Epic Poems and Elegies
According to Suidas, he wrote epic poems and elegies ; among which were Παραινέσεις or Γνῶμαι
which were also called Κεφάλαια. This gnomic poetry
shows the reason why Suidas calls him a philosopher. Most of the few fragments we possess
are of this character; and they display that contempt for birth and station, and that love
for substantial enjoyment, which always marked the Ionian character. One of his gnomic
precepts, on the virtue of moderation, is quoted with praise by Aristotle (Aristot. Pol. 4.8) :__ πολλὰ μέσοισιν ἄριστα· μέσος θέλω ἐν πόλει
εἶναι.
The didactic character of his poetry is shown by the frequent occurrence of verses
beginning, καὶ τόδε φωκυλίδεω. These words no doubt
formed the heading of each of those sections (κεφάλαια), in which, as we have seen from Saidas, the poems of Phocylides were
arranged.
We possess only about eighteen short fragments of his poems, of which only two are in
elegiac metre, and the rest in hexameters.
Editions
The editions of them are too numerous to mention; the titles of these editions, and
of the versions into Latin, German, French, Italian, English, and Spanish, fill seven
columns of Hoffmann's Lexicon Bibliographicum (s.v.). They have, in fact, been included in all the chief
collections of the lyric and gnomic poets, from that of Constantine Lascaris, Venet.
1494, 1495, 4to., down to those of Gaisford, Boissonade, Schneidewin, and
Bergk.
Spurious works
Some of these collections, however, contain a didactic poem, in 217 hexanmeters, entitled
ποίημα νουθετικόν, which is undoubtedly a forgery, made
since the Christian era; but the fact of the name of Phocylides being attached to such a
composition is a proof of the estimation in which he was held as a didactic poet.
So also, when Suidas states that some of his verses were stolen from the Sibylline
Oracles, the meaning is either that some genuine verses of Phocylides had been preserved in
that apocryphal collection, or that both the Oracles and the ποίημα νουθετικόν
contained some of the same old verses, the true authorship of which was
unknown.