Lycophron
- Lycophron of Chalcis, in Euboea, the author of Cassandra, an Alexandrine grammarian and tragedian of the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus: utque cothurnatum periisse Lycophrona narrant, Ov. Ib. 531: latebrae Lycophronis atri, so called from his obscure style, Stat. S. 5, 3, 157.
(Λυκόφρων), a son of Mastor, who had been obliged to quit his native place Cythera, on account of a murder he had committed. He accompanied the Telamonian Ajax against Troy, where he was slain by Hector. (Hom. Il. 15.430, &c.) [L.S]
(Λυκόφρων).
1. The younger son of Periander, tyrant of Corinth, by his wife Lyside or Melissa. Melissa having been killed by Periander, her father Procles, tyrant of Epidaurus. asked her two sons, while staying at his court, if they knew who had slain their mother. This rankled in the mind of Lycophron, and, on his return to Corinth, he refused to hold any communication with his father. Periander drove him from his house, and forbade any one to receive him or address him under the penalty of the confiscation of a certain sum to the service of Apollo; but the misery to which he was thus reduced had no effect on Lycophron's resolution, and even his father's entreaties, that he would recede from his obstinacy and return home, called forth from him only the remark that Periander, by speaking to him, had subjected himself to the threatened penalty. Periander then sent him away to Corcyra; but, when he was himself advanced in years, he summoned him back to Corinth to succeed to the tyranny, seeing that Cypselus, his elder son, was unfit to hold it from deficiency of understanding. The summons was disregarded, and, notwithstanding a second message to the same effect, conveyed by Lycophron's sister, and backed by her earnest entreaties, he persisted in refusing to return to Corinth as long as his father was there. Periander then offered to withdraw to Corcyra, if Lycophron would come home and take the government. To this he assented; but the Corcyraeans, not wishing to have Periander among them, put Lycophron to death, probably about B. C. 586. (Hdt. 3.50_53; D. L. 1.94, 95; comp. Paus. 2.28.)
2. A Corinthian general, was slain in a battle with the Athenians, who had made a descent on the Corinthian coast, under Nicias, in B. C. 425. (Thuc. 4.43, 44; Plut. Nic. 6 )
3. An Athenian, son of one Lycurgus, and father of Lycurgus the orator. The language of the author of the Lives of the Ten Orators is such as to leave it doubtful whether it was Lycophron or his father Lycurgus who was put to death by the thirty tyrants. (Paus. 1.29; Pseudo_Plut. Vit. X. Orat. Lyc. ad init.; Clint. F. H. sub anno 337.)
4. A citizen of Pherae, where he put down the government of the nobles and established a tyranny. Aiming further at making himself master of the whole of Thessaly, he overthrew in a battle, with great slaughter (B. C. 404), the Larissaeans and others of the Thessalians, who opposed him, adherents, no doubt, of the Aleuadae. (Xen. Hell. 2.3.4.) Schneider (ad Xen. l.c.) conjectures that the troops and money obtained in the preceding year by Aristippus of Larissa from Cyrus the Younger were intended to resist the attempts of Lycophron (Xen. Anab. 1.1.10). In B. C. 395, Medius of Larissa, probably the head of the Aleuadae, was engaged in war with Lycophron, who was assisted by Sparta, while Medius received succours from the opposite confederacy of Greek states, which enabled him to take Pharsalus. (Diod. 14.82.) Of the manner and period of Lycophron's death we know nothing. He was probably the father of Jason of Pherae.
5. A son, apparently, of Jason, and one of the brothers of Thebe, wife of Alexander, the tyrant of Phlerae, in whose murder he tool part together with his sister and his two brothers, Tisiphonus and Peitholaus. On Alexander's death the power appears to have been wielded mainly by Tisiphonus, though Diodorus says that he and Lycophron made themselves joint-tyrants, with the aid of a mercenary force, and maintained their ascendancy by cruelty and violence. (Xen. Hell. 6.4. § 37; Con. Narr. 50; Diod. 16.14; Plut. Pel. 35; Clint. F. H. vol. ii. App. Ch. 15.) In B. C. 352, by which time it seems that Tisiphonus was dead, Philip of Macedon, on the application of the Aleuadae and their party, advanced into Thessaly against Lycophron, who was now chief ruler. The latter was aided by the Phocians, at first under Phayllus, without success, and then with better fortune under Onomarchus, who defeated Philip in two battles and drove him back into Macedonia ; but soon after Philip entered Thessaly again, and (Onomarchus, having also returned front Boeotia to the assistance of Lycophron, was defeated and slain. Lycophron, and his brother Peitholaus, being now left without resource, surrendered Pherae to Philip and withdrew from Thessaly with 2000 mercenaries to join their Phocian allies under Phayllus. An antithetic sarcasm, quoted by Aristotle, seems to imply that they did not give their services for nothing. In the hostilities between Sparta and Megalopolis, in this same year (B. C. 352), we find among the forces of the former 150 of the Thessalian cavalry, who had been driven out from Pherae with Lycophron and Peitholaus. (Diod. 16.35_37, 39; Paus. 10.2; Just. 8.2; Dem. Olynth. ii. p. 22; Isocr. Phil. p. 86b; Arist. Rhet. 3.9.8.) From the downfall of Lycophron to the battle of Cynoscephalae, in B. C. 197, Thessaly continued dependent on the kings of Macedonia.
