Samius: lyrist and writer of epigrams at the Macedonian court, c. 300 B.C.
Scipio: (1) P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major; the brilliant and almost ideal Roman general who conquered Hannibal in 202 B.C.
(2) P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Minor, who completed the conquest of Carthage 146 B.C.; a student of letters and philosophy.
Scirōn: a spot on the Sacred Way from Athens to Eleusis.
Scyros: island in the Aegean off north-east of Euboea. Here Achilles was for a time hidden by his mother in woman’s dress, and occupied in feminine tasks to keep him from the dangers of Troy.
Seleucus: called Callinicus (the ‘Victorious’); king of Syria 246-226 B.C. He was defeated by Antiochus with the help of Gauls (= Galatians) at Ancyra, and it was for a time thought that he had perished in the rout. He managed, however, to retain his kingdom.
Silániōn: Athenian portrait sculptor c. 324 B.C. His Jocasta represented her as dying, her pallor being realistically rendered by the unworthy device of mixing silver with bronze.
Siléni: a class of tipsy satyrs associated with Dionysus. The Silenus was in a sense the Falstaff of Greek legend.
Simónȋdes: a most distinguished poet of Ceos, writer of elegies, choral and processional odes, epigrams, and drinking songs (556-467 B.C.). He spent part of his life as a kind of court poet in Thessaly and at Syracuse, and visited Athens. His compositions were of a high order, and his moral maxims much in vogue, but he was notorious for worldliness and a love of money.
Sísyphus: legendary king of Corinth; type of fraudulent and criminal cunning; punished in Hades by being compelled to roll a stone up a hill for ever and never establishing it at the top.