PHILETAS, a distinguished poet and critic of the Alexandrian school, was the son of Telephus and a native of the island of Cos. He lived in the reigns of Philip, Alexander the Great, and Ptolemy I. of Egypt, the last of whom appointed him tutor to his son Ptolemy Philadelphus. His life thus fell in the latter part of the 4th and early part of the 3rd century B.C. He was a contemporary of Menander, a friend of the poet Hermesianax of Cos, and lived into the time of Aratus. Amongst his pupils were Theocritus and Zenodotus. He was sickly and so thin that he was said to carry lead in his shoes to keep himself from being blown away. The story runs that he died from the excessive assiduity with which he sought the answer to the sophistical problem called “The Liar.”[1] A bronze statue of him was erected in Cos.
The fame of Philetas rested chiefly on his elegiac verses, in which, however, he was esteemed inferior to the younger poet Callimachus. He is frequently mentioned by the Latin elegiac poets Propertius and Ovid. From Hermesianax and Ovid we gather that his verses were amatory and celebrated the praises of the fair Bittis or Battis, but her name does not occur in the existing frag ments, which are of a melancholy rather than an amatory tone. In one of his poems (Demetcr) he depicted the grief of Demeter for the loss of Proserpine ; in another (Hermes) the love of Polymele for Ulysses. The latter poem appears from the fragments to have been composed in hexameter verse. Further, he wrote epigrams and poems called Haiyvta. There is no evidence that he wrote bucolic poems, for the passage in Moschus formerly quoted to prove this is an interpolation of Musneus. Some iambic verses are attri buted to him, probably by a mistake arising from a common con fusion between names beginning with Phil. Besides his poems, Philetas was the author of a vocabulary explaining the meanings of rare and obscure words, including words peculiar to certain dialects. He also wrote notes on Homer. The work on Naxos (XaiaKa), sometimes attributed to him, was perhaps rather by Philteas. The fragments of Philetas have been edited by Kayser, Gbttingen, 1793, and by Bach, Halle, 1829.
PHILIP, one of the twelve apostles, mentioned fifth in all the lists (Matt. x. 3 ; Mark iii. 18 ; Luke vi. 14 ; Acts i. 13), is a mere name in the Synoptists, but a figure of some prominence in the Fourth Gospel. There he is said to have been "of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter," and to have received his call to follow Jesus at Bethany, having previously been, it would seem, a disciple of the Baptist (John i. 43, 44). Philip was at that time the means of bringing Nathanael to Jesus (John i. 45), and at a later date he, along with Andrew, carried the request of the incpuiring Greeks to the Master (John xii. 22). Philip and Andrew alone are mentioned by name in con nexion with the feeding of the five thousand (John vi. 5, 7), and Philip is also one of the few interlocutors in John xiv. After the resurrection he was present at the election of Matthias as successor to Judas, but he does not again appear in the New Testament history ; it is, however, implied that he still continued in Jerusalem after the outbreak of the first persecution.
