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[15b]

“ After the sack of Ilium,1 Menestheus, Phidippus and Antiphus, and the people of Elephenor, and Philoctetes sailed together as far as Mimas. Then Menestheus went to Melos and reigned as king, because the king there, Polyanax, had died. And Antiphus the son of Thessalus went to the Pelasgians, and having taken possession of the country he called it Thessaly.2 Phidippus with the Coans was driven first to Andros, and then to Cyprus, where he settled. Elephenor died in Troy,3 but his people were cast away in the Ionian gulf and inhabited Apollonia in Epirus. And the people of Tlepolemus touched at Crete; then they were driven out of their course by winds and settled in the Iberian islands. ...The people of Protesilaus were cast away on Pellene near the plain of Canastrum.4 And Philoctetes was driven to Campania in Italy, and after making war on the Lucanians, he settled in Crimissa, near Croton and Thurium5; and, his wanderings over, he founded a sanctuary of Apollo the Wanderer (Alaios), to whom also he dedicated his bow, as Euphorion says.6

Tzetzes, Scholia on Lycophron, 911


1 This paragraph is quoted from Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 911.

2 Compare Strab. 9.5.23.

3 Elephenor was killed in battle by Agenor. See Hom. Il. 4.463-472. Compare Aristot. Peplos 33(4), in Bergk's Poetae Lyrici Graeci, ii.654.

4 Canastrum, or Canastra, is the extreme southern cape of the peninsula of PallenePellene) in Macedonia. See Hdt. 7.123; Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.599, with the Scholiast; Strab. 7 Fr. 25; Apostolius, Cent. ii.20; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 526; Livy xxx.45.15, xliv.11.3.

5 It is said that in a sedition Philoctetes was driven from his city of Meliboea in ThessalyHom. Il. 2.717ff.), and fled to southern Italy, where he founded the cities of Petilia, Old Crimissa, and Chone, between Croton and Thurii. See Strab. 6.1.3, who, after recording the foundation of Petilia and Old Crimissa by Philoctetes, proceeds as follows: “And Apollodorus, after mentioning Philoctetes in his Book of the Ships, says that some people relate how, on arriving in the country of Croton, he founded Crimissa on the headland and above it the city of Chone, from which the Chonians hereabout took their name, and how men sent by him to Sicily fortified Segesta near Eryx with the help of Aegestes the Trojan.” The book from which Strabo makes this quotation is not the Library of our author, but the Catalogue of the Ships, a work on the Homeric Catalogue by the Athenian grammarian Apollodorus. According to Strab. 8.3.6, Apollodorus borrowed most of his materials for this work from Demetrius of Scepsis. For the fragments of the work see Heyne's Apollodorus (Second Edition, 1803), vol. i. pp. 417ff.; Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, i.453ff.

6 Compare Aristot. Mir. 107(115): “It is said that Philoctetes is worshipped by the Sybarites; for on his return from Troy he settled in the territory of Croton at the place called Macalla, which they say is distant a hundred and twenty furlongs, and they relate that he dedicated the bow of Hercules in the sanctuary of the Halian Apollo. But they say that in the time of their sovereignty the people of Croton fetched the bow from there and dedicated it in the sanctuary of Apollo in their country. It is said, too, that when he died he was buried beside the river Sybaris; for he had gone to the help of the Rhodians under Tlepolemus, who had been carried out of their course to these regions and had engaged in battle with the barbarous inhabitants of that country.” This war with the barbarians is no doubt the “war on the Lucanians,” in which Apollodorus, or at all events, Tzetzes here tells us that Philoctetes engaged after his arrival in Italy.

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