3. One of the ephors of the Messenians in B. C. 220. With some other leading men amongst them, who held oligarchical views, he was a strenuous supporter of peace, even to the detriment of the public interests. When the envoys from the congress held at Corinth, at which war had been resolved on against the Aetolians, came to Messenia, Nicippus and his party, contrary to the feelings and wishes of the people generally, by means of some degree of compulsion got the reply returned to the envoys, that the Messenians would not enter into the war until Phigalea, a town on their borders, had been wrested from the Aetolians. Polybius, in a digression, finds great fault with the policy of this faction among the Messenians. (Plb. 4.31; Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece, vol. viii. p. 233, &c.)