Alcon (classical history)
The name Alcon (Greek: Ἄλκων) or Alco can refer to a number of people from classical myth and history:
- Alcon, a son of Hippocoon, and one of the hunters of the Calydonian Boar. He was killed, together with his father and brothers, by Heracles, and had a heroon at Sparta.[1][2][3]
- Alcon, a son of Erechtheus, king of Athens, and father of Phalerus the Argonaut.[4][5] Valerius Flaccus represents him as such a skillful archer that once, when a serpent had entwined his son, he shot the serpent without hurting his child.[6] Virgil mentions an Alcon, whom Servius calls a Cretan, and of whom he relates almost the same story as that which Valerius Flaccus ascribes to Alcon, the son of Erechtheus.[7]
- Alcon the Molossian (6th century BC) suitor of Agariste of Sicyon.
- Alcon, a surgeon (vulnerum medicus) at Rome in the reign of Claudius, 41—54, who is said by Pliny to have been banished to Gaul, and to have been fined ten million sestertii.[8] After his return from banishment, he is said to have gained by his practice an equal sum within a few years, which, however, seems so enormous that there must probably be some mistake in the text. A surgeon of the same name, who is mentioned by Martial as a contemporary, may possibly be the same person.[9][10]
- Alcon, a sculptor mentioned by Pliny.[11] He was the author of a statue of Hercules at Thebes, made of iron, as symbolic of the god's endurance of labor.[12]
- Two other, otherwise unknown personages of the same name occur in Cicero and in Hyginus.[2][13]
References
- ^ Pseudo-Apollodorus, iii. 10. § 5
- ^ a b Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae 173
- ^ Pausanias, Description of Greece iii. 14. § 7, 15. § 3
- ^ Apollonius of Rhodes, i. 97
- ^ Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae 14
- ^ Valerius Flaccus, i. 399, &c.
- ^ Virgil, Eclogues v. 11
- ^ Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia xxix. 8
- ^ Martial, Epigrams xi. 84
- ^ Greenhill, William Alexander (1867). "Alcon". In William Smith. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 1. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. pp. 108. http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/0117.html.
- ^ Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia xxxiv. 14. s. 40
- ^ Mason, Charles Peter (1867). "Alcon". In William Smith. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 1. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. pp. 108. http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/0117.html.
- ^ Cicero, De Natura Deorum iii. 21
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).