Nicodemus

(Νικόδημος), historical.

1. A tyrant of Centoripa in Sicily, who was driven out by Timoleon, B. C. 339. (Diod. 16.82.)

2. An Athenian of the deme Aphidnae, a partizan of Eubulus. He was murdered by Aristarchus, the son of Moschus. Demosthenes, for no other reason apparently than that he was opposed to the party of Eubulus, was suspected of having been privy to the murder (Dem. Meid. p. 549; Schol. Ulpian. ad p. 548; Deinarch. c. Dem. p. 24, ed. Reiske).

A man of the name of Nicodemus also figures in the speech of Isaeus, περὶ τοῦ Πύρρου κλήρον.

3. A Messenian, mentioned by Plutarch (Dem. p. 852a.), who contrasts his political tergiversation (he had first espoused the cause of Cassander, afterwards that of Demetrius) with the conduct of Demosthenes.

4. A native of Elis, sent by Philopoemen at the head of an embassy to Rome, B. C. 187. (Plb. 23.1, 7.) [C.P.M]

(Νικόδημος), of Heracleia. Seven epigrams written by hint have by an inadvertence of Brunck been attributed to Nicodemus, the physician of Smyrna. They are of the childish class of epigrams, called ἀντιστρέφοντα, or ἀνακυκλίκα, in which the sense is the same, though each distich be read from end to beginning, instead of from beginning to end. The epigrams of Nicodemus consist of two lines each, in the elegiac measure, and seem to have been principally inscriptions for statues and pictures. (Anth. Graec. vol. iii. p. 91, vol. xiii. p.923, ed. Jacobs.) [W.M.G]