AGYRIUM, the ancient name of a Sicilian town, in the Val di Demona, near the River Semetius, now called San Filippo d'Argiro, containing 6500 inhabitants. It was the birth-place of the historian Diodorus.
AGYRTÆ (αγυρτα, I congregate), in Grecian Antiquity, a kind of strolling imposters, who went about the country to pick up money, by telling fortunes at rich men's doors; pretending to cure diseases by charms, sacrifices, and other religious mysteries; also to expiate the crimes of their deceased ancestors, by virtue of certain odours and fumigations; to torment their enemies, by the use of magical verses, and the like. The Agyrtae corresponded to the Eruscatores of the Latins, and to our modern gypsies.