Philiscus
(Φιλίσκος), a citizen of Abydus, who in B. C. 368 was sent into Greece by Ariobarzanes, the Persian satrap of the Hellespont, to effect a reconciliation between the Thebans and Lacedaemonians. He came well supplied with money, and in the name of Artaxerxes II.; but in a congress which he caused to be held at Delphi, he failed to accomplish his object, as the Thebans refused to abandon their claim to the sovereignty of Boeotia, and Lacedaemon would not acknowledge the independence of Messenia. Upon this Philiscus, leaving behind him a body of 2000 mercenaries for the service of Sparta, and having been honoured, as well as Ariobarzanes, with the Athenian franchise, returned to Asia. Here, under cover of the satrap's protection, he made himself master of a number of Greek states, over which he exercised a tyrannical and insolent sway, till he was at last assassinated at Lampsacus by Thersagoras and Execestus (Xen. Hell. 7.1.27 ; Diod. 15.70; Dem. c. Aristocr. pp. 666, 667). Diodorus places the mission of Philiscus to Greece in B. C. 369, a year too soon. [E.E]
(Φιλίσκος), literary.
1. An Athenian comic poet of the Middle Comedy, of whom little is known. Suidas simply mentions him as a comic poet, and gives the following titles of his plays : Ἄδωνις, Διὸς γοναί, Θημιστοκλῆς, Ὄλυμπος, Πανὸς γοναί, Ἑρμοῦ καὶ Ἀφροδίτης γοναί, Ἀρτέμιδος καὶ Ἀπόλλωνος. These mythological titles sufficiently prove that Philiscus belonged to the Middle Comedy. The nativities of the gods, to which most of them relate, formed a very favourite class of subjects with the poets of the Middle Comedy. (Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Graec. pp. 278, &c.) Eudocia omits the title Ἑρμοῦ καὶ Ἀφροδίτης γοναί, and Lobeck has pointed out the difficulty of seeing how the nativities of Hermes and Aphrodite could be connected in one drama (Aglaoph. p. 437); a difficulty which Meineke meets by supposing that we ought to read Ἑρμοῦ γοναί, Ἀφροδίτης γοναι, as two distinct titles (Hist. Crit. pp. 281, 282). The Themistocles is, almost without doubt, wrongly ascribed by Suidas to the comie poet Philiscus, instead of the tragic poet of the same name. Another play is cited by Stobaeus (Serm. 73.53), namely the Φιλάργυροι, or, as Meineke thinks it ought to be, Φιλάργυρος.
Philiscus must have flourished about B. C. 400, or a little later, as his portrait was painted by Parrhasius, in a picture which Pliny thus describes (H. N. 35.10. s. 36.5) :--"et Philiscum, et Liberum patrem adstante Virtute," from which it seems that the picture was a group, representing the poet supported by the patron deity of his art, and by a personified representation of Arete, to intimate the excellence he had attained in it. Naeke has clearly shown that this statement can only refer to Philiscus the comic poet, and not to any other of the known persons of the same name. (Sched. Crit. p. 26; Opusc. vol. i. p. 42).
There are very few fragments of Philiscus preserved. Stobaeus (l.c.) quotes two verses from the Φιλάργυροι, and elsewhere (29.40), two from an unknown play. Another verse from an unknown play is quoted by Dicaearchus (Vit. Graec. p. 30, Buttmann); and another is preserved in the Palatine Anthology (11.441, vol. i. p. 445, ed. Jacobs), which Jacobs wrongly ascribes to the rhetorician of Miletus. (Meineke, Frag. Com. Graec. vol. i. pp. 423, 424, vol. iii. pp. 579, 580 ; Naeke, l.c.)
2. Of Miletus, an orator or rhetorician, was the disciple of Isocrates, having been previously a noted flute player (Suid. s.v. Dionys. Halic. Ep. ad Amm. p. 120). He wrote a life of the orator Lycurgus, and an epitaph on Lysias; the latter is preserved by the pseudo-Plutarch (Vit. X. Orat. p. 836), and in the Greek Anthology (Brunck, Anal. vol. i. p. 184; Jacobs, Anth. Craec. vol. i. p. 101, vol. xiii. p. 936). Remembering the constant confusion of the names Philiscus and Philistus, we may safely ascribe to this orator the δημηγορίαι, which Suidas mentions among the works of the historian Philistus of Syracuse. (Suid. s. v. Φίλιστος ; it is also to be observed that Suidas, in addition to his article Φίλιστος, gives a life of the Syracusan historian under the head of Φίλισκος ἢ Φίλιστος, comp. Philistus). Suidas (s. v. Τίμαιος) states that the historian Timaeus was a disciple of Philiscus of Miletus; another disciple was Neanthes of Cyzicus (Ruhnken, Hist. Crit. Orat. Graec. p. lxxxiii., Opusc. p. 367; Clinton, F. H. vol. iii. p. 25).
