Creo'phylus
（
*Krew/fulos).
1. One of the earliest epic poets of Greece, whom tradition placed in direct connexion with Homer, as he is called his friend or even his son-in-law. (Plat.
de Rep. x. p. 600b; Callim.
Epigram. 6;
Strab. xiv. p.638, &c.; Sext. Empir.
ad v. Math. 1.2; Eustath.
ad Hom. Il. 2.730; Suidas,
s. v.) Creophylus is said to have received Homer into his house, and to have been a native of Chios, though other accounts describe him as a native of Samos or los.
The epic poem
Οἰχαλία or
Οἰχαλίας ἅλωσις, which is ascribed to him, he is said, in some traditions, to have received from Homer as a present or as a dowry with his wife. (Proclus, apud
Hephaest. p. 466, ed. Gaisford; Schol.
ad Plat. p. 421, ed. Bekker; Suidas,
s. v.) Tradition thus seems to point to Creophylus as one of the most ancient Homeridae, and as the first link connecting Homer himself with the subsequent history of the Homeric poems; for he preserved and taught the Homeric poems, and handed them down to his descendants, from whom Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, is said to have received them. (
Plut. Lyc. 4; Heracleid. Pont.
Polit. Fragm. 2; Iamblich.
Vit. Pythag. 2.9;
Strab. xiv. p.639.) His poem
*Oi)xali/a contained the contest which Heracles, for the sake of Iole, undertook with Eurytus, and the final capture of Oechalia.
This poem, from which Panyasis is said to have copied (
Clem. Al. Strom. iv. p. 266), is often referred to, both with and without its author's name, but we possess only a few statements derived from it. (Phot.
Lex. p. 177, ed. Person; Tzetz.
Chil. 13.659 ; Cramer,
Anecd. ii. p. 327; Schol.
ad Soph. Trach. 266; Bekker,
Anecd. p. 728.) Pausanias (
4.2.3) mentions a poem
Ἡρακλεία by Creophylus, but this seems to be only a different name for the
Οἰχαλία. (Comp. Schol.
ad Eurip. Med. 276.) The Heracleia which the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (1.1357) ascribes to Cinaethon, is likewise supposed by some to be a mistake, and to allude to the
Οἰχαλία of Creophylus. (Welcker,
Der Episch. Cyclus, p. 219, &c.; Wüllner,
De Cycl. Epic. p. 52, &c.; K. W. Müller,
De Cycl. Graec. Epic. p. 62, &c.)
