Philostephanus

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Philostephanus is also a genus of plant bugs among the Miridae.''

Philostephanus of Cyrene (Philostephanus Cyrenaeus) was a Hellenistic writer from Cyrene in north Africa, who was a pupil of the poet Callimachus in Alexandria and doubtless worked there, during the third century BCE. His history of Cyprus, De Cypro, written during the reign of Ptolemy Philopator (222-206 BCE), has been lost but was known to at least two Christian writers, Clement of Alexandria and Arnobius It contained a narration of the story of Pygmalion, in which the king of Cyprus fashioned a cult image of Aphrodite that came to life, upon which Ovid depended for his dramatised and expanded version in Metamorphoses, through which the Pygmalion myth was transmitted to the medieval and modern world..

The remarks on Cyprus seem to have come from a larger work, On Islands. Scattered brief quotes of Philostephanus on islands refer also to Sicily, Calauria off the coast of Troezen and Stryme. Pliny's Natural History adduces Philostephanus as a source for the assertion Jason was the first that went out to sea in a long vessel.

Other works of Philostephanus cited in passages from other authors were works Of the Cities of Asia, On Cyllene, Epirotica ("On Epirus"), On Remarkable Rivers On Inventions, and various commentaries.

The fragments of Philostephanus, surviving in quotes from other authors, were published in Fragmenta historicorum graecorum

Philostephanus was also a comic poet, of whom little is known.

Notes

References

• Karl Otfried Müller et al. Fragmenta historicorum graecorum ("FHG") 1849, vol iii. pp 28-34

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