Philistion
Φιλιστίων
(Φιλιστίων) of Nicaea or Magnesia, a mimnographer, who flourished in the time of Augustus, about A. D. 7 (Hieron. in Euseb. Chron. Ol. 196. 3).
Works
Mimes
He was an actor, as well as a writer of mimes, and is said, in an epigram preserved in the Greek Anthology, to have died of excessive laughter (Jacobs, Anth. Graec. vol. iv. p. 230; Anth. Pal. vol. ii. p. 349). He is frequently mentioned by the Greek writers of the second century and downwards. Suidas, who, by some extraordinary error, has placed his death in the time of Socrates, makes him a native of Prusa, and says that he wrote κωμῳδίας βιολογικάς (that is, mimes), that he wrote a play called Μισοψηφισταί, and a work entitled Φιλογέλως. He is mentioned by Tzetzes (Proleg. ad Lycophr. p. 257), among the poets of the New Comedy, but the name is there, almost certainly, an error for PHILIPPIDES.
Σύγκρισις Μενάνδρου καὶ Φιλιστίωνος
We have no fragments of Philistion, hut there is a work extant under the title of Σύγκρισις Μενάνδρου καὶ Φιλιστίωνος, which is a collection of lines, containing moral sentiments, from Menander and some other poet of the New Comedy, who of course could not be Philistion the mimographer. All difficulty is however removed by the emendation of Meineke, who substitutes Φιλήμονος for Φιλιστίωνος. (Comp. PHILEMON).
Editions
The work was first edited by N. Rigaltius, Par. 1613, afterwards, in a much improved state, by J. Rutgersius, in his Var. Lect. vol. iv. p. 355-367, with the notes of Heinsius. Boissonade has published the work, from a Paris MS., in his Anecdota, vol. i. p. 146-150, whence Meineke has transferred it into his Fragmenta Comicorum Graecorum, vol. iv. pp. 335-339.
Further Information
Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. p. 480; Meineke, Menand. et Philem. Reliq. Praef. p. vii. &c.; Clinton, F. H. sub ann. A. D. 7; Bernhardy, Geschichte der Griech. Litt. vol. ii. p. 924.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.