Portal:Greece/Selected biography/4

Philitas or Philetas of Cos (c. 340 – c. 285 BC) was the most important intellectual in the early years of Hellenistic civilization. A Greek associated with Alexandria, he flourished in the second half of the 4th century BC, and was appointed as tutor to the heir of the royal throne of Ptolemaic Egypt. He was caricatured as a frail old academic so consumed by his studies that he forgot to eat and drink. Philitas was the first major writer who was both a scholar and a poet. His reputation continued for centuries, based on both his pioneering study of words and his verse in elegiac meter. His vocabulary Disorderly Words explained meanings of rare and obscure poetic words, such as those used by Homer. His poetry, notably his elegiac poem Demeter, was highly respected by later ancient poets. Almost all his work has since vanished. Little is known of Philitas' life. Ancient sources refer to him as a Coan, that is, a native or long-time inhabitant of Cos, one of the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea just off the coast of Asia. His student Theocritus wrote that Philetas' father was Telephos (Τήλεφος) and his mother, assuming the manuscript is supplemented correctly, Euctione (Εὐκτιόνη).