According to Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, in his controversial letter written to Victor of Rome towards the end of the 2d century (ap. Euseb., H. E., iii. 31, v. 24), the graves of Philip, "one of the twelve," and of his two aged virgin daughters were in [the Phrygian] Hierapolis ; a third daughter, "who had lived in the Holy Ghost," was buried at Ephesus. Proclus, one of the interlocutors in the "Dialogue of Caius," a writing of somewhat later date than the letter of Polycrates, mentions (ap. Euseb., H. E., iii. 31) "four prophetesses, the daughters of Philip at Hierapolis in Asia, whose tomb and that of their father are to be seen there." But Euscbius himself proceeds expressly to identify this Philip with the Philip mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as living in Cæsarea; and in another place he alludes to Philip "the apostle " as having preached the gospel to the Ethiopian eunuch (//. E., ii. 1). Clement of Alexandria also (Strom., iii. 6 [52]) incidentally speaks of " Philip the apostle " as having begotten children and as having given daughters in marriage. In another place (Strom., iv. 9 [73]) Clement quotes, with concurrence, a passage from the Gnostic Heraclcon, in which it is expressly said that Matthew, Philip, Thomas, and others died without "confession of the voice," or, in other words, were not, properly speaking, confessors or martyrs. A later stage of the tradition regarding Philip appears in various late apocryphal writings which have been edited by Tischendorf in his Ada Apostolorum Apocrypha, and in his Apocalypses Apocrypha. According to the Ada PMlippi, this apostle, along with Bartholo mew and Mariamne, the sister of the latter, came to Ophiorynia or Hierapolis, where the success of their preaching, and more par ticularly the conversion and miraculous healing of Nicanora, the wife of the governor, provoked bitter hostility. Philip was crucified head downwards, and invoked curses on his persecutors. His imprecations were heard, but the Lord Jesus immediately afterwards appeared to him and rebuked him for his want of meekness, further announcing his approaching death, and that on account of his sin he would be kept back forty days from the gates of paradise. The Actct Philippi in Hclladc (i.e., "in the city of Athens, called Hellas") are still more fantastical. An apocryphal book, under the title Actus Pliilippi, is condemned in tne canon of Gelasius. Since the 6th century Philip has been commemorated in the West, along with St James the Less, on 1st May, their relics being deposited in the same church in Rome ; in the Eastern Church Philip s day is 14th November, and that of James the Less 23d October.
PHILIP, “the evangelist,” is first mentioned in the Acts (vi. 5) as one of “the seven” who were chosen to attend to certain temporal affairs of the church in Jerusalem in consequence of the murmurings of the Hellenists against the Hebrews. After the martyrdom of Stephen he went to Samaria, where he preached with much success, Simon Magus being one of his converts. He afterwards instructed and baptized the Ethiopian eunuch on the road between Jerusalem and Gaza ; next he was " caught away" by the Spirit and "found at Azotus " (Ashdod), whence " passing through he preached in all the cities till he came to Cæsarea" (Acts viii.). Here some years after wards, according to Acts xxi. 8, 9, he entertained Paul and his companion on their way to Jerusalem ; at that time " he had four daughters which did prophesy." At a very early period he came to be confounded with the subject of the preceding notice (q.v.); the confusion was all the more easy because, while he undoubtedly could in a certain well-understood sense of the word be called an "apostle," writers naturally refrained from applying to him the more ambiguous designation of "evangelist." "Philip the deacon " is commemorated on 6th June.
PHILIP, tetrarch of Ituræa. See Herod Philip, vol. xi. p. 755.
greatest of these was Philip II. (382–336 B.C.), the first founder of the Macedonian Empire (q.v.). After the death of Alexander the Great, Arrhidæus, a bastard of Philip II., reigned as Philip III., till he was put to death by Olympias in 317. Philip IV., son of Cassander, reigned only for a few months in 296. Philip V., the last but one of the kings of Macedon and son of Demetrius II., was born in 237, and came to the throne on the death of his uncle, Antigonus Doson, in 220. In the course of the next three years he acquired a brilliant reputation by his exploits against the Ætolians and their allies in the Peloponnesus in the Social War; but after this, though his whole career was marked by military and even political ability, the bad sides of his character became predominant, and he appeared more and more as a perfidious, morose, and cruel tyrant, thus alienating the affections of the Greeks and ultimately even of his own subjects. His life was full of ambitious schemes, but he made the cardinal error of siding with Carthage against Rome. His character made it easy for the Romans to raise against him a powerful coalition of his neighbours, but Philip held his ground with vigour till the armies of the republic themselves appeared on the field. How he was finally driven out of Greece has been related under Flaminius. After 196 Philip for some time accepted his reverses and sought the
friendship of Rome, helping the republic against Antiochus;
- ↑ The problem was this: If a man says he is telling a lie, does he speak truly or falsely?
