=Lucullus=: Roman conqueror of Mithridates, succeeded in his command by Pompey, 66 B.C. Famous for his wealth and luxury, and particularly for his lavish feasts. A byword for self-indulgence. =Lycéum=: an exercise ground with terraces (‘walks’) and colonnades just outside the wall to the east of Athens. It was here that Aristotle discoursed on the ‘Walk’ (_peripatos_), whence the name ‘Peripatetic’ became applied to his school. =Lycurgus=: (1) the more or less legendary lawgiver and constitution-maker of Sparta. His date and personality are quite uncertain, and he is not improbably as mythical as Heracles. (2) son of Dryas, a legendary Thracian king who resisted the worship of Dionysius and hacked down his sacred plant, the vine. Dionysius punished him with madness, during which he killed his own son, thinking him a vine. The story is much varied in particulars. =Lysander=: Spartan admiral, who won the battle of Aegospotami against the Athenians and concluded the reduction of Athens in 404 B.C. He was afterwards distinguished for his ostentation and arrogance. =Lysias=: orator and professional rhetorician of Athens, distinguished for the purity and lucidity of his diction and his grace of style: _fl._ _c._ 403 B.C. The majority of his 230 speeches were written for litigants. =Lysímăchus=: of Macedonia; became king of Thrace on the partition of Alexander’s empire. A man of powerful physique and an able soldier. Later his territory included the western half of Asia Minor. Killed in battle 281 B.C. =Masinissa=: king of Numidia; first a supporter, then an enemy, of Carthage, he lent great assistance to the Romans from 204 B.C. to 148. His reign was long and he died at ninety. =Meidias= (=Mídias=): an Athenian citizen and bitter enemy of Demosthenes, one of whose best known speeches is a violent, and possibly a rather scurrilous, attack upon him. =Melánthius=: of Athens: an inferior tragic and elegiac poet of worthless character: a contemporary of Aristophanes and Plato. =Meleáger=: legendary prince of Calydon. Having slain his mother’s brothers, he was cursed by her, and thereupon refused to take further part in the war against the Curetes. No offers could induce him to leave his chamber and rout the enemy, until he yielded to the prayers of his wife Cleopatra. =Menander=: chief poet of the Athenian New Comedy (or comedy of manners), 342-291 B.C.; a polished and easy-tempered man of the world. His sententious writings lent themselves to quotation and were much read in schools. To moralizing critics of a later age he was to comedy what Homer was to epic. =Mĕnedémus=: philosopher and statesman of Euboea, of the ‘Megarian’ school. Died _c._ 277 B.C. =Méropë=: the name of several mythological semi-goddesses, mostly connected with the heavenly bodies.