SICKSA
720
SICYONIA
as a remedy (see Cohn, De Medkina Talrmid. [Vratis- lav. 1846]; of no account is Goldmanii, Diss, de Rel. Med. V. T. [ibid. 1845]). In general, see Wedel, Exerci- Uitt. Med.-philoloc/. Sacra et Piofanm (Jen. 1G86, 1704) ; Schmidt, Bibl. Medicus (Zlillicliau, 1743); Keinhard, Bibelkrankheiten (Frankf. and Leips. 1707, 3 vols. 8vo); Michaelis, Philolnf/nuita Medica (Hal. 1758) ; ]\Iead, Med- ico Sacra (Lond. 1749) ; Ackermann, Erldut. d. Krank- heiten im N. T. (in Weisse's Material f. Gottesr/el. u. Reliy. [Gera, 1784], ii, 57 sq. ; iii, 124 sq. ; iv, 73 sq.) ; Shapler, Short Exposition of Diseases in the Sacred Writin;is (Lond. 1834).— Winer, i, C73. See Disease; Medicine.
Sicksa, in Slavic mythology, was a mocking sj'lvan sprite who possessed the power of assuming any form, but delighted particularly in those shapes which in- volved the extreme of startling oddity.
Sicyon, in Grecian mythology, was a son of INIara- thon, Metion, Erechtheus, or Pelops, and the husband of Xeurippe, daughter of king Lamedon of Sicyon. The town was named Mecone oryEgialoe, but is said to have received its subsequent name from him (see Fausan. ii, 1, 1 ; vii, 2, 3 ; Strabo, viii, 382).
Sic'yon (SiKirwj'), a city mentioned with several others [see Phaselis] in 1 Mace, xv, 23 as those to which the Romans sent a decree in favor of the Jews. The name is derived from a Punic root {sdk, sik, or sok), which always im|)lies a periodical market; and the orig- inal settlement was probably one to which the inhabi- tants of the narrow strip of highly fertile soil between the mountains and the southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf brought their produce for exportation. The oldest name of the town on the coast (the Sicyon of the times before Alexander) was said to have been AlyiaXr], or AlyiaXoi. This was perha|)S the common native name, 'aiul Sicyon that given to it by the Phoenician traders, which would not unnaturally extrude the other as the place acquired commercial importance. It is this Sicj'- on, on the shore, which was the seat of the government of the Orthagorids, to which the Clisthenes celebrated by Herodotus (v, 67) belonged. The commercial con- nection of the Sicyon of the Orthagorids with Phoenicia is shown by the quantity of Tartessian brass in the treasury of the Orthagorid Myron at Olympia. The l*hoenician ( Carthaginian ) treasury was next to it (Pausan. vi, 19, 1). But the Sicyon referred to in the book of Maccabees is a more recent city, built on the site which served as an acropolis to the old one, and was distant from the shore from twelve to twenty stadia. Demetrius Poliorcetes, in B.C. 303, surprised the gar- rison which Ptolemjf had five years before placed there, and made himself master of the harbor and the lower town. The acropolis was surrendered to him, and he then persuaded the po|)ulation, whom he re- stored to independence, to destroy the whole of the buildings adjacent to the harbor and remove thither, the site being one much more easily defensible, es|)ecial- ly against any enemy who might attack from the sea. Diodorus describes the new town as including a large space so surrounded on every side by precipices as to be unapproachable by the machines which at that time were employed in sieges, and as possessing the great advantage of a plentiful supply of water witliin its cir- cuit. Modern travellers completely confirm his account. Mr. Clark, who in 1857 descended upon Sic3'ou from "a ridge of hills running east and west, and commanding a splendid prospect of both the [Corinthian and Saronic] gulfs and the isthmus Tietween," after two hours and a half of riding from the highest point, came to a ruined bridge, probably ancient, at the bottom of a ravine, and then ascended the right bank by a steep path. Along the crest of this hill he traced fragments of the western wall of Sicj'on. The mountain which he had descended did not fall towards the sea in a continuous slope, but presented a succession of abrupt descents and level ter- races, severed at intervals by deep rents and gorges.
down which the mountain-torrents make their way to the sea, spreading alluvium over the plain, about two miles in breadth, which lies between the lowest cliffs and the shore. '• Between two such gorges, on a smooth expanse of table-land overlooking the plain," stood the city of Demetrius. "On every side are abriqit clitfs, and even at the southern extremity there is a lucky transverse rent separating this from the next plateau. The ancient walls may be seen at intervals along the edge of the cliff on all sides." It is easy to conceive how these advantages of position must at once have fixed the attention of the great engineer of antiquity — the besieger.
Demetrius established the forms of republican gov- ernment in his new city; but republican government had by that time become an impossibility in Hellas. In the next half century a number of tyrants succeeded one another, maintaining themselves by the aid of mer- cenaries, and by temporizing with the rival sovereigns, who each endeavored to secure the hegemony of the Grecian race. This state of things received a tem- porary check by the efforts of Aratus, himself a native of Sicyon, of which his father Clinias for a time be- came dynast. In his twentieth year, being at the time in exile, he contrived to recover possession of the city and to unite it with the Achiean league. This was in B.C. 251, and it appears that at this time the Dorian population was so preponderant as to make the addition of the town to a confederation of Achajans a matter of remark. For the half century before the foundation of the new city, Sicyon had favored the anti- Lacediemunian party in Peloponnese, taking active part with the Messenians and Argives in support of Mega- lopolis, which Epaminondas had founded as a counter- check to Sparta.