ALCYONIUS, PETER, a learned Italian, born in 1487. He was, for a considerable time, corrector of the press to Aldus Manutius, and afterwards Professor of Greek at Florence. His treatise on banishment entitled Medices Legatus, sive de Exilio, written in imitation of the style of Cicero, brought upon him, though unjustly, the charge of plagiarism. Paulus Manutius, who bore him no goodwill, was the author of this insinuation, and says that Alcyonius made away with the only existing MS. of Cicero's Treatise De Gloria, to save detection; but the accusation has been satisfactorily refuted. Alcyonius composed two excellent orations on the taking of Rome, representing very strongly the injustice of Charles V. and the barbarity of his soldiers. There is also an oration ascribed to him, on the knights who died at the siege of Rhodes.