Dercyllidas
2. A Spartan, who was sent as ambassador to Pyrrhus when he invaded Sparta in B. C. 272 for the purpose of placing Cleonymus on the throne. [CHELIDONIS; CLEONYMUS.] Plutarch records an apophthegm of Dercyllidas on this occasion with respect to the invader: " If he is a god, we fear him not, for we are guilty of no wrong; if a man, we are as good as he." (Plut. Apophth. Lac. vol. ii. p. 128, ed. Tauchn.; Plut. Pyrrh. 26, where the saying is ascribed to one Mandricidas.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.