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 attempt to repair his fatal treachery only exposed the essential selfishness of his character. Though he must have known that his influence over the Persian satraps was slender in the extreme, he used it with the most flagrant dishonesty as a bait first to Sparta, then to the Athenian oligarchs, and finally to the democracy. Superficial and opportunist to the last, he owed the successes of his meteoric career purely to personal magnetism and an almost incredible capacity for deception.

ALCIDAMAS, of Elaea, in Aeolis, Greek sophist and rhetorician, flourished in the 4th century He was the pupil and successor of Gorgias and taught at Athens at the same time as Isocrates, whose rival and opponent he was. We possess two declamations under his name: , directed against Isocrates and setting forth the superiority of extempore over written speeches (a recently discovered fragment of another speech against Isocrates is probably of later date);  , in which Odysseus accuses Palamedes of treachery during the siege of Troy (this is generally considered spurious). According to Alcidamas, the highest aim of the orator was the power of speaking extempore on every conceivable subject. Aristotle (Rhet. iii. 3) criticizes his writings as characterized by pomposity of style and an extravagant use of poetical epithets and compounds and far-fetched metaphors. Of other works only fragments and the titles have survived: , advocating the freedom of the Messenians and containing the sentiment that “all are by nature free”; a Eulogy of Death, in consideration of the wide extent of human sufferings; a  or instruction-book in the art of rhetoric; and a . Lastly, his  (a word of doubtful meaning) contained the narrative of the contest between Homer and Hesiod, two fragments of which are found in the , the work of a grammarian in the time of Hadrian. A 3rd-century papyrus (Flinders Petrie, Papyri, ed. Mahaffy, 1891, pl. xxv.) probably contains the actual remains of a description by Alcidamas.

ALCINOUS, in ancient Greek legend, king of the fabulous Phaeacians, in the island of Scheria, was the son of Nausithous and grandson of Poseidon. His reception and entertainment of Odysseus, who when cast by a storm on the shore of the island was relieved by the king’s daughter, Nausicaä, is described in the Odyssey (vi.-xiii.). The gardens and palace of Alcinous and the wonderful ships of the Phaeacian mariners were famous in antiquity. Scheria was identified in very early times with Corcyra, where Alcinous was reverenced as a hero. In the Argonautic legend, his abode was the island of Drepane (Apoll. Rhodius iv. 990).

ALCINOUS, the Platonic philosopher, lived probably in the time of the Caesars. He was the author of an , an analysis of Plato’s philosophy according to later writers. It is rather in the manner of Aristotle, and freely attributes to Plato any ideas of other philosophers which appeared to contribute to the system. He produced in the end a synthesis of Plato and Aristotle with an admixture of Pythagorean or Oriental mysticism, and is closely allied to the Alexandrian school of thought. He recognized a god who is unknowable, and a series of beings ( ) who hold intercourse with men. He recognized also Ideas and Matter, and borrowed largely from Aristotle and the Stoics.

ALCIONIO, PIETRO, or (c. 1487–1527), Italian classical scholar, was born at Venice. After having studied Greek under Marcus Musurus of Candia, he was employed for some time by Aldus Manutius as a corrector of the press, and in 1522 was appointed professor of Greek at Florence through the influence of Giulio de’ Medici. When his patron became pope in 1523 under the title of Clement VII., Alcionio followed him to Rome and remained there until his death. Alcionio published at Venice, in 1521, a Latin translation of several of the works of Aristotle, which was shown by the Spanish scholar Sepulveda to be very incorrect. He wrote a dialogue entitled Medices Legatus, sive de Exilio (1522), in connexion with which he was charged with plagiarism by his personal enemy, Paulus Manutius. The accusation, which Tiraboschi has shown to be groundless, was that he had taken the finest passages in the work from Cicero’s lost treatise De Gloria, and had then destroyed the only existing copy of the original in order to escape detection. His contemporaries speak very unfavourably of Alcionio, and accuse him of haughtiness, uncouth manners, vanity and licentiousness.

ALCIPHRON, Greek rhetorician, was probably a contemporary of Lucian (2nd century ). He was the author of a collection of fictitious letters, of which 124 (118 complete and 6 fragments) have been published; they are written in the purest Attic dialect and are considered models of style. The scene is throughout at Athens; the imaginary writers are country people, fishermen, parasites and courtesans, who express their sentiments and opinions on familiar subjects in elegant language. The “courtesan” letters are especially valuable, the information contained in them being chiefly derived from the writers of the New Comedy, especially Menander.

ALCIRA, a town of eastern Spain, in the province of Valencia; on the left bank of the river Júcar, and on the Valencia-Alicante railway. Pop. (1900) 20,572. Alcira is a walled town, surrounded by palm, orange and mulberry groves, and by low-lying rice-swamps, which render its neighbourhood somewhat unhealthy. Silk, fruit and rice are its chief products. It is sometimes identified with the Roman Saetabicula. In the middle ages it was a prosperous Moorish trading-station.

ALCMAEON, of Argos, in Greek legend, was the son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle. When his father set out with the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, which he knew would be fatal to him, he enjoined upon his sons to avenge his death by slaying Eriphyle and undertaking a second expedition against Thebes. After the destruction of Thebes by the Epigoni, Alcmaeon carried out his father’s injunctions by killing his mother, as a punishment for which he was driven mad and pursued by the Erinyes from place to place. On his arrival at Psophis in Arcadia, he was purified by its king Phegeus, whose daughter Arsinoe (or Alphesiboea) he married, making her a present of the fatal necklace and the peplus of Harmonia. But the land was cursed with barrenness, and the oracle declared that Alcmaeon would never find rest until he reached a spot on which the sun had never shone at the time he slew his mother. Such a spot he found at the mouth of the river Achelous, where an island had recently been formed by the alluvial deposit; here he settled and, forgetting his wife Arsinoe, married Callirrhoe, the daughter of the river-god. His new wife longed for the necklace and peplus, and Alcmaeon, returning to Psophis, obtained possession of them, on the pretence that he desired to dedicate them at Delphi. When the truth became known he was pursued and slain by Phegeus and his sons. After his death Alcmaeon was worshipped at Thebes; his tomb was at Psophis in a grove of cypresses. His story was the subject of an old epic and of several tragedies, but none of these has been preserved.