PHILAE, an island of syenite stone in the Nile, near Assouan, in Nubia, 1200 ft. long and 50 ft. broad; is almost covered with ancient buildings of great beauty, among which is a temple of Isis, with a great gateway dating from 361 B.C., which was converted into a church in 577.

PHILATORY, a transparent reliquary to contain and exhibit the bones and relics of saints.

PHILEMON, EPISTLE TO, a short letter by Paul to a member of the Church at Colossae on behalf of a slave, Onesimus, who had deserted his service, gone off with some of his property, and taken refuge in Rome, but had been converted to Christ, and whom he begs not to manumit, but simply to receive back as a brother for his sake.

PHILEMON AND BAUCIS, in the Greek mythology a pair of poor people who, in fond attachment to each other, lived in a small cottage in Phrygia by themselves and gave hospitality to gods in disguise when every other door was shut against them, and to whom, in the judgment that descended upon their inhospitable neighbours, the gods were propitious, and did honour by appointing them to priesthood, when they would rather have been servants, in a temple metamorphosed out of their cottage.  Here they continued to minister to old age, and had but one prayer for themselves, that they might in the end die together; when as they sat at the door of the temple one day, bent with years, they were changed, he into an oak and she into a linden.  This is Ovid’s version of the story, to which he adds as the moral of it, “Those who piously honour the gods are themselves held in honour.”

PHILIP, an Indian chief whose father had been a staunch friend of the Pilgrim settlers, was himself friendly to the colonists, till in 1671 their encroachments provoked him to retaliation; after six years’ fighting, in which many colonists perished and great massacres of Indians took place, he was defeated and slain, 1676.

PHILIP OF MACEDON, the father of Alexander the Great, usurped the kingdom from the infant king Amyntas, his nephew and ward, in 360 B.C.; having secured his throne, he entered on a series of aggressive wars, making expeditions into Thrace and Thessaly; the siege of Olynthus brought him into conflict with Athens, the two cities being allies, and occasioned some of the most brilliant orations of Demosthenes; the successive appeals for his aid against their enemies by the Thebans and the Argives led him into Greece and into the Peloponnesus; in 339 B.C. a council of Greek cities appointed him commander-in-chief of their leagued forces in a projected war against the Locrians, but the Athenians and Thebans opposed his coming; the defeat of their armies at Chaeronea, 338 B.C., placed all Greece at his feet; his next project was an expedition against Persia, but while preparations were on foot he was assassinated at AEgae; a man of unbridled lust, he was an astute and unscrupulous politician, but of incomparable eloquence, energy, and military skill (382-336 B.C.).