Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/727

LAMACHUS. § 5 ; Plut, vol. ii, p. 767, e. ; Athcn. xiii. p. 58.0, b.) According to the scholiast on Aristophanes (Plut. 179), a pestilence ensued, which did not abate till a temple was dedicated to Aphrodite Anosia. She was buried on the banks of the Peneus. The inscription on her monument is preserved by Athenaeus (xiii. p. 589). [C P.M.] LAIUS (Adios). 1. A son of Labdacus, and father of Oedipus. After his father's death he was placed under the guardianship of Lycus, and on the death of the latter, Laius was obliged to take re- fuge with Pelops in Peloponnesus. But when Amphion and Zethus, the murderers of Lycus, who liad usurped his throne, had lost their lives, Laius returned to Thebes, and ascended the throne of his father. He married Jocaste (Homer calls her Epicastc), and became by her the father of Oedi- pus, by whom he was slain without being known to him. His body was buried by Damasi stratus, king of Plataeae. (Herod, v. 59 ; Pans. ix. 5. § 2 ; Apollod. iii. 5. § 5, &c. ; Diod. v. 64 ; comp. Oedipus.) 2. A Cretan, who, together with Aegolius, Ce- ieus, and Cerberus, entered the sacred cave of bees in Crete, in order to steal honey. They succeeded in their crime, but perceived the cradle of the in- fant Zeus, and that instant their brazen armour broke to pieces. Zeus thundered, and wanted to kill them by a flash of lightning ; but the Moerae and Themis prevented him, as no one was allowed to be killed on that sacred spot, whereupon the thieves were metamorphosed into birds. (Anton. Lib. 19 ; Plin. //. .V. X. 60, 79.) [L. S.] LALA, of Cyzicus, a female painter, who lived at Rome at the time when M. Varro was a young man (about B. c. 74). She painted with the pencil, and also practised encaustic painting on ivory with the cestrum. Her subjects were principally pictures of women, among which Avas her own portrait, painted at a mirror. No painter surpassed her in speed. Her works were so highly esteemed as to be preferred to those of Sopolis and Dionysius, whose pictures filled the galleries at Rome. She was never married. (Plin. H. N. xxxv. 11. s. 40. § 43.) It is useless to discuss the inferences drawn from the various reading, inventa for juvevta, as there is no authority in any MS. for that reading ; and it can hardly be made to give a good mean- ing. [P. S.J LA'LAGE. Under the name of Lalage two distinct persons are intended by Horace. In one ode (i. 22, 10) a wolf appears to the poet as he is singing of his Lalage ; but in another ode (ii. 5, 16) an unnamed friend is advised to defer making love to Lalage until she is older. It is evidently not a personal name, but the Greek AoAo77), prattling, chattering (Oppian, Hal. i. 135), used as a term of endearment, "little prattlfer," which accords with the tender age of the Horatian damsel. [ W. B. D.] LA'MACHUS (Actjuaxos), son of Xenophanes, in the 8th year of the Peloponnesian war, B. c. 424, with a detachment of 10 ships from the tribute-collecting squadron, sailed into the Euxine ; and coming to harbour at the mouth of the Calex, near Heracleia, had his ships destroyed by a sudden flood. He succeeded in making his way by land to Chalcedon. (Thuc. iv. 75.) His name recurs in the signatures to the treaties of B. c. 421. And in the 17th year B. c. 415 he appears as colleague of Alcibiades and Nicias, in the great Sicilian ex- pedition. In the consultation held at Kgcsta on LAMIA. 713 their first arrival, in which Nicias proposed a return to Athens and Alcibiades negotiation, Lamachus, while preferring of these two plans the latter, urged, as his own judgment, an immediate attack on Syracuse, and the occupation of Megara, as the base for future attempts, advice which in him may have been prompted less by counsel than courage, but which undoubtedly was the wisest, and would almost certainly have been attended with complete success. In the following year, soon after the in- vestment was commenced, he fell in a sally of the besieged, in advancing against which he had en- tangled himself amongst some dykes, and got parted from his troops. The loss of his activity and vigour must have been severely felt : his death was one of those many contingencies, each one of which may be thought to have singly turned the scale in the Syracusan contest. (Thuc. vi. 8, 49, 101.) Lamachus appears amongst the dramatis per- sonae of Aristophanes (Jc/i. 565, &c. 960, 1070, &c.) as the brave and somewhat blustering soldier, delighting in the war, and thankful, moreover, for its pay. Plutarch, in like manner, describes him as brave and honest, and a hero in the field ; but so poor, and so ill-provided, that on every fresh ap- pointment he used to beg for money from the government to buy clothing and shoes ; and this dependent position he thinks made him backward to take a part of his own, and deferential to his colleagues — Nicias, perhaps, in especial. (Plut. Nic. 16, cf. ib. 12, 13, and Alcib. 18, 20,21.) Plato also speaks of his valour. {Lack. p. 198.) If we may trust a passage of Plutarch {Pericles, 20), Lamachus, in an expedition made by Pericles into the Euxine, was left there in charge of 13 ships, to assist the people of Sinope against their tyrant, Timesilaus ; after the expulsion of whom the town received 600 Athenian colonists. The precise date of this occurrence can hardly be esta- blished : in Plutarch's narrative, it is previous to the Thirty Years' Peace of b. c. 445. He must there- fore have been an old man at the time of his last command. [A. H. C] LA'MEDON (AayticSwi'), a son of Coronus, and husband of Pheno, by whom he became the father of Zeuxippe. He was the successor of Epopeus in the kingdom of Sicyon. (Pausan. ii. 5, in fin., 6, 2.) [L. S.] LA'MIA (Aa/xia). 1. A daughter of Poseidon, became by Zeus the mother of the Sibyl Herophile. (Pans. X. 12. § 1 ; Plut. de Pyih. Orac. 9.) 2. A female phantom, by which children were frightened. According to tradition, she was ori- ginally a Libyan queen, of great beauty, and a daughter of Belus. She was beloved by Zeus, and Hera in her jealousy robbed her of her children. Lamia, from revenge and despair, robbed others of their children, and murdered them ; and the savage cruelty in which she now indulged rendered her ugly, and her face became fearfully distorted. Zeus gave her the power of taking her eyes out of her head, and putting them in again. (Diod. xx. 41 ; Suidas, s.v. ; Plut. de Curios. 2 ; Schol. ad Aris- toph. Pac. 757 ; Strab. i. p. 19.) Some ancients called her the mother of Scylla, (Eustath. ad Horn. p. 1714 ; Arist. de Mor. vii. 5.) In later times Lamiae were conceived *as handsome ghostly wo- men, who by voluptuous artifices attracted young men, in order to enjoy their fresh, youthful, and pure flesh and blood. They were thus in ancient times what the vampires are in modern legends.