Philocles
(Φιλοκλῆς) historical.
1. An Athenian, who, together with Adeimantus, was joined with Conon in the command of the fleet on the deposition of the generals who had conquered at Arginusae (B. C. 406). Philocles was the author of the proposal for the mutilation of all the prisoners who should be taken in the sea-fight which the Athenians contemplated; but it seems doubtful whether the decree in question was passed in an assembly at Athens, or in one held at Aegospotami before the battle; also whether it determined on the amputation of the right thumb, according to Plutarch, or the right hand, as Xenophon tells us. The same spirit of cruelty was exhibited by Philocales on the capture of a Corinthian and Andrian trireme, the crews of which he ordered to be thrown down a precipice. In retribution for these deeds he was slain at Lampsacus by Lysander, into whose hands he had fallen at the battle of Aegospotami in B. C. 405 (Xen. Hell. 1.7.1, 2.1. §§ 30_32; Diod. 13.104-106; Plut. Lys. 9, 13; comp. Cic. de Off. 3.1; Ael. V. II. 2.9; Thirlwall's Greece, vol. iv. pp. 148, &c.)
2. An officer and friend of Philip V. of Macedon. In B. C. 200, when Philip was compelled by Attalus I. and the Rhodians to winter in Caria. Philocles was with him, and formed a plan, which did not, however, succeed, for gaining possession of the town of Mylasa. In the same year he was sent by Philip into Attica to ravage the country, and made an unsuccessful attempt on Eleusis, and also afterwards, in conjunction with Philip, on Athens and the Peiraeeus. In B. C. 198 he was stationed at Chalcis in Euboea, and failed in an endeavour to succour Eretria, which the combined forces of the Romans, the Rhodians, and Attalus were besieging, and which was taken by them very shortly after the repulse of Philocles. In the same year, however, he compelled L. Quintius Flamininus and Attalus to raise the siege of Corinth, having brought up through Boeotia to the promontory of Juno Acraea, just opposite Sicyon, a reinforcement of 1500 men; and in consequence of this success he was invited to Argos by the Macedonian party in the town, and made himself master of it. In the war between Prusias and Eumenes II. of Pergamus, Philip sided with the former, and sent Philocles to his court to negotiate with him, and also to Rome to explain and defend his conduct. In B. C. 184 Philocles and Apelles were joined by Philip with his son Demetrius in an embassy to Rome, to plead his cause before the senate, and avert their anger. In B. C. 181 Philocles and Apelles were again sent to Rome, to inquire into the truth of an accusation brought by Perseus against Demetrius, of having formed a design for changing the succession to the throne in his own favour, and of having communicated it to T. Quintius Flamininus and other Romans. The envoys had been chosen by Philip because he thought that they were impartial between his sons. They were however suborned by Perseus, and brought back with them a forged letter, professing to be from Flamininus to Philip, and confirming the charge. [Demetrius]. On the discovery of the fraud, Philip caused Philocles to be arrested and put to death, B. C. 179. According to one account, no confession could be wrung from him even by torture. (Plb. 16.24, 23.14, 24.1, 3; Liv. 31.16, 26, 32.16, 23, 25, 39.35, 46, 40.20, 23, 54, 55; Just. 32.2, 3.) [E.E]
(Φιλοκλῆς), literary.
1. An Athenian tragic poet, the sister's son of Aeschylus ; his father's name was Philopeithes. The genealogy of the family is shown in the following table, from Clinton (F. H. vol. ii. p. xxxv.) :
Suidas states that Philocles was contemporary with Euripides (adopting the emendation of Clinton, μετὰ for κατὰ), and that he composed 100 tragedies, among which were the following :--Ἠριγόνη, Ναύπλιος, Οἰδίπους, Οἰνεύς, Πείαμος, Πηνελόπη, Φιλοκτήτης. Besides these, we learn from the Didascaliae of Aristotle (ap. Schol. ad Aristoph. Au. 281) that he wrote a tetralogy on the fates of Procne and Philomela, under the title of Pandionis, one play of which was called Τηρεὺς ἢ ἔποψ, Tereus, or the Hoopoe, and furnished Aristophanes with a subject of ridicule in the Birds, where he not only introduces the Hoopoe as one of the chief characters, but gives point to the parody by making him say, in answer to the surprise expressed by Pisthetaerus at seeing another hoopoe (5.281) :--
Ἀλλʼ οὗτος μέν ἐστι Φιλοκλέους ἐξ ἔποπος, ἐγὼ δὲ τούτου πάππος, ὥσπερ εἰ λέγοις Ἱππόνικος Καλλίου κἀξ Ἱππονίκου Καλλίας,
which we may perhaps explain, taking a hint from the scholiast, thus :--" I am the original hoopoe : the other is the son of Philocles, and my grandson," insinuating that Philocles, the author of the Τηρεὺς ἢ Ἔποψ, was himself indebted to an earlier play on the same subject, namely, according to the/ scholiast, the Tereus of Sophocles. That Philocles, indeed, was an imitator of Sophocles, might be conjectured from the identity of some of the titles mentioned by Suidas with those of plays by Sophocles ; and there is also reason to believe that the tragedians who succeeded the three great masters of the art were in the habit of expanding their single plays into trilogies. In the general character of his plays, we must, however, regard Philocles as an imitator, not of Sophocles, but of Aeschylus, whom, on account of his relationship, he would na turally, according to the custom of the Greeks, have for his teacher. That he was not altogether un worthy of his great master, may be inferred from the fact that, on one occasion he actually gained a victory over Sophocles, an honour to which, as Aristeides indignantly remarks (ii. p. 256), Aeschylus himself never attained. The circumstance is the more remarkable, as the drama of Sophocles to which that of Philocles was