LILYBÆUM, in Ancient Geography, a city of Sicily, situated on the most westerly promontory of the island of Sicily, and said to have been founded by the Carthaginians on their expulsion from Motya by Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse. It is remarkable for three sieges it sustained; one against Dionysius the tyrant, another against Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, and the third against the Romans. The two first failed in their attempts, but the Romans with great difficulty made themselves masters of it. No remains of this once stately city are now to be seen, except some aqueducts and temples; though it was standing in Strabo's time.

LILYÉ, WILLIAM, the grammarian, was born in the year 1466 at Oldham in Hampshire; and in 1486 was admitted a semi-commoner of Magdalen college in Oxford. Having taken the degree of bachelor of arts, he left the university, and travelled to Jerusalem. Returning from thence, he continued five years in the island of Rhodes, where he studied the Greek language, several learned men having retired thither after the taking of Constantinople. From Rhodes he travelled to Rome; where he improved himself in the Greek and Latin languages, under Sulpitius and P. Sabinus. He then returned to London, where for some time he taught a private grammar-school, being the first person who taught Greek in the metropolis. In 1510, when Dr Colet founded St Paul's school, Lilyé was appointed the first master; at which time, it seems, he was married and had many children. In this employment he had laboured 12 years, when, being seized by the plague, which then raged in London, he died in February 1523, and was buried in the north yard of St Paul's. He had the character of an excellent grammarian, and a successful teacher of the learned languages. His principal work is Brevissima institutio seu ratio grammaticae cognoscendi; Lond. 1513. Reprinted times without number, and commonly called Lilyé's grammar. The English rudiments were written by Dr Colet, dean of St Paul's; and the preface to the first edition, by Cardinal Wolsey. The English syntax was written by Lilyé; also the rules for the genders of nouns, beginning with propria qua maribus: and those for the preterperfect tenses and supines, beginning with As in presenti. The Latin syntax was chiefly the work of Erasmus. See Ward's preface to his edition of Lilyé's grammar, 1732.