discussion respecting its plan (Dithyramb. pp. 54-68). The scholiast on the Plutus (I. c.) calls this poem a drama; and several other writers call Philoxenus a tragic poet; but this is probably only one of several instances in which the dithyrambic poets have been erroneously represented as tragedians (see Kayser, Hist. Grit. Trag. Graec. p. 262). We have a few other fragments of the poems of Philoxenus (pp. 68, 69), andt the following titles of four others of his dithyrambs, though even these are not free from doubt--Μυσοί, Σύρος, Κωμαστής, Φαέθων.

Of the character of the music to which his dithyrambs were set, we have little other information than the statement that they were publicly chanted in the theatres by the Arcadian youth on certain days of the year (Aristot. Pol. 8.7; Plb. 4.20). He was, however, as we have already seen, included in the attacks which the comic poets made onl all the musicians of the day, for their corruptions of the simplicity of the ancient music ; and there are several passages in Plutarch's treatise onl music, describing the nature of those inovations, in which he followed and even went beyond his master Melanippides, and in which Timotheus again vied with him (Plut. de Mus. 12, 29, 30, 31; Schmidt, pp. 72, 73). A curious story is told of his musical composition by Aristotle, who, in confirmation of the statement that the dithyramb belongs essentially to the Phrygian mode, relates that Philoxenus attempted to compose one of his dithyrambs in the Dorian, but that it fell back by the force of its very nature into the proper Phrygian harmony (Aristot. Pol. 8.7.12). In an obscure passage of Pollux (Onom. 4.9. s. 65, ed. Bekker) the Locrian harmony is stated to ibe his invention; and the Hypodorian has also been ascribed to him (Schmidt, pp. 73, 74).

There is a passage respecting his rhythms in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (de Comp. Verb. p. 131, Reiske).

We have abundant testimony to the high esteem in which the ancients held Philoxenus, both during his life and after his death. The most remarkable eulogy of him is the passage in which the comic poet Antiphases contrasts him with the musicians who camrie after him (Ath. xiv. p. 643). This, and the testimonies of Machon, Aelian, and others, are given fully by Schmidt (pp. 71, 72). Alexander the Great sent for his poems during his campaigns. in. Asia (Plut. Alex. 8, de Fort. Alex. p. 355a.) : the Alexandrian grammarians received him into the canon; and, moreover, the very attacks of the comic poets are evidence of his eminence and popularity, and the more so in proportion to their vehemence.

The most important works upon Philoxenus are those of D. Wyttenbach, in his Miscellanea Doctrinae, ii. pp. 64-72; Burette, Sur Philoxène, in his Rèmarques sur la, Dialogue de Plutarche touchant la Musique, in the Mém. de l'Acad. des Insc. vol. xiii. pp. 200, &c.; Luetke, Dissert. de Graec. Dithyramb. pp. 77, &c. Berol. 1829; L. A. Berglein, De Philoxeno Cytherio Dithyramborum Poeta, Götting. 1843, 8vo.; G. Bippart, Philoxeni, Timothei, Telestis Dithyrambographorum Reliquiae, Lips. 18143, 8vo.; G. M. Schmidt, Diatribe in Dithyrambum Poetarunmque Dithyrambicorum Reliquias, c. i. Berol. 1845; the passages already referred to, and others, in the works of Meineke and Bergk, on Greek Comedy; the Histories of Greek Poetry, by Ulrici and Bode; and Bernhardy, Gesch. d. Griech. Litt. vol. ii. pp. 548-551.