preferred, was the Oedipus Tyrannus, which we are accustomed to regard as the greatest work of Greek dramatic art. It is useless to discuss the various conjectures by which modern critics have attempted to explain this curious fact : its chief importance is in the proof it furnishes that Philocles must have been a poet of real excellence, for otherwise he could not, under any circumstances, have been preferred to Sophocles. It is true that a different impression might be gathered from the terms in which the comic poets refer to him; but it ought never to be forgotten that the poets of the Old Comedy were essentially and avowedly caricaturists; nay, a man's being abused by them is in itself a proof that he was eminent enough to be worth abusing. The following are some of the attacks made by the comic poets upon Philocles. Telecleides says that, though reated to Aeschylus, he had nothing of his spirit (Meineke, Frag. Com. Graec. vol. ii. p. 366). The same poet seems to have attacked him for departing from the purity of the Attic language (see Meineke, Hit. Crit. Com. Graec. vol. i. p. 90). Cratinus charged him with corrupting the fable, that is, probably, of Tereus, in his Pandionis (Schol. ad Soph. Antig. 402; Meineke, Frag. Com. Graec. vol. ii. p. 226). Aristophanes not only ridicules his Hoopoe, but compares him to another bird, the κορυδός, or crested lark (Av. 1295). In another place he says that, being ugly himself, he makes ugly poetry (Tlesm. 168); and elsewhere he insinuates that the lyric odes of Philocles were anything but sweet and pleasing (Vesp. 462). In explanation of these passages the scholiasts inform us that Philocles was little and ugly, and that his head was of a sharp projecting shape, which gave occasion to the comparison between him and a crested bird, such as the hoopoe; but explanations of this sort are very often nothing more than fancies of the commentators, having no other foundation than the text which they affect to explain. On the last-quoted allusion of Aristophanes, however, the grammarians do throw some light, for they tell us that Philocles was nicknamed Bile and Salt (Χολή, Ἁλμίων), on account of a certain harshness and unpleasantness in his poetry (Suid.; Schol. in Aristoph. Birds 281, Vesp. 462); from which we may infer that, in his attempt to imitate Aeschylus, he fell into a harsh and repulsive style, unredeemed by his uncle's genius.
The date of Philocles may be determined by his victory over Sophocles, which took place in B. C. 429, when he must have been at the least 40 years old, for his son Morsimus is mentioned as a poet only five years later. We possess no remains of his poetry except a single line, which seems to come from a satyric drama (Ath. ii. p. 66). This line has led Meineke to doubt whether there was not a comic poet of the same name, identical, perhaps, with Philocles, the father of Philippides. The scholiast on Aristophanes (Aristoph. Birds 281) and Suidas, followed by Eudocia, expressly mention a comic poet Philocles; but the passages themselves contain abundant proof that they refer to one and the same person as the subject of this article. The error of writing κωμικόςand κωμῳδία for τραγιλός and τραγῳδία, and conversely, is excessively common in the works of the grammarians; and especially when, as often happens, the tragic poet has been an object of ridicule to the comic poets, which we have seen to be the case with Philocles.
2. The great-grandson of the former, son of Astydamas the elder, and brother of Astydamas the younger, was also a tragic poet, according to the scholiast on Aristophanes (Aristoph. Birds 281), but a general, according to Suidas. Kayser enters on an elaborate and ingenious argument to show that there is no ground for supposing that the second Philocles was a tragic poet; but we ought probably to accept the express statement of the scholiast, and to change στρατηγός in Suidas into τραγικός. (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. p. 314; Welcker, die Griech. Trag. p. 967; Kayser, Hist Crit. Trag. Graec. p. 46 ; Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Graec. p. 521; Bode, Gesch. d. Hellen. Dichtkunst, vol. iii. pt. i. pp. 538, 539; Clinton, F. H. vol. ii. p. xxxv.) [P.S]
artists.
1. An Egyptian artist, of the mythical, or, at all events, of an unknown period, to whom some ascribed the invention of the first step in painting, which others attributed to Cleanthes, a Corinthian, namely, tracing the outline of the shadow of a figure cast on a wall, σκία, σκιαγράμμα, a silhouette. (Plin. Nat. 35.3. s. 5; comp. Ardices.)
2. An Athenian architect, of Acharnae, who is not mentioned by any ancient author, but who must have been one of the chief architects of the best period of Greek art, for he was the architect of the beautiful Ionic temple of Athena Polias, in Ol. 111, B. C. 336-332, as we learn from the celebrated inscription relating to the building of the temple, which was found in the Acropolis, and is now in the British Museum. (Böckh, Corp. Inscr. vol. i. No. 160, where Böckh enters into an elaborate and valuable discussion of all that is known of the temple.) [P.S]
(Φιλοκλῆς). (1) A Greek tragedian, son of Aeschylus's sister. He wrote a hundred plays in the manner of Aeschylus, and won the prize against Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus. Only scanty fragments of his plays remain. The drama was also cultivated by his sons Morsimus and Melanthius, by Morsimus's son Astydamas (about B.C. 399), and again by the sons of the latter, Astydamas and Philocles.
(2) The joint commander with Conon of the Athenian fleet at the battle of Arginusae, and put to death by Lysander for having treated his prisoners with cruelty (Plut. Lys. 13).
- slain by Lysander: Paus. 9.32.9