The New International Encyclopædia/Philemon (poet)

PHILE′MON (Lat., from Gk. Φιλήμων) (c. 361–263 B.C.). A Greek comic poet. He was a native of Soli, in Cilicia, or of Syracuse, in Sicily. He resided chiefly in Athens, but for a time also in Alexandria at the Court of Ptolemy Philadelphus. He and Menander were the two representative poets of the Attic New Comedy. Philemon gained more prizes than Menander, perhaps through bribery of the judges. Posterity, however, reversed the decision, and Menander and Homer were the two favorite poets of later Greece. Of the 97 comedies which Philemon left, 57 are known to us from titles and fragments, while two at least, the Ἔμπορος and Θησαυρός, are preserved in Plautus's adaptations, the Mercator and Trinummus; and it is also probable that Plautus's Mostellaria follows Philemon's Φάσμα. The fragments are published by Koch, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, vol. ii. (Leipzig, 1886).