3. Of Aegina. It is doubtful whether there was one or two cynic philosophers of this name from Aegina. Suidas has two, of one of whom he says that he was the disciple of Diogenes the Cynic, or, according to Hermippus, of Stilpon, that he was the teacher of Alexander in grammar, and that he wrote dialogues, one of which was entitled Κόδρος ; of the other, Suidas says that, having gone from Aegina to Athens, in order to see the city, he heard Diogenes, and addicted himself to philosophy : and that his brother, having been sent by his father to Athens to fetch him home, also staid there, and became a philosopher; and lastly, the father himself, having gone to Athens in search of his sons, became infected with the philosophical mania : the rest of the article refers to Diogenes himself. The latter article is taken from Diogenes Laertius (6.75, 76), who mentions the name of the father, Onesicritus, and who evidently only speaks of one cynic philosopher of the name of Philiscus (comp. 6.73, 80, 84). This is, therefore, very probably one of the many cases in which Suidas makes two articles out of the same name, by copying statements from two different authors. We do not see the force of Naeke's argument (Sched. Crit. p. 25), that the Philiscus of whom the tale in Diogenes and Suidas is told, could hardly, for chronological reasons, be the same person as the teacher of Alexander. Some ancient writers ascribed to Philiscus some, or even all, of the tragedies of Diogenes the Cynic, probably through confounding him with the celebrated tragic poet of the same name. (D. L. 6.73 ; Julian. Oral. vi. vii.; Naeke, l.c. ; Clinton, F. H. vol. iii. p. 505, n.) Aelian has preserved a short exhortation of Philiscus, addressed to Alexander (V. H. 14.11).
4. Of Corcyra, a distinguished tragic poet, and one of the seven who formed the Tragic Pleiad, was also a priest of Dionysus, and in that character he was present at the coronation procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus in B. C. 284. (Ath. v. p. 198c.) Pliny (Plin. Nat. 35.10. s. 36.20) states that his portrait was painted in the attitude of meditation by Protogenes, who is known to have been still alive ill B. C. 304. It seems, therefore, that the time of Philiscus must be extended to an earlier period than that assigned to him by Suidas, who merely says that he lived under Ptolemy Philadelphus. He wrote 42 dramas, of which we know nothing, except that the Themistocles, which is enumerated among the plays of Philiscus the comic poet, ought probably to be ascribed to him : such subjects are known to have been chosen by the tragedians, as in the Marathonians of Lycophron. The choriambic hexameter verse was named after Philiscus, on account of his frequent use of it (Hephaest. p. 53). There is much dispute whether the name should be written Φιλίκκος or Φίλικος, but the former appears to be the true form, though he himself, for the sake of metre, used the latter. (Naeke, Sched. Crit. pp. 18, &c., in Opusc. vol. i. pp. 29, &c.; Welcker, Die Griech. Trag. p. 1265.) [P.S]
artists.
1. A painter, of whom we have no information, except the mention, by Pliny, of his picture of a painter's studio, with a boy blowing the fire. (H. N. 35.11. s. 40.38.)
2. Of Rhodes, a sculptor, several of whose works were placed in the temple of Apollo, adjoining the portico of Octavia at Rome. One of these statues was that of the god himself : the others were Latona and Diana, the nine Muses, and another statue of Apollo, without drapery. Within the portico, in the temple of Juno, was a statue of Venus, by the same artist (Plin. Nat. 36.5. s. 4.10). From this statement it is evident that Philiscus made some of the statues expressly for the temples, but whether at the time of their first erection by Metellus (B. C. 146), or of their restoration by Augustus more than a hundred years later, cannot be determined with certainty. Most of the writers on art place him at the earlier date ; but at all events he belonged to that period of the revival of art which, according to Pliny, began with the 155th Olympiad (B. C. 160), and which extended down to the time of the Antonines during which period the Rhodian school sent forth several of the best statuaries and sculptors, and Rome became a great seat of the arts. The group of Muses, found in the villa of Cassius at Tivoli, is supposed by Visconti to be a copy of that of Philiscus. Meyer takes the beautiful statue at Florence, known as the Apollino, for the naked Apollo of Philiscus; it is engraved in Müller's Denkmäler d. alten Kunst, vol. ii. pl. xi. fig. 126. (Meyer, Kunstgeschichte, vol. iii. pp. 35, 120; Hirt, Gesch. d. bild. Kiinste, p. 298; Müller, Archäol. d. Kunst, §§ 160. n. 2, 393, n. 2.) [P.S]
killed his own daughter, because she had been guilty of fornication. (V. Max. 6.1.6.)
(Φιλίσκος). (1) A Greek tragedian of Corcyra, in the first half of the third century b.c.; he was priest of Dionysus in Alexandria, and, as such, stood at the head of the Dionysiac guild of actors in that city. He was one of the “Pleiad” of Alexandrian tragic poets. His portrait is preserved in a relief in the Lateran Museum. He wrote forty-two dramas.
(2) A Rhodian sculptor of about B.C. 146 (Pliny , Pliny H. N. xxxvi. 34).