Phylla, the wife of Demetrius Poliorcetes, and mother of Stratonice the wife of Seleucus.
Phyllalia, a part of Arcadia.——A place in Thessaly.
Phylleius, a mountain, country, and town of Macedonia. Apollonius, Argonautica, bk. 1.
Phyllis, a daughter of Sithon, or, according to others, of Lycurgus king of Thrace, who hospitably received Demophoon the son of Theseus, who, at his return from the Trojan war, had stopped on her coasts. She became enamoured of him, and did not find him insensible to her passion. After some months of mutual tenderness and affection, Demophoon set sail for Athens, where his domestic affairs recalled him. He promised faithfully to return as soon as a month was expired; but either his dislike for Phyllis, or the irreparable situation of his affairs, obliged him to violate his engagement, and the queen, grown desperate on account of his absence, hanged herself, or, according to others, threw herself down a precipice into the sea, and perished. Her friends raised a tomb over her body, where there grew up certain trees, whose leaves at a particular season of the year, suddenly became wet, as if shedding tears for the death of Phyllis. According to an old tradition mentioned by Servius, Virgil’s commentator, Phyllis was changed by the gods into an almond tree, which is called Phylla by the Greeks. Some days after this metamorphosis, Demophoon revisited Thrace, and when he heard of the fate of Phyllis, he ran and clasped the tree, which, though at that time stripped of its leaves, suddenly shot forth and blossomed, as if still sensible of tenderness and love. The absence of Demophoon from the house of Phyllis has given rise to a beautiful epistle of Ovid, supposed to have been written by the Thracian queen, about the fourth month after her lover’s departure. Ovid, Heroides, poem 2; De Ars Amatoria, bk. 2, li. 353; Tristia, bk. 2, li. 437.—Hyginus, fable 59.——A country woman introduced in Virgil’s eclogues.——The nurse of the emperor Domitian. Suetonius, Domitian, ch. 17.——A country of Thrace, near mount Pangæus. Herodotus, bk. 7, ch. 13.
Phyllius, a young Bœotian, uncommonly fond of Cygnus the son of Hyria, a woman of Bœotia. Cygnus slighted his passion, and told him that, to obtain a return of affection, he must previously destroy an enormous lion, take alive two large vultures, and sacrifice on Jupiter’s altars a wild bull that infested the country. This he easily effected by means of artifice, and by the advice of Hercules he forgot his partiality for the son of Hyria. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 7, li. 372.—Nicander, Heteroeumena, bk. 3.——A Spartan remarkable for the courage with which he fought against Pyrrhus king of Epirus.
Phyllŏdŏce, one of Cyrene’s attendant nymphs. Virgil, Georgics, bk. 4, li. 336.
Phyllos, a country of Arcadia.——A town of Thessaly near Larissa, where Apollo had a temple.
Phyllus, a general of Phocis during the Phocian or sacred war against the Thebans. He had assumed the command after the death of his brothers Philomelus and Onomarchus. He is called by some Phayllus. See: [Phocis].
Physcella, a town of Macedonia. Mela, bk. 2, ch. 3.
Physcion, a famous rock of Bœotia, which was the residence of the Sphinx, and against which the monster destroyed himself, when his enigmas were explained by Œdipus. Plutarch.