Menophilus of Damascus is SH 558: hexameters of a man who has crossed Europe, Libya, and all Asia and seen a myriad of wonders, yet never such a light — a φάσμα that seizes the mind, unspeakable, not even (he thinks) matched among the immortals on Olympus. Speech fails; limbs loosen from head to sole; all Hellas falls from his breast; boundless wonder comes on the heart. He asks to hymn the ever-fresh locks of a figure seen whole and bright as the Graces coming to Olympus from the Acidalian spring.
Lloyd-Jones and Parsons, Supplementum Hellenisticum (Berlin, 1983), pp. 272–273. Canon: MENOPHILUS Poeta (Damascenus: Incertum).
The poem is a divine-vision fragment after a world-wander, not a poet without a poem.
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