Iccus
Ἴκκος
(Ἴκκος).
1. Of Tarentum, a distinguished athlete and teacher of gymnastics. Pausanias (6.10.2) calls him the best gymnast of his age, that is, of the period about Ol. 77, or B. C. 470; and Plato also mentions him with great praise (de Leg. viii. p. 840, Protag. p. 316, with the Schol.; comp. Lucian, Quomodo Hist. sit conscrib. 35; Aelian, Ael. VH 11.3). He looked upon temperance as the fruit of gymnastic exercises, and was himself a model of temperance. Iamblichus (Vit. Pythag. 36) calls him a Pythagorean, and, according to Themistius (Orat. xxiii. p. 350, ed. Dindorf), Plato reckoned him among the sophists.
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.