The Shelves · Lyric (melic) poetry

Demeter, and Disorderly Words (Ataktoi Glossai)

Ἄτακτοι γλῶσσαι

Known · Probablein Alexandria?Conjecturedvery likely classLegend · Told storya told story on its tag

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I · The entry, in his form

In the table of Lyric (melic) poetry: “elegy; glossary”

Conjecturedvery likely class

Philitas of Cos

Demeter, and Disorderly Words

Ἄτακτοι γλῶσσαι

Opening words not preserved.

Length: not counted

Above, his entry form, filled from what we know. Below, ours.

II · Does it survive? Where to read it

Survives in fragments

Was it in Alexandria?

Known · Probable

Probably held in the Library.

In the cupboard: no source names the Alexandrian copy, but its scholars' use of it makes one very likely.

Read it today

III · In the show

The show has not yet spoken of this work.

IV · Sources and the living entry

Ancient references (3)
  • Suda φ 332
  • Athenaeus 9.401e
  • Aelian, Varia Historia 9.14
Modern scholarship (2)
  • K. Spanoudakis, Philitas of Cos (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
  • R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968)

Entry checked 31 Oct 2026 · no corrections · Suggest a correction ›

ΑΤΑΚΤΟΙ ΓΛΩΣΣΑΙ

Read what is told

The back of the tag: a story told of this work, in its teller's voice.

Legend: told story

The poet killed by a paradox

Athenaeus, some five centuries later, quotes an epitaph in which Philitas says the Liar paradox and his nights of thought on it killed him; Aelian adds that he was so thin he wore lead in his shoes so the wind would not blow him over.

Told by Athenaeus and Aelian, c. 200 CE, some five centuries later

What the evidence supports

Philitas was a poet and scholar who taught the young Ptolemy II, and his glossary of rare words is attested. Both stories are jokes about a learned man's leanness, not records.

Sources (3)
  • Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 9.401e
  • Aelian, Varia Historia 9.14
  • Suda φ 332
The Hall of Told Stories

Beside it in the cupboard