Nicŏcles
（
Νικοκλῆς).
1.
A king of Paphos, in the island of Cyprus. He owed his throne to the kindness of Ptolemy
I., king of Egypt, who continued thereafter to bestow upon him many marks of favour. Having
learned, however, at last, that Nicocles had formed an alliance with Antigonus, Ptolemy sent
two emissaries to Cyprus, with orders to despatch Nicocles in case his treachery should be
clearly proved. These persons, having taken with them a party of soldiers, surrounded the
palace of the king of Paphos, and compelled him to destroy himself, although he protested his
innocence (B.C. 310). His wife Axiothea, when she heard of her husband's death, killed her
daughters with her own hand, and then slew herself. The other female relatives followed her
example. The brothers of Nicocles also, having shut themselves up in the palace, set fire to
it, and then fell by their own hands (
Diod. Sic.xx. 21).
2.
King of Salamis, in Cyprus, succeeding his father Evagoras B.C. 374. He celebrated the
funeral obsequies of his parent with great splendour, and engaged Isocrates to write his
eulogy. (See
Isocrates.)
3.
A tyrant of Sicyon, deposed by Aratus in B.C. 251.
