Lyciscus
(Λυκίσκος).
1. A Messenian, descended from Aepytus. In the first Messenian war, the Messenians, having consulted the Delphic oracle, were told that to save their country, they must offer by night, to the gods below, an unstained virgin of the blood of the Aepytidae. The lot fell on the daughter of Lyciscus; but Epebolus, the seer, pronounced her to be unfit for the sacrifice, as being no daughter of Lyciscus at all, but a supposititious child. Meanwhile, Lyciscus, in alarm, took the maiden with him and withdrew to Sparta. Here she died; and several years after, as he was visiting her tomb, to which he often resorted, he was seized by some Arcadian horsemen, carried back to Ithome, and put upon his trial for treason. His defence was, that he had fled, not as being hostile to his country or indifferent to her fate, but in the full belief of what Epebolus had declared. This being unexpectedly confirmed by the priestess of Hera, who confessed that she was herself the mother of the girl, Lyciscus was acquitted. (Paus. 4.9, 12.) [Aristodemus, No. 1.]
2. An Athenian demagogue, obliged Euryptolemus to drop his threatened prosecution of Callixenus for his illegal decree against the commanders who had conquered at Arginusae, B. C. 406, by moving that such as attempted to prevent the people from doing what they chose should have their fate decided by the same ballot as the generals themselves. (Xen. Hell. 1.7.13.) It is possible that the comedy of Alexis, called " Lyciscus," had reference to this demagogue. (See Meineke, Frag. Com. Graec. vol. i. pp. 274, 275, iii. p. 446; Athen. 13.595d.)
3. An officer of Cassander, was sent by him to Epeirus as regent and general, when the Epeirots had passed sentence of banishment against their king Aeacides and allied themselves with Cassander, in B. C. 316. In B. C. 314, Cassander left him in command of a strong body of troops in Acarnania, which he had organised against the Aetolians, who favoured the cause of Antigonus. Lyciscus was still commanding in Acarnania, in B. C. 312, when he was sent with an army into Epeirus against Alcetas II. whom he defeated. He also took the town of Eurymenae, and destroyed it. (Diod. 19.36, 67, 88.)
4. An officer of Agathocles, by whom he was much esteemed for his military talents. During the expedition of Agathocles to Africa (B. C. 309), Lyciscus, being heated with wine at a banquet, assailed his master with abuse, which the latter met only with good-humoured jesting. But Archagathus, the son of Agathocles, was greatly exasperated ; and when Lyciscus, in answer to his threats after the banquet, threw in his teeth his suspected intrigue with his step-mother Alcia, he seized a spear and slew him. The consequence was a formidable mutiny in the army, which it required all the boldness and prudence of Agathocles to quell. (Diod. 20.33, 34.)
5. An Acarnanian, was sent by his countrymen as ambassador to the Lacedaiemonians, B. C. 211 to urge them to ally themselves with Philip V. of Macedon,--at any rate not to join the Roman and Aetolian league. He defended the kings of Macedonia from the attack of Chlaeneas, and dwelt on the danger of allowing the Romans to gain a footing in Greece and on the indignity of the descendants of those who had repulsed Xerxes and his barbarians becoming now the confederates of other barbarians against Greeks. (Pol. 9.32-39.)
6. An Aetolian, a partisan of Rome, was made general of the Aetolians, in B. C. 171, through the influence of Q. Marcius and A. Atilius, two of the Roman commissioners sent to Greece in that year, (Liv. 42.38.) In B. C. 167, the Aetolians complained to Aemilius Paullus, then making a progress through Greece, that Lyciscus and Tisippus had caused 550 of their senators to be slain by Roman soldiers, lent them by Baebius for the purpose, while they had driven others into banishment and seized their property. But the murder and violence had been perpetrated against partisans of Perseus and opponents of Rome, and the Roman commissioners at Amphipolis decided that Lyciscus and Tisippus were justified in what they had done. Baebius only was condemned for having supplied Roman soldiers as the instruments of the murder. (Liv. 45.28, 31.) [Baebius, No. 5.] [E.E]
a statuary, who made " Lagonem puerum subdolae ac fucatae vernilitatis." (Plin. Nat. 34.8. s. 19.17.) [P.S]
- deserts with his daughter to Sparta: Paus. 4.9.5, Paus. 4.10.1
- recaptured and acquitted: Paus. 4.12.5ff.