Philitas of Cos (; ,
Philitas; – ), sometimes spelled
Philetas (; ,
Philetas; see Bibliography below), was a scholar and poet during the early
Hellenistic period of
ancient Greece. A Greek associated with
Alexandria, he
flourished in the second half of the 4th century BC and was appointed tutor to the heir to the throne of
Ptolemaic Egypt. He was thin and frail;
Athenaeus later caricatured him as an academic so consumed by his studies that he wasted away and died.