A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Φημονόη), a mythical Greek poetess of the ante-Homeric period, was said to have been the daughter of Apollo, and his first priestess at Delphi, and the inventor of the hexameter verse (Paus. 10.5.7, 6.7; Strab. ix. p.419; Plin. Nat. 7.57; Clem. Alex. Strom. i. pp. 323, 334; Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 1094; Eust. Prol. ad Iliad. ; and other authors cited by Fabricius). Some writers seem to have placed her at Delos instead of Delphi (Atil. Fort. p. 2690, Putsch); and Servius identifies her with the Cumaean Sybil (ad Virg. Aen. 3.445). The tradition which ascribed to her the invention of the hexameter, was by no means uniform; Pausanias, for example, as quoted above, calls her the first who used it, but in another passage (10.12.10) he quotes an hexameter distich, which was ascribed to the Peleiads, who lived before Phemonoe : the traditions respecting the invention of the hexameter are collected by Fabricius (Bibl. Graec. vol. i. p. 207). There were poems which went under the name of Phemonoe, like the old religious poems

which were ascribed to Orpheus, Musaeus, and the other mythological birds. Melampus for example, quotes from her in his book περὶ παλυῶν (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. i. p. 116); and Pliny quotes from her respecting eagles and hawks, evidently from some book of augury, and perhaps from a work which is still exttant in MS., entitled Orneosophium (Plin. Nat. 10.3, 8. s. 9; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. i. pp. 210, 211; Olearii, Disser de Poetriis Graecis. Hamb. 1734, 4to.). There is an epigram of Antipater of Thessalonica, alluding to a statue of Phemonoe, dressed in a φᾶρος. (Brnnck. Anal. vol. ii. p. 114, No. 22; Anth. Pal. 6.208.)

[P.S]