Flavian II., who had accepted the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon and was patriarch of Antioch from 498 to 512. The Monophysites had the sympathy of the emperor Anastasius, and were finally successful in ousting Flavian in 512 and replacing him by their partisan Severus. Of Philoxenus's part in the struggle we possess not too trustworthy accounts by hostile writers, such as Theophanes and Theodorus Lector. We know that in 498 he was staying at Edessa[1]; in or about 507, according to Theophanes, he was summoned by the emperor to Constantinople; and he finally presided at a synod at Sidon which was the means of procuring the replacement of Flavian by Severus. But the triumph was short-lived. Justin I., who succeeded Anastasius in 518, was less favourable to the party of Severus and Philoxenus, and in 519 they were both sentenced to banishment. Philoxenus was sent to Philippopolis in Thrace, and afterwards to Gangra in Paphlagonia, where he met his death by foul play in 523.
Apart from his redoubtable powers as a controversialist, Philoxenus deserves commemoration as a scholar, an elegant writer, and an exponent of practical Christianity. Of the chief monument of his scholarship—the Philoxenian version of the Bible—only the Gospels and certain portions of Isaiah are known to survive (see Wright, Syr Lit. 14). It was an attempt to provide a more accurate rendering of the Greek Bible than had hiterto existed in Syriac, and obtained recognition among the Monophysites until superseded by the still more literal renderings of the Old Testament by Paul of Tella and of the New Testament by Thomas of Harkel (both in 616–617), of which the latter at least was based on the work of Philoxenus. There are also extant portions of commentaries on the Gospels from his pen. Of the excellence of his style and of his practical religious zeal we are able to judge from the thirteen homilies on the Christian life and character which have been edited and translated by Budge (London, 1894). In these he holds aloof for the most part from theological controversy, and treats in an admirable tone and spirit the themes of faith, simplicity, the fear of God, poverty, greed, abstinence and unchastity. His affinity with his earlier countryman Aphraates is manifest both in his choice of subjects and his manner of treatment. As his quotations from Scripture appear to be made from the Pēshīţtā, he probably wrote the homilies before he embarked upon the Philoxenian version.[2] Philoxenus wrote also many controversial works and some liturgical pieces. Many of his letters survive, and at least two have been edited.[3] Several of his writings were translated into Arabic and Ethiopic.
PHILTRE (Lat. philtrum, from Gr. φίλτρον, φιλεῖν, to love), a drug or other medicinal drink supposed to have the magical property of exciting love.
PHINEUS, in Greek legend, son of Agenor, the blind king of Salmydessus on the coast of Thrace. He was skilled in the art of navigation, and Apollo had bestowed upon him the gift of prophecy. His blindness was a punishment from the gods for his having revealed the counsels of Zeus to mortals, or for his treatment of his sons by his first wife Cleopatra. His second wife having accused her stepsons of dishonourable proposals, Phineus put out their eyes, or exposed them to the wild beasts, or buried them in the ground up to their waists and ordered them to be scourged. Zeus oiiered him the choice of death or blindness. Phineus chose the latter, whereupon Helios (the sun-god), oEended at the slight thus put upon him, sent the Harpies to torment him. In another story, the Argonauts (amongst whom were Calais and Zetes, the brothers of Cleopatra), on their arrival in Thrace found the sons of Phineus half-buried in the earth and demanded their liberation. Phineus refused, and a fight took place in which he was slain by Heracles, who freed Cleopatra (Who had been thrown into prison) and her sons, and reinstated them as rulers of the kingdom. Tragedies on the subject of Phineus were written by Aeschylus and Sophocles. These would directly appeal to an Athenian audience, Phineus's first wife having been the daughter of Orithyia (daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens), who had been carried off by Boreas to his home in Thrace. The punishment of Ph1neus would naturally be regarded as a just retribution for the insult put upon a princess of the royal house of Athens.
Apollodorus i. 9, 21, iii. 15, 3; Sophocles, Antigone, 966, with Jebb's notes; Diod. Sic. 43, 44; Servius on Aeneid iii. 2o9; chol. on Apollonius Rhodius 11. 178.
