Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/345

Rh PHILOXENUS. whether in his native island, whither the scholiast just quoted 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 wor- ship ot Dionysus prevailed there. In this point, however, as in so many others, we encounter the difficulty arising from the confusion of the two Phi- loxeni, 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 Philoxe- Tius, 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 subse- quent residence at Tarentum or Cy thera, 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 ou, or, as some think, what Philoxenus wrote was «, as the contracted sign for ov. Hence a flat refusal was proverbially called ^jAo^eVou 7pa;u/iOTioy(Suid. s.v. ; Schmidt, p. 17). Respecting the works of Philoxenus, Suidas re- lates that he wrote twenty-four dithyrambs, and a 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 Aiiirvov already mentioned, which appears to have been the most popular of his works, and of which we have more fragments than of any other. These fragments, which are almost all in Athenaeus, are so corrupted, owing to the very extraordinary style and phraseo- logy, which the poet purposely adopted, that Ca- eaubon gave up the emendation of them as hopeless {Animadv. in Ath. iv. p. 470). Contributions to their restoration have, however, been made by Jacobs, Schweighauser, and Fiorillo, in their re- spective annotations upon Athenaeus, and by Bergk, in the Ad. Soc. Gr. Lips, for 1836 ; and recently most of the fragments have been edited by Meineke (Frag. Com. Graee. vol. iii. Epimetrum de Philooceni Cytherii Co7ivivio, pp. 635 — 646, comp. pp. 146, 637, 638, 639, and vol. ii. p. 306), and the whole by Bergk (Poet. Lyr. Graec. pp. 851—860), and by Schmidt {Dithyramb, pp. 29— 51), who has also added a discussion on 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 be formed without reading it, but of which the following specimen may convey some slight notion (v. 9): — •TTOj/TeTraAeC, Kiirapot t' ea e^xcA-e^i^Os dpiaTHv^ with which a line from the parody of it by Aris- tophanes, in the Ecclesiazusae may be compared (v. 1169): — Ae7raSoT6iuaxotr€Aa;^o7aA60 — and so on through six lines, forming but one word. Of the dithyrambs of Philoxenus, by far the most important is his Ki//cAw^ 17 TaActTeia, the occasion of his composing which is variously related, but the most probable account has been already given. Aelian ( V. H. xii. 44) calls it the most beautiful of his poems, and Hermesianax refers to it in terms of the highest praise (Ath. xiii. p. 598, e. ; Fr. 1, ed. Bach). Its loss is greatly to be liimented. The few fragments which remain are PHILOXENUS. 333 collected by Bergk {Puct. Lyr. Graec. I. c.) and by Schmidt, who has added an interesting discussion respecting its plan {Dithyramb, pp. 54 — 68). The scholiast on tlie 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, Hisf. Crit. Trag. Graec. p. 262). We have a few other fragments of the poems of Philoxenus (pp. 68, Qd), and the following titles of four others of his dithyrambs, though even these are not free from doubt — Mvaol, ^vpos, Kcofxaar-^s, Of the character of the music to which his dithy- rambs 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. Polit. viii. 7 ; Polyb. iv. 20). He was, however, as we have already seen, included in the attacks which the comic poets made on all the musicians of the day, for their corruptions of the simplicity of the ancient music ; and there are several passnges in Plutarch's treatise on music, describing the nature of those in- novations, in which he followed and even went beyond his master Melanippides, and in which Timotheus again vied with him (Plut. t^e Mas. 12, 29, 30, 31 ; Schmidt, pp. 72, 73). A curious story is told of his musical composition by Aris- totle, who, in confirmation of the statement that the dithyramb belongs essentially to the Phrygian mode, relates that Philoxenus attempted to com- pose 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. Polit. viii. 7.§ 12). In an obscure passage of Pollux {Onom. iv. 9. 8. 65, ed. Bekker) the Locrian harmony is stated to be 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. Ferb. 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 Antiphaaes contrasts him with the musicians who came 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 (Pint. Alex. 8, de Fort. Alex. p. 355, a.) : 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 Doc- trinac., ii. pp. 64 — 72 ; Burette, Sur Philoxene, in his Remarques sur la Dialogtie de Plutarche toucluiiit la Musique., in the Mem. de VAcad. des Insc. vol. xiii. pp. 200, &c. ; Luetke, Dissert, de Graec. Dithjramb. pp. 77, &c. Berol. 1829 ; L. A. Ber- glein, De Philoxeno Qytlwrio Dithyramborum Poeta^ Gutting. 1843, 8vo. ; G. Bippart, Philoxeni, Ti- jnothei, Telestis Dithyrambographorum lieliquiae^ Lips. 1843, 8vo. ; G. M. Schmidt, Diatribe in Di- thyrambum Poeiarumque Dithyrambicorum ReU- q?uas, c. i. Berol. 1 845 ; the passages already re- ferred to, and others, in the works of Meineke and