A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Ἀμφικράτης), a Greek sophist and rhetorician of Athens. He was a contemporary of Tigranes (B. C. 70), and being exiled (we know not for what reason) from Athens, he went to Seleuceia on the Tigris. The inhabitants of this place requested him to teach rhetoric in their city, but he haughtily refused, saying, that the vessel was too small to contain a dolphin. He then went to Cleopatra, the daughter of Mithridates, who was married to Tigranes, and who seems to have become attached to him. Amphicrates soon drew suspicions upon himself, and was forbidden to have any intercourse with the Greeks, whereupon he starved himself to death. (Plut. Luc. 22.) Longinus (de Sublim. p. 54, ed. Toup) mentions him along with Hegesias and Matris, and censures him for his affectation of sublimity. Whether he is the same person as the Amphicrates who wrote a work on celebrated men (περὶ ἐνδόξων

ανδρῶν, Athen. 13.576; D. L. 2.101), is uncertain.

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