Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/799

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LICINUS.
LICYMNIUS.
785

more probable that he meant to refer to the less celebrated of the two writers. (Krause, Vitae et Fragm. vet. Hist. Rom. p. 213; Perizon. Animad. Hist. p. 349.)


LI'CINUS, PO'RCIUS. 1. L. Porcius Licinus, lived in the second Punic war. He is first mentioned in b. c. 211, when he served with distinction as legate in the army that was besieging Capua. In the following year (b. c. 210) he was plebeian aedile, and with his colleague, Q. Catius, celebrated the public games with great splendour. He was praetor in b. c. 207, and obtained Cisalpine Gaul as his province. In co-operation with the consuls of the year, C. Claudius Nero and M. Livius Salinator, he had a share in the glory of the defeat of Hasdrubal, the brother of Hannibal, at the battle of the Metaurus, in Umbria. (Liv. xxvi. 6, xxvii. 6, 35, 36, 39, 46—48.)


2. L. Porcius Licinus, the son of the preceding, was praetor b. c. 193, and received Sardinia as his province. He sued unsuccessfully for the consulship at first, but at length obtained it, in b. c. 184 ; and in conjunction with his colleague, P. Claudius Pulcher, carried on the war against the Ligurians. (Liv. xxxiv. 54, 55, xxxix. 32, 33, 45, xl. 34; Cic. Brut. 15.)


3. L. Porcius Licinus, the son of No. 2, dedicated, as duumvir in b. c. 181, the temple to Venus Erycina, which his father had vowed in the Ligurian war. This temple, which was called after the celebrated temple of Venus at Eryx in Sicily, was situated outside the Colline gate, and is mentioned by Livy, by prolepsis, as in existence as early as the year b. c. 202. (Liv. xxx. 38.) Licinus was appointed in b. c. 172 to conduct to Brundusium from the docks at Rome the fleet which was to convey to Greece the troops destined for the war against Perseus. (Liv. xl. 34 ; Strab. vi. p. 272 ; Ov. Fast. iv. 874; App. B. C. i. 93; Liv. xlii. 27.)


4. L. Porcius Licinus, occurs only on coins, of which a specimen is given below. The obverse represents the head of Pallas, with L. PORCI LICI. ; the reverse the naked figure of Mars driving a chariot and hurling a spear, with the legend L. LIC. CN. DOM. We have coins of the Aurelia and Cosconia gentes exactly the same as the preceding, with the sole exception of the difference of name, those of the former bearing the name of M. Aurelius Scaurus, and those of the latter L. Cosconius. [Cosconius; Scaurus.] Now, as all the three sets of coins have on the obverse L. LIC. CN. DOM., it is supposed that they were struck in the censorship of L. Licinius Crassus and Cn. Domi tius Ahenobarbus, b. c. 92, and that L. Porcius Licinus, M. Aurelius Scaurus, and L. Cosconius, were triumvirs of the Mint in that year. Eckhel (vol. v. p. 196), however, thinks that these coins must have been struck at an earlier time ; but on this point see Drumann, Gesch. Roms, vol. v. p. 95.

COIN OP L. PORCIUS LICINUS.


5. Porcius Licinus, an ancient Roman poet, whom A. Gellius places between Valerius Aeditiuus and Q. Lutatius Catulus, consul b. c. 104, and who, therefore, probably lived in the latter part of the second century, b. c. Gellius quotes an epigram of Licinus, which seems to be taken from the Greek, and likewise cites the commencement of a poem of his on the history of Roman poetry written in trochaic tetrameters. He seems to be the same as the Porcius mentioned in the life of Terence, ascribed to Suetonius, but must not be confounded, as he has been by some modern writers, with the consul of this name. [No. 2.] (Gell. xix. 9, xvii. 2; Anthol. Lat. Nos. 25, 26, ed. Meyer ; Madvig, de L. Attii Didascalicis, p. 20.)


LICY'MNIA, spoken of by Horace (Carm. ii. 12. 13, &c.), is maintained at great length by Weichert (Poetar. Latin. Reliquiae, p. 462, &c.) to be the same as Terentia, the wife of Maecenas ; but it seems impossible that Horace could have used such amatory language as he employs in this ode in reference to the wife of Maecenas. (Comp. Teuffel, in Zeitschift für die Alterthumsw. p. 46, &c., 1845.)


LICY'MNIUS (Λικύμνιος), a son of Electryon and the Phrygian slave Mideia, and consequently a half-brother of Alcraene. (Paus. iii. 15. § 4.) He was married to Perimede, by whom he became the father of Oeonus, Argeius, and Melas. He was a friend of Heracles, whose son Tlepolemus slew him, according to some unintentionally, and according to others in a fit of anger. (Pind. Ol. vii. 50, &c. ; Apollod. ii. 8. § 2, ii. 4. § 5, comp. Hom. Ill. ii. 663.) His tomb was shown in aftertimes at Argos. (Paus. ii. 22. § 8 ; Plut. Pyrrh. 34.) [L. S.]


LICY'MNIUS (Λικύμνιος). 1. Of Chios, a distinguished dithyrambic poet, of uncertain date. Some writers, on the authority of a passage of Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math. 49, p. 447, xi. pp. 700, 701; Fabric, p. 447; Pacard. p. 556, Bekker), place him before Simonides ; but this is not clearly made out, and it is perhaps more likely, from all we know of his poetry, that he belonged to the later Athenian dithyrambic school about the end of the fourth century b. c. ; indeed Spengel and Schneidewin identify him with the rhetorician (No. 2). He is mentioned by Aristotle (Rhet. iii. 12), in conjunction with Chaereraon, as among the poets whose works were rather fit for reading than for exhibition (ἀναγνωστικοί). Among the poems ascribed to him was one in praise of health ; a pretty sure indication of a late date, if we could be certain that the poem was his. A fragment of this poem is preserved by Sextus Empiricus (l. c.), in which three lines out of six are identical with lines in the paean of Ariphron to health ; and it seems likely that it was a mere mistake in Sextus to quote the poem as by Licymnius. A poem of his on the legend of Endymion is mentioned by Athenaeus (xiii. p. 564, c), who also refers to one of his dithyrambs on the love of Argynnus for Hymenaeus (xiii. p. 603, d.). Parthenius (c. 22) quotes from him an account of the taking of Sardis, which has every mark of a late and fictitious embellishment of the event. Eustathius (ad Hom. Od. iii. 267) mentions Λικύμνιον Βουπρασιέα ἀοιδόν. (Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. pp. 839, 840 ; Schmidt, Diatrib. in Dithyramb. pp. 84 — 86 ; Ulrici, Gesch. d. Hellen. Dichtk. vol. ii. p. 497; Bode, Gesch. d. Lyr. Dichtk. vol. ii. pp. 303, 304.)