He was an actor, as well as a writer of mimes, and is said, in an epigram preserved in the Greek Anthology, to have died of excessive laughter (Jacobs, Anth. Graec. vol. iv. p. 230; Anth. Pal. vol. ii. p. 349). He is frequently mentioned by the Greek writers of the second century and downwards. Suidas, who, by some extraordinary error, has placed his death in the time of Socrates, makes him a native of Prusa, and says that he wrote κωμῳδίας βιολογικάς (that is, mimes), that he wrote a play called Μισοψηφισταί, and a work entitled . He is mentioned by Tzetzes (Proleg. ad Lycophr. p. 257), among the poets of the New Comedy, but the name is there, almost certainly, an error for PHILIPPIDES.

We have no fragments of Philistion, hut there is a work extant under the title of , which is a collection of lines, containing moral sentiments, from Menander and some other poet of the New Comedy, who of course could not be Philistion the mimographer. All difficulty is however removed by the emendation of Meineke, who substitutes Φιλήμονος for Φιλιστίωνος. (Comp. PHILEMON).