Nicocles

Coin of Nicocles. The obverse shows the head of Aphrodite. The reverse shows Apollo seated on the Omphalos. The Greek inscription reads ΝΙΚΟΚΛΕΟΥΣ ΠΑΦΙΟΝ (Nicocles of Paphos). Nicocles (; d. 306 BC) was a king of Paphos on the island of Cyprus. As king, Nicocles changed his capital of from Old Paphos to New Paphos. In 321 BC, he allied himself with Ptolemy I Soter to fight against Perdiccas and Antigonus.

In 310 BC, after Ptolemy had established his power over all of Cyprus, Nicocles entered into secret negotiations with Antigonus. Hereupon, the Egyptian monarch, alarmed lest the spirit of disaffection should spread to other cities, dispatched two of his friends, Argaeus and Kallikrates, to Cyprus; they linked up with Menelaus, who was still on the island with an army, and surrounded the palace of Paphos with an armed force, and commanded Nicocles to kill himself, an order with which, after a vain attempt at explanation, he complied. Nicocles and his brothers hanged themselves. After his death his wife, Axiothea of Paphos, killed her virgin daughters to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Greeks. Then, together with her sisters-in-law, she set fire to the palace and died in the flames so that their bodies would not fall in the hands of their enemies.

Ancient sources Isocrates, Nicocles or the Cyprians Diodorus Siculurs, Bibliotheca Historica (Diod. Sic. xx. 21) Polyaenus, Strategemata (VIII, 48).