ALCEUS, an Athenian tragic poet, and, as some think, the first composer of tragedies. He renounced his native country Mitylene, and passed for an Athenian. He left 10 pieces, one of which was Pasiphae, that which he produced when he disputed with Aristophanes, in the 4th year of the 97th Olympiad.
There is another ALCEUS mentioned in Plutarch, perhaps the same whom Porphyrius mentions as a composer of satirical iambics and epigrams, and who wrote a poem concerning the plagiarism of Euphorus the historian. He lived in the 145th Olympiad.
We are told likewise of one ALCEUS, a Messenian, who lived in the reign of Vespasian and Titus. We know not which of these it was who suffered for his lewdness a very singular kind of death, which gave occasion to the following epitaph:
ΑΛΚΕΙΩ ΤΑΦΟΣ ΟΥΤΟΣ, &c.
This is Alceus's tomb, who died by a radish.
The daughter of the earth, and punisher of adulterers.
This punishment, inflicted on adulterers, was thrusting one of the largest radishes up the anus of the adulterer; or, for want of radishes, they made use of a fish with a very large head, which Juvenal alludes to:
Quodam machas et mugilis intrat. Sat. x.
The mullet enters some behind.
Hence we may understand the menace of Catullus:
Ah! tam te miserum, malique fati,
Quem attractis pedibus, patente porta,
Percurrent raphaniquet, mugilisque. Epig. xv.
Ah! wretched thou, and born to luckless fate,
Who art discover'd by the unshut gate!
If once, alas! the jealous husband come,
The radish or the sea-fish is thy doom.