See also upsilon 364.
[1] For Phayllos the athlete and naval captain (phi 144), see Herodotus 8.47.5; Pausanias 10.9.2. For his leap, see also Aristophanes, Acharnians 208-214 and Wasps 1206; Zenobius 6.23; scholiast to Aristophanes, Acharnians 214; Golden 60-61; Miller 68; Tyrrell 212-213. For his significance concerning the social status of ancient Greek athletes, see Young 12-14, 160-161.
[2] Plato, Cratylus 413A: "I [Socrates] seem to ask more questions than is fitting and leap beyond the dug-up pit."
[3] Scholiast to Plato, Cratylus 413A (Greene): "This is a proverb regarding those who do something beyond what is proper as if one leaped beyond the dug-up pit. It came about from the following circumstance. A certain Phayllos, lightest of all in bearing himself through the air, leaped fifty-five feet, a distance contrary to anyone's opinion. For this reason those who were competing against him, admiring him for this leap, bequeathed to distant time their admiration in song by composing a line of verse: "five and fifty feet jumped Phayllos." Those who dig the trench of the pits point out that fifty feet is the farthest distance for the contest. Phayllos, having exceeded this by five feet, leaped beyond the [dug-up pit]."
[4] 'Pontios' (i.e. from the Black Sea) is the ethnikon transmitted here. Suggested alternatives, noted by Adler, are Opountios (so Aemilius Portus) and Metapontios (so F.W. Schneidewin). Whatever the correct reading, it seems necessary to suppose that Phayllos was not a citizen of Croton (kappa 2481) by birth, but recruited by that city to compete on its behalf.