If Cypselus was originally a potter he may be compared with Agathocles, tyrant at the end of the fourth century of Syracuse, the great daughter city of Corinth. Agathocles is said to have been the son of a potter[1074]. According to Diodorus Siculus, the Delphic oracle prophesied over the infant Agathocles (as it had over Cypselus) that “he would be the cause of great misfortunes” to his country: and as a result of the prophecy it was resolved to do away with the child, who however was saved by its mother. Eventually the father was told that the child had been saved, and took it back, and “being poor he taught Agathocles the potter’s trade (τὴν κεραμευτικὴν τέχνην) while he was still a boy.” This story is probably to be traced back to Timaeus, who is quoted by Polybius[1075] for the statement that Agathocles was a potter, and is the only source of Diodorus actively hostile to the tyrant, by whom he had been banished from Sicily[1076]. [Sidenote: in what is probably a fiction intended to suggest a comparison with Cypselus.] Plainly in great part at least the story of the young Agathocles is a piece of malicious fiction. What is its prototype? I cannot help suspecting that it is Cypselus himself. It is true that there is no cypsele or larnax in the story, and Bauer[1077] connects it with the legends of the youthful Cyrus and infant Romulus. But neither is there an animal to suckle the infant, which the experts state to be the essential feature of the Cyrus Romulus cycle[1078]. The oracle and the rescue by the mother are both salient incidents of the Cypselus story. In the Cyrus story we have dreams and their interpretation by Magians, not nearly so close an analogy. The dreams too indicate only the greatness of the child that is to be born. The Cypselus story indicates, like that of Agathocles, the harm the child will do[1079]. Agathocles grew up in the days when the great name in Sicily was that of the Corinthian Timoleon. The thoughts of Sicily were all turned towards Corinth, and we find this rapprochement reflected in the Syracusan coins of the period, which show the Corinthian types of the helmeted goddess head and Pegasus[1080]. What more natural therefore, especially for the banished Timaeus, than to compare Agathocles with Cypselus[1081]? It is not impossible that from this seditious analogy there grew up the story that Agathocles was the son of a potter[1082]. The alternative is to accept Agathocles’ early connexion with “the wheel, the clay, and the smoke[1083]” of the pottery as a historical fact: but this is less likely. Polybius himself warns us against accepting Timaeus on Agathocles as truthful history, and seems himself to suspect his own quotation about the tyrant having been a potter in his early days. The elder brother of Agathocles was a prominent statesman and soldier in Syracuse early in his career, before the younger brother had risen to the tyranny: Agathocles himself appears early in his career to have