AGATHO, an Athenian tragic poet, the disciple of Prodicus and Socrates, celebrated by Plato in his Protagoras for his virtue and his beauty. A tragedy of his obtained the prize in the fourth year of the 90th Olympiad, and he was crowned, in the presence of upwards of 30,000 persons, when a little over thirty years of age. There are no remains of his works, except a few quotations in Aristotle, Athenaeus, and others.

AGATHOCLES, a famous tyrant of Sicily, was the son of a potter at Rhegium. By his singular vigour and abilities he raised himself through various gradations of rank till he finally made himself tyrant of Syracuse, and then of nearly all Sicily. He defeated the armies of the Carthaginians several times, both in Sicily and Africa; but at length he met with a reverse, and his soldiers’ pay being in arrears, they mutinied, forced him to fly his camp, and murdered his sons. Recovering himself, he relieved Corcyra, which was besieged by Cassander; burnt the Macedonian fleet; and revenged the death of his children by putting the murderers, with their wives and families, to the sword. After ravaging the sea-coast of Italy he took the city of Hipponium. The last years of his life were greatly harassed with ill-health and the turbulence of his grandson Archagathus. He died in the seventy-second year of his age, b.c. 290, after a reign of twenty-eight years.