Phi'leas
（
*File/as).
1. A Greek geographer of Athens, whose time cannot be determined with certainty, but who probably belonged to the older period of Athenian literature.
He is not only quoted by Dicaearchus (33); but that a still higher antiquity must be assigned to him, would appear from the position in which his name occurs in Avienus (
Or. Mar. 42), who places him between Hellanicus and Scylax, and also front the words of Macrobius (
Macr. 5.20), who calls him a
vetus scriptor with reference to Ephorus. Phileas was the author of a Periplus, which is quoted several times by Stephanus Byzantinus and other later writers, and which appears to have comprehended most of the coasts known at the time at which he lived.
It was divided into two parts, one on Asia, and the other on Europe. From the fragments of it which have been preserved, we learn that it treated of the following countries among others :--of the Thracian Bosporus (Suidas,
s. v. βόσπορος ; Schol.
ad Soph. Aj. 870); of the Arganthonian promontory in the Propontis (Etymol. M.
s. v. ᾿αργανθών); of Assos, Gargara, and Antandros (Macrob.
l.c.); of Antheia, a Milesian colony on the Propontis (Steph. Byz.
s. v.); of Andria, a Macedonian town (Steph. Byz.
s. v.) ; of Thermopylae (Harpocrat. Phot.
s. v.); of the Thesprotian Ambracia (Steph. Byz.
s. v). Even the coast of Italy was included in the work (Steph. Byz.
s. v. Ἄβυδοι). For a further account of this writer, see Osann,
Ueber den Geoqraphen Phileas und sein Zeitalter, in the
Zeitschrift für die Alterthumswissenschaft, 1841, p. 635, &c.
