Creophylus (

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

: , ''Kreophylos ho Samios'') is the name of a legendary early Greek epic poet, native to

Samos Samos (, also ; , ) is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese archipelago, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the Mycale Strait. It is also a separate reg ...

Chios Chios (; , traditionally known as Scio in English) is the fifth largest Greece, Greek list of islands of Greece, island, situated in the northern Aegean Sea, and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, tenth largest island in the Medi ...

. He was said to have been a contemporary of

Homer Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...

and author of the lost epic '' Capture of Oechalia''. According to some sources, Homer gave the poem to Creophylus in return for hospitality; one source says that Panyassis of Halicarnassus, in turn, stole it from Creophylus. Panyassis, however, is a much later poet who worked in writing: the story is presumably a way of saying that Panyassis, in his literary epic on the life of

Heracles Heracles ( ; ), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a Divinity, divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of ZeusApollodorus1.9.16/ref> and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive descent through ...

, plagiarised the work of Creophylus. Creophylus may represent a tradition parallel to the Homeridae. In Plutarch's Lives in the biography of Lycurgus, Lycurgus in his travels "…had the first sight of Homer's works, in the hands, we may suppose, of the posterity of Creophylus… scattered proportions, as chance conveyed them, were in the hands of individuals; but Lycurgus first made them really known." (

John Dryden John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration (En ...

transl.). Another descendant of Creophylus, Hermodamas of Samos, was said to be the teacher of

Pythagoras of Samos Pythagoras of Samos (; BC) was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of P ...

(see Iamblichus, Porphyry,

Diogenes Laërtius Diogenes Laërtius ( ; , ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Little is definitively known about his life, but his surviving book ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek ph ...

). So we have two examples of descendants of Creophylus teaching outsiders (non-Homeridae) the Epic tradition. It seems that the restrictions on the Homeridae in regards to teaching may have not been applicable to the descendants of Creophylus, Homer's host and friend. He is mentioned disparagingly in Book X (600b-c) of the ''Republic'', in which the reasons for banishing some forms of poetry and 'imitative art' from his ideal city are outlined, with Plato alluding to his name meaning 'meathead'.

References

Early Greek epic poets 8th-century BC Greek poets Ancient Samians Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown {{Greece-poet-stub