A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Φιλήμων), literary.

1. The first in order of time, and the second in celebrity, of the Athenian comic poets of the New Comedy, was the son of Damon, and a native of Soli in Cilicia, according to Strabo (xiv. p.671) : others make him a Syracusan; but it is certain that he went at an early age to Athens, and there received the citizenship (Suid. Eudoc. Hesych., Anon. de Com. p. xxx.). Meineke suggested that he came to be considered as a native of Soli because he went there on the occasion of his banishment, of which we shall have to speak presently; but it is a mere conjecture that he went to Soli at all upon that occasion; and Meineke himself withdraws the suggestion in his more recent work (Frag. Com. Graec. vol. ii. p. 52).

There can be no doubt that Philemon is rightly assigned to the New Comedy, although one authority makes him belong to the Middle (Apul. Flor. § 16), which. if not a mere error, may be explained by the well-known fact, that the beginning of the New Comedy was contemporary with the closing period of the Middle. There is, however, nothing in the titles or fragments of Philemon which can be at all referred to the Middle Comedy. He was placed by the Alexandrian grammarians among the six poets who formed their canon of the New Comedy, and who were as follows :--Philemon, Menander, Diphilus, Philippides, Poseidippus, Apollodorus. (Anon. de Com. p. xxx. τῆς δὲ νέας κωμῳδίας γεγόνασι μὲν ποιηταὶ ξδʼ, ἀξιολογώτατοι δὲ τούτων Φιλήμων, Μένανδρος, Δίφιλος, Φιλιππίδης, Ποσείδιππος, Ἀπολλόδωρος; comp. Ruhnken, Hist. Crit. Orat. Graec>. p. xcv.) He flourished in the reign of Alexander, a little earlier than Menander (Suid.), whom, however, he long survived. He began to exhibit before the 113th Olympiad (Anon. l.c.), that is, about B. C. 330. He was, therefore, the first poet of the New Comedy [*](* Respecting the error by which Philippides is placed before him, see PHILIPPIDES.), and shares with Menander, who appeared eight years after him, the honour of its invention, or rather of reducing it to a regular form; for the elements of the New Comedy had appeared already in the Middle, and even in the Old, as for example in the Cocalus of Aristophanes, or his son Araros. It is possible even to assign, with great likelihood, the very play of Philemon's which furnished the first example of the New Comedy, namely the Hypobolimaeus, which was an imitation of the Cocalus. (Clem. Alex. Stromn. vi. p. 267; Anon. de Vit. Arist. pp. 13, 14. s. 37, 38.)

Philemon lived to a very great age, and died, according to Aelian. during the war between Athens and Antigonus (ap. Suid. s. v.), or, according to the more exact date of Diodorus (23.7), in Ol. 129. 3, B. C. 262 (see Wesseling, ad loc.), so that he may have exhibited comedy nearly 70 years. The statements respecting the age at which he died vary between 96, 97, 99, and 101 years (Lucian, Maicrob. 25; Diod. l.c. ; Suid. s. v.). He must, therefore, have been born about B. C. 360, and was about twenty years older than Menander. The manner of his death is differently related; some ascribing it to excessive laughter at a ludicrous incident (Suid. Hesych. Lucian, l.c. ; V. Max. 9.12. ext. 6); others to joy at obtaining a victory in a

dramatic contest (Plut. An Seni sit Respubl. gerend. p. 785b.); while another story represents him as quietly called away by the goddesses whom he served, in the midst of the composition or representation of his last and best work (Aelian, apud Suid. s. v. ; Apuleius, Flor. 16). There are portraits of him extant in a marble statue at Rome, formerly in the possession of Raffaelle, and on a gem : the latter is engraved in Gronovius's Thesaurus, vol. ii. pl. 99. (See Meineke, Men. et Phil. Reliq. p. 47.)

Although there can be no doubt that Philemon was inferior to Menander as a poet, yet he was a greater favourite with the Athenians, and often conquered his rival in the dramatic contests. Gellius (17.4) ascribes these victories to the use of unfair influence (ambntiu gratiaque et facticonibus), and tells us that Menander used to ask Philemon himself, whether he did not blush when he conquered him. We have other proofs of the rivalry between Menander and Philemon in the identity of some of their titles, and in an anecdote told by Athenaeus (xiii. p. 594d.). Philemon was, however, sometimes defeated; and it would seem that on one such occasion he went into exile for a time (Stob. Serm. xxxviii. p. 232). At all events he undertook a journey to the East, whether from this cause or by the desire of king Ptolemy, who appears to have invited him to Alexandria (Alciphr. Epist. 2.3); and to this journey ought no doubt to be referred his adventure with Magas, tyrant of Cyrene, the brother of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Philemon had ridiculed Magas for his want of learning, in acomedy, copies of which he took pains to circulate; and the arrival of the poet at Cyrene, whither he was driven by a storm, furnished the king with an opportunity of taking a contemptuous revenge, by ordering a soldier to touch the poet's throat with a naked sword, and then to retire politely without hurting him; after which he made him a present of a set of child's playthings, and then dismissed him. (Plut. de Cohib. Ira, p. 458a., de Virt. Mor. p. 449e.)