Alexicacus

Ancient Greek votive relief to Heracles Alexicacos, 4th century BC, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Alexikakos (Ancient Greek: Ἀλεξίκακος), the "averter of evil", was an epithet given by the ancient Greeks to several deities such as Zeus and Apollo, who was worshipped under this name by the Athenians, because he was believed to have stopped the plague which raged at Athens in the time of the Peloponnesian War. It was also applied to Heracles.

There is a statue of Apollo in the Museo delle Terme in Rome, a Roman copy of a Greek original, that is thought to be a copy of the statue of Apollo Alexicacus by Calamis that stood in the Ceramicus of Athens.

References

• Lactantius, Divine Institutes translated by William Fletcher (1810-1900). From Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 7. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. ISBN 0-674-99328-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
• Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio. 3 vols. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Alexicacus". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.