Lagus
Λάγος
(Λάγος).
1. The father, or reputed father, of Ptolemy, the founder of the Egyptian monarchy. He married Arsinoe, a concubine of Philip of Macedon, who was said to have been pregnant at the time of their marriage, on which account the Macedonians generally looked upon Ptolemy as in reality the son of Philip. (Paus. 1.6.2; Curt. 9.8; Suidas. s. v. Λάγος.) From an anecdote recorded by Plutarch (De cohib. Ira, 9, p. 458), it is clear that Lagus was a man of obscure birth; hence, when Theocritus (Idyll. 17.26) calls Ptolemy a descendant of Hercules, he probably means to represent him as the son of Philip. Lagus appears to have subsequently married Antigone, niece of Antipater, by whom he became the father of Berenice, afterwards the wife of her step-brother Ptolemy. (Schol. ad Theocr. Id. 17.34, 61.)
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.