Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/396

 assigned the second place among the poets of the New Comedy to Philemon, and Apuleius, who had a high opinion of him, has drawn a comparison between him and Menander.

 PHILEMON, EPISTLE TO, a scripture of the New Testament. Onesimus, a slave, had robbed (vv. 11, 18–19) and run away from his master Philemon, a prosperous and influential Christian citizen of Colossae (Col. iv. 9), either offence rendering him liable to be crucified. Voluntarily or accidentally, he came across Paul, who won him over to the Christian faith. In the few tactful and charming lines of this brief note, the apostle sends him back to his master with a plea for kindly treatment. After greeting Philemon and his wife, with Archippus (possibly their son) and the Christians who met for worship at Philemon’s house (vv. 1–2), Paul rejoices over (vv. 4–7) his correspondent’s character, it encourages him to make an appeal on behalf of the unworthy Onesimus (8–21), now returning (Col. iv. 9) along with Tychicus to Colossae, as a penitent and sincere Christian, in order to resume his place in the household. With a line or two of personal detail (22–25) the note closes.

Rome would be a more natural rendezvous for fugitivarii (runaway slaves) than Caesarea (Hilgenfeld and others), and it is probable that Paul wrote this note, with Philippians and Colossians, from the metropolis. As Laodicea is close to Colossae it does not follow, even if Archippus be held to have belonged to the former town (as Lightfoot argues from Col. iv. 13–17), that Philemon’s residence must have been there also (so A. Maier, Thiersch, Wieseler, &c). Paul cannot have converted Philemon at Colossae (Col. 11. 1), but elsewhere, possibly at Ephesus, yet Philemon may have been on a visit to Ephesus, for, even were the Ephesian Onesimus of Ignatius (Eph. ii.) the Onesimus of this note, it would not prove that he had always lived there. No adequate reason has been shown for suspecting that the note is interpolated at any point. The association of Timotheus with Paul (v. 1) does not involve any official tinge, which would justify the deletion of in that verse, and of  in vv. 1–2 (so Holtzmann), and Hausrath’s suspicions of the allusion to Paul as a prisoner and of v. 12 are equally arbitrary. The construction in vv. 5–6 is difficult, but it yields to exegetical treatment (cf. especially Haupt’s note) and does not involve the interpolation of matter by the later redactor of Colossians and Ephesians (Holtzmann, Hausrath and Bruckner, Reihenfolge d. paul. Briefe, 200 seq.).

The brevity of the note and its lack of doctrinal significance prevented it from gaining frequent quotation in the early Christian literature. but it appears in Marcion’s canon as well as in the Muratorian, whilst Tertullian mentions, and Origen expressly quotes it. During the 19th century, the hesitation about Colossians led to the rejection of Philemon by some critics as a pseudonymous little pamphlet on the slave question—an aberration of literary criticism (reproduced in Ency. Bib, 3693 seq) which needs simply to be chronicled. It is interesting to observe that, apart from the letter of commendation for Phoebe (Rom. xvi), this is the only letter in the New Testament addressed, even in part, to a woman, unless the second epistle of John be taken as meant for an individual.

 PHILEMON and BAUCIS, the hero and heroine of a beautiful story told by Ovid (Metam. viii. 610–715), the scene of which is laid in Phrygia. Zeus, accompanied by Hermes, visited earth in human form; tired and weary, they sought shelter for the night, but all shut their doors against them except an aged couple living in a humble cottage, who afforded them hospitality. Before their departure the gods revealed themselves, and bade their hosts follow them to the top of a mountain, to escape the punishment destined to fall on the rest of the inhabitants. The country was overwhelmed by a flood; the cottage, which alone remained standing, was changed into a magnificent temple. The gods appointed Philemon and Baucis priest and priestess, and granted their prayer that they might die together. After many years they were changed into trees—Philemon into an oak, Baucis into a lime. The story, which emphasizes the sacred duty of hospitality, is probably of Phrygian origin, put together from two widely circulated legends of the visits of gods to men, and of the preservation of certain individuals from the flood as the reward of piety. It lingers in the account (Acts xiv.) of the healing of the lame man by Paul at Lystra, the inhabitants of which identified Paul and Barnabas with Zeus and Hermes, "come down in the likeness of men."

 PHILES, MANUEL (c. 1275–1345), of Ephesus, Byzantine poet. At an early age he removed to Constantinople, where he was the pupil of Georgius Pachymeres, in whose honour he composed a memorial poem. Philes appears to have travelled extensively, and his writings contain much information concerning the imperial court and distinguished Byzantines. Having offended one of the emperors by indiscreet remarks published in a chronograph, he was thrown into pr1son and only released after an abject apology. Philes is the counterpart of Theodorus Prodromus in the time of the Comneni; his character, as shown in his poems, is that of a begging poet, always pleading poverty, and ready to descend to the grossest flattery to obtain the favourable notice of the great. With one unimportant exception, his productions are in verse, the greater part in dodecasyllabic iambic trimesters, the remainder in the fifteen-syllable “political” measure.

Philes was the author of poems on a great variety of subjects: on the characteristics of animals, chiefly based upon Aelian and Oppian, a didactic poem of some 2000 lines, dedicated to Michael Palaeologus; on the elephant; on plants, a neurological poem, probably written on the death of one of the sons of the imperial house; a panegyric on John Cantacuzene, in the form of a dialogue; a conversation between a man and his soul; on ecclesiastical subjects, such as church festivals, Christian beliefs, the saints and fathers of the church; on works of art, perhaps the most valuable of all his pieces for their bearing on Byzantine iconography, since the writer had before him the works he describes, and also the most successful from a literary point of view, occasional poems, many of which are simply begging letters in verse.

Editions the natural history poems in F Lehrs and F. Dubner, Poetae bucolici et didactici (Didot series, 1846); Manuelis Philae Carmina medita, ed. A. Martini (1900); Manuelis Philae Carmina ed. E Miller (1855–1857). See also C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897).

 PHILETAS of Cos, Alexandrian poet and critic, flourished in the second half of the 4th century He was tutor to the son of Ptolemy I. of Egypt, and also taught Theocritus and the grammarian Zenodotus. His thinness made him an object of ridicule; according to the comic poets, he carried lead in his shoes to keep himself from being blown away. Over-study of Megarian dialectic subtleties is said to have shortened his life. His elegies, chiefly of an amatory nature and singing the praises of his mistress Battis (or Bittis), were much admired by the Romans. He is frequently mentioned by Ovid and Propertius, the latter of whom imitated him and preferred him to his rival Callimachus, whose superior mythological lore was more to the taste of the Alexandrian critics. Philetas was also the author of a vocabulary called, explaining the meanings of rare 