SICYON was a city in the east of Achaia, Greece, about 2 miles inland from the Corinthian Gulf, situated on and below a hill in the angle formed by the confluence of the rivers Asopus and Helisson; the site is now occupied by the village of Vasilika. It possessed a harbour on the coast round which was a well-fortified town, which was almost a suburb of the main city (∑ικυωvίωv λιµήv ). The ancient and native form of the name was ∑ϵκυὠv . The earliest inhabitants were Ionians; but it was conquered by the Dorian invaders of Argolis, who extended their dominion over Corinth, Sicyon, and the whole valley of the Asopus. Phalces, son of the first Dorian king of Argos, Temenus, was said to have been the conqueror of Sicyon and founder (oἰκιστής ) of the Dorian city, which, like Corinth, probably continued for a long time subject to the powerful kings of Argos. The population of the Dorian Sicyon was divided into four tribes; the Dorian conquerors constituted three—viz., the usual Dorian tribes Hylleis, Dymanes, and Pamphyli—and a part of the pre-Dorian population constituted the fourth tribe, which was called Aegialeis. (Previous to the Dorian conquest the city bore, according to Strabo, the name Aegiali, or according to Pausanias Aegialeia.) The rest of the ancient population were reduced to the state of serfs, called κaτωva-κοϕόροι or κορυνηϕόροι, whose position was similar to that of the Helots in Sparta. As in most of the cities of Greece, the conflict between the aristocracy and the commons, who were superior in number but inferior in organization, in education, and in power, resulted in the rise of a dynasty of tyrants, the Orthagoridae, who destroyed the rule of the Dorian oligarchy and reigned in Sicyon for a ...century, from about 665 b.c. Under the strong hand of these dynasts Sicyon attained great wealth. Lying near the great commercial centre Corinth, and possessing a harbour, it shared in the immense development of trade with the Italian peninsula which took place in the 8th and 7th centuries. Its marine was considerable, though apparently never of the first rank; at a later time it sent fifteen triremes to fight against the Persians at Salamis. The bronze work of Sicyon was renowned, as Strabo mentions; and we may gain some conception of its style from some of the bronzes found at Olympia, which have probably been fabricated either at Sicyon or in the closely connected workshops of Argos. The Daedalid sculptors Dipoenus and Scyllis from Crete settled in Sicyon about the beginning of the 6th century, and gave the first impulse to a school of art, working mainly in bronze or in wood covered with bronze, which lasted for some generations at Sicyon, Corinth, and Argos, and played a very prominent part in the development of Greek art. The early bronze work of the Sicyo-Argive workshops in all probability formed the model after which the Hesiodic description of the Shield of Hercules was composed by a poet of the 7th century. The fame of Sicyonian bronze work gave rise to the epithet Tϵλχιvία , which was sometimes applied to the city. Terra-cotta vases which have been fabricated at Sicyon are found in Etruria, whither they were exported in the Italian trade. They closely resemble in style the vases of Corinth, from which they are distinguished by the peculiar form of the letter epsilon in the inscriptions painted on them, and they usually belong to the 6th century. The market-gardens of the fertile Asopus valley supplied the populous Corinth with fruit and vegetables. At least in later times the fine shoes made in Sicyon were widely used in Greece. In the 4th century Sicyon continued to be one of the foremost states in an artistic point of view. The Sicyonian school of painting was founded by Eupompus, and some of the greatest foreign artists, such as Pamphilus and Apelles, studied in it. Lysippus also, who gave a new impulse and tone to Greek sculpture, was a native of Sicyon.
In the dynasty of the Orthagoridae Andreas began to reign about 665, his son Myron before 648; of Aristonymus, son of Myron, nothing is known; Myron II., son of Aristonymus, reigned seven years; Isodamus, brother and murderer of Myron II., reigned a short time, and about 596 was replaced by his younger brother Clisthenes, who ruled till about 565. The dynasty ended with Clisthenes, who had no son; but his institutions continued in force for sixty years longer, until Sicyon came under the influence of the Peloponnesian confederacy, in which the Dorian Sparta was the chief power. The policy of the Orthagoridae had always been strongly anti-Dorian, and under the Dorian reaction the most unfavourable colour was given to their actions; hence grew the extremely unpleasant picture of them in the pages of Herodotus, who gives the current Peloponnesian accounts of the 5th century. These accounts are contradicted by the long rule of the dynasty and the permanence of their policy after their extinction. Myron I. won a chariot-race at Olympia in 648, and dedicated a bronze ϴάλαμos (probably a large chest or ναΐσκος covered with bronze), with an inscription, which Pausanias saw in the Olympian treasury of the Sicyonians. The building of this treasury is ascribed to him by Pausanias, but excavation has shown that the building is not earlier than 500; it consists of a simple cella with a pronaos in antis, and is built of Sicyonian stones, cut and numbered at Sicyon, and thence transported by water to Olympia. Clisthenes was the most powerful and famous of the Sicyonian despots, and he continued the anti-Dorian policy of his predecessors; but, as we have seen, it is impossible to trust the details of his action as given by Herodotus (v. 67). He is said to have forbidden the rhapsodists to recite the epics in which the fame of Dorian heroes was sung, and to have encouraged the worship of Dionysus, a non-Dorian deity. Another object of his policy was to secure the favour of the Delphian oracle, and he used all his power in the Sacred War on the side of Delphi against Crissa (590 b.c.). He won a victory in the chariot-race at Delphi in 582. Clisthenes had no son, and he desired to obtain the noblest of the Greeks as a husband for his daughter Agariste. The story of the wooing of Agariste as it was current in Athens, probably in poetic form, has been preserved by Herodotus. Clisthenes, when declared victor at the Olympian games (572 or 568), invited the best of the Greeks to Sicyon. Twelve representatives from all parts of Greece (whose names are chosen by the poet with little regard to chronological possibility) assembled there and spent a year as guests of Clisthenes. First among them all were two Athenians, one of whom, Megacles the Alcmaeonid, was at last preferred to his rival Hippoclides; and the careless remark of the latter, “Hippoclides cares not,” became proverbial. Megacles and Agariste were parents of Clisthenes, who became famous after 510 as the second founder of the Athenian democracy, and their grand-daughter Agariste was mother of the still more famous Pericles. When Sicyon again came under the Dorian influence shortly before 500, the oligarchical form of government was reintroduced and lasted till about 369, when the democracy was again established; but its form was used by Euphron to exercise his own power, and after him a series of tyrants ruled the city, till in 251 Aratus reintroduced the democratic government and Sicyon joined the Achaean league. Under the Roman rule Sicyon profited by the destruction of Corinth in 146 b.c. ; it received part of the Corinthian territory together with the presidency of the Isthmian games. But it sank into decay as Corinth revived, and was almost depopulated when Pausanias visited it in the 2d century after Christ. Among the bishoprics of the Byzantine time New Sicyon occurs regularly; it is probable that this was a town on a new site near the old city.
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