6. A Rhodian, was sent by his countrymen as ambassador to Rome, in B. C. 177, to obtain from the senate, if possible, a more favourable decree than that which had just pronounced the Lycians to have been assigned by Rome to the Rhodians, eleven years before, as allies rather than as subjects. (Pol. 26.7, 8; comp. Liv. 38.39, 41.6.) [E.E]
(Λυκόφρων), the celebrated Alexandrian grammarian and poet, was a native of Chalcis in Euboea, the son of Socles, and the adopted son of the historian Lycus of Rhegium (Suid. s. v.). Other accounts made him the son of Lycus (Tzetz., Chil. 8.481). Works Work on the Comic Poets
Lycophron lived at Alexandria, under Ptolemy Philadelphus, who entrusted to him the arrangement of the works of the comic poets contained in the Alexandrian library. In the execution of this commission Lycophron drew up a very extensive work on comedy (περὶ κωμῳδίας), which appears to have embraced the whole subject of the history and nature of the Greek comedy, together with accounts of the comic poets, and, besides this, many matters bearing indirectly on the interpretation of the comedians (Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Graec. pp. 9-11). Nothing more is known of his life. Ovid (Ibis, 533) states that he was killed by an arrow. Tragedies and Satyric Drama
As a poet, Lycophron obtained a place in the Tragic Pleiad; but there is scarcely a fragment of his tragedies extant. Suidas gives the titles of twenty of Lycophron's tragedies; while Tzetzes (Schol. in Lyc. 262, 270) makes their number forty-six or sixty-four. Four lines of his Πελοπίδαι are quoted by Stobaeus (119.13.) He also wrote a satyric drama, entitled Μενέδημος, in which he ridiculed his fellow-countryman, the philosopher Menedemus of Eretria (Ath. x. p. 420b.; D. L. 2.140; comp. Menag. ad loc.), who, nevertheless. highly prized the tragedies of Lycophron (Diog. ii 133). Anagrams
He is said to have been a very skilful commposer of anagrams, of which he wrote several in honour of Ptolemy and Arsinoe. Cassandra
The only one of his poems which has come down to us is the Cassandra or Alexandra. This is neither a tragedy nor an epic poem, but a long iambic monologue of 1474 verses, in which Cassandra is made to prophesy the fall of Troy, the adventures of the Grecian and Trojan heroes, with numerous other mythological and historical events, going back as early as the Argonauts, the Amazons, and the fables of Io and Europa, and ending with Alexander the Great. Assessment
The work has no pretensions to poetical merit. It is simply a cumbrous store of traditional learning. Its obscurity is proverbial. Suidas calls it σκοτεινὸν ποίημα, and its author himself obtained the epithet σκοτεινός. Its stores of learning and its obscurity alike excited the efforts of the ancient grammarians, several of whom wrote commentaries on the poem: among them were Theon, Dection, and Orus. The only one of these works which survives, is the Scholia of Isaac and John Tzetzes, which are far more valuable than the poem itself. Lycophron the Tragedian vs. Lycophron the author of the Cassandra
A question has been raised respecting the identity of Lycophron the tragedian and Lycophron the author of the Cassandra. From some lines of the poem (1226, &c., 1446, &c.) which refer to Roman history, Niebuhr was led to suppose that the author could not have lived before the time of Flamininus (about B. C. 190); but Welcker, in an elaborate discussion of. the question, regards the lines as interpolated. Editions
The first printed edition of Lycophron was the Aldine, with Pindar and Callimachus, Venet. 1513, 8vo.; the next was that of Lacisius, with the Scholia, Basil. 1546, fol..
Of the later editions the most important are those of Potter, Oxon. 1697, fol., reprinted 1702; Reichard, Lips. 1788, 2 vols. 8vo.; and Bachmann, Lips. 1828, 2 vols. 8vo.; to which must be added the admirable edition of the Scholia by C. G. Miller, Lips. 1811, 3 vols. 8vo. Further Information
Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. iii. p. 750; Welcker, die Griech. Tragd. pp. 1256-1263; Bernhardy, Grundriss d. Griech. Lift. vol. ii. pp. 613, 1026-1029. [P.S]
(Λυκόφρων). A grammarian and poet who was a native of Chalcis in Euboea, and lived at Alexandria under Ptolemy Philadelphus (B.C. 285-247). He was the author of an extant poem in 1474 iambic lines, entitled Cassandra or Alexandra, in which Cassandra is made to prophesy the fall of Troy, with numerous other events. The obscurity of this work is proverbial, and it is filled with obsolete words and long compounds. Among the numerous ancient commentaries on the poem, the most important are the scholia of Isaac and John Tzetzes, which are far more valuable than the poem itself. The earliest edition is that which appeared at Venice in 1513. It has since been edited by Bachmann (Leipzig, 1828), Kinkel (1880), and Scheer (1881). There is an English version by Lord Royston.
Lycophron also wrote a work on the history of Greek comedy and the comic poets, and composed tragedies now lost.
- Paus. 1.8.2, Paus. 1.29.15
- his quarrel with his father: Hdt. 3.50-53