PHIPS (or Phipps), SIR WILLIAM (1651-1695), colonial governor of Massachusetts, was born on the 2nd of February 1651, at Woolwich, Maine, near the mouth of the Kennebec river. He was a shepherd until he was eighteen, and then a ship carpenter's apprentice for four years; worked at his trade in Boston for a year, at this time learning to read and write; and with his wife's property established a ship-yard on the Sheepscot river in Maine, but soon abandoned it because of Indian disorders. In 1684-1686, with a commission from the British Crown, he searched vainly for a wrecked Spanish treasure ship of which he had heard while on a voyage to the Bahamas; he found this vessel in 1687, and from it recovered £300,000. Of this amount much went to the duke of Albemarle, who had fitted out the second expedition. Phips received £16,000 as his share, was knighted by James II., and was appointed sheriE of New England under Sir Edmund Andros. Poorly educated and ignorant of law, Phips could accomplish little, and returned to England. In 1689 he returned to Massachusetts, found a revolutionary government in control, and at once entered into the life of the colony. He joined the North Church (Cotton Mather's) at Boston, and was soon appointed by the General Court commander of an expedition against the French in Canada, which sailed in April 1690 and easily captured Port Royal. A much larger expedition led by Phips in July against Quebec and Montreal ended disastrously. Phips generously bought at their par value, in order to give them credit in the colony, many of the colony's bills issued to pay for the expedition. In the winter of 1690 he returned to England, vainly sought aid for another expedition against Canada, and urged, with Increase Mather, the colonial agent, a. restoration of the colony's charter, annuHed during the reign of Charles II. The Crown, at the suggestion of, Mather, appointed him the first royal governor under the new charter. On reaching Boston in May 1692, Phips found the colony in a very disordered condition, and though honest, persevering and indisposed to exalt his prerogative at the expense of the people, he was untitted for the difficult position. He appointed a special commission to try the witchcraft cases, but did nothing to stop the witchcraft mania, and suspended the sittings of the court only after great atrocities had been committed. In defending the frontier he displayed great energy, but his policy of building forts was expensive and therefore unpopular. Having the manners of a 17th-century sea captain, he became involved in many quarrels, and engaged in a bitter controversy with Governor Benjamin Fletcher of New York. Numerous complaints to the home government resulted in his being summoned to England to answer charges. While in London awaiting trial, he died on the 18th of February 1695.
See Cotton Mather's Life of His Excellency Sir William Phips (London, 1697; republished in his Magnalia in 1702); Francis Bowen's “Life of Sir William Phips," in Jared Sparks's American Biography, 1st series, vol. vii. (New York, 1856); William Goold's “Sir William Phips,” in Collections of the Maine Historical Society, series 1, vol. ix. (Portland, 1887): Ernest Myrand's Sir William Phipps devant Quebec (Quebec, 1893); Thomas Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts (2 vols, Boston; 3rd ed., 1795); and J. G. Palfrey's History of New England (5 vols., Boston, 1858-1890).
PHLEBITIS (from Gr. φλέψ), inflammation of a vein.
When a vein is inflamed the blood in it is apt to form a clot, or thrombus, which, if loosened and displaced from its original position, may be carried as an embolus towards the heart and there be arrested; or it may pass through the cavities of the heart into the lungs, there to lodge and give rise to alarming symptoms. If the thrombus is formed in the inflamed vein of a pile it may pass as an embolus (see Haemorrhoids) into the liver. If an embolus is carried through the left side of the heart it may enter the large vessels at the root of the neck and reach the brain, giving rise to serious cerebral disturbance or
- ↑ Chronicle of Joshua Stylites, ch. 30.
- ↑ One these and other point see Budge's introduction to his second volume, which contains also a list of the other works of Philoxenus and a number of illustrative extracts.
- ↑ One by Martin (in Grammatica chrestomathia et glossarium linguae syriacae) and one by Guidi (La Lettera di Filosseno ai monaci di Tell 'Addā).
