4. Philitas Was so OCD Pedantic That He Starved to Death While Correcting Others
Long before grammar Nazis, there was Philitas of Cos (circa 340 – circa 285 BC), whom ancient sources describe as an annoying and overly pedantic busybody who could not stop himself from constantly correcting others. A poet and scholar who tutored Egypt’s king Ptolemy II, Philitas played a key role in popularizing the Hellenistic school of poetry, which flourished in Alexandria. Later poets, such as the Roman Ovid, refer to him as their model.
A native of the island of Cos in the Aegean Sea, he was already an established poet and intellectual when his homeland was conquered by Ptolemy I of Egypt in 309 BC. The king appointed Philitas to tutor his son and heir, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, and the poet relocated to Alexandria to perform his duties. He returned to Cos after his royal charge grew up, where he led an intellectual society of poets and scholars.
While a brilliant man by all accounts, Philitas seems to have rubbed many the wrong way with an overbearing perfectionism and a need to point out every mistake he came across. All it took was for him to hear somebody utter a logical fallacy or use a wrong word, and Philitas would be off to the races, going into a pedantic frenzy of writing page after page detailing the error, why it was erroneous, and copious examples of what the correct usage should have been.
According to ancient sources, he got so caught up in correcting others’ mistakes, investigating false arguments and poor word choices, that he starved to death while researching and writing an essay about somebody’s erroneous word usage. An inscription in front of his tomb read: “Stranger, Philitas is my name, I lie – Slain by fallacious arguments, and cares – Protracted from evening through the night“.
