Ly'cophron
（
Λυκόφρων).
1. The younger son of Periander, tyrant of Corinth, by his wife Lyside or Melissa. Melissa having been killed by Periander, her father Procles, tyrant of Epidaurus. asked her two sons, while staying at his court, if they knew who had slain their mother.
This rankled in the mind of Lycophron, and, on his return to Corinth, he refused to hold any communication with his father. Periander drove him from his house, and forbade any one to receive him or address him under the penalty of the confiscation of a certain sum to the service of Apollo; but the misery to which he was thus reduced had no effect on Lycophron's resolution, and even his father's entreaties, that he would recede from his obstinacy and return home, called forth from him only the remark that Periander, by speaking to him, had subjected himself to the threatened penalty. Periander then sent him away to Corcyra; but, when he was himself advanced in years, he summoned him back to Corinth to succeed to the tyranny, seeing that Cypselus, his elder son, was unfit to hold it from deficiency of understanding.
The summons was disregarded, and, notwithstanding a second message to the same effect, conveyed by Lycophron's sister, and backed by her earnest entreaties, he persisted in refusing to return to Corinth as long as his father was there. Periander then offered to withdraw to Corcyra, if Lycophron would come home and take the government. To this he assented; but the Corcyraeans, not wishing to have Periander among them, put Lycophron to death, probably about B. C. 586. (
Hdt. 3.50-
53;
D. L. 1.94,
95; comp.
Paus. 2.28.)
