In
Greek mythology, Phemonoe ( /fiˈmɒnoʊ.i/;[1]Ancient Greek: Φημονόη) was a Greek poet of the ante-Homeric period. She was said to have been the daughter of
Apollo, his first
priestess at
Delphi,[2] or of his possible son
Delphus, and the inventor of the
hexameter verses, a type of
poeticmetre.[3] In some studies, attributed to the phrase "
know thyself" (
γνῶθι σεαυτόν) found inscribed at the entrance to the
Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Some writers seem to have placed her at
Delos instead of Delphi;[4] and
Servius identifies her with the
Cumaean Sibyl.[5] The tradition which ascribed to her the invention of the hexameter, was by no means uniform;
Pausanias, for example, as quoted above, calls her the first who used it, but in another passage[6] he quotes an hexameter
distich, which was ascribed to the
Peleiades, who lived before Phemonoe: the traditions respecting the invention of the hexameter are collected by Fabricius.[7] There were poems which went under the name of Phemonoe, like the old religious poems which were ascribed to
Orpheus,
Musaeus, and the other mythological
bards.
Melampus, for example, quotes from her in his book Peri Palmon Mantike ("On Twitches") §17, §18;[8] and
Pliny quotes from her respecting eagles and hawks, evidently from some book of
augury, and perhaps from a work which is still extant in MS., entitled Orneosophium.[9] There is an
epigram of
Antipater of Thessalonica, alluding to a statue of Phemonoe, dressed in a
pharos.[10]
^Pausanias 10.5.7, 10.6.7; Strabo, 9 p. 419; Pliny the Elder, H. N. 7.57; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata i. pp. 323, 334; Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 1094; Eustathius Prol. ad Iliad.; and other authors cited by Fabricius.