Agathocles was a Greek

Greeks

The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....

 Prince who was of Macedonian

Macedonia (Greece)

Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of Greece in Southern Europe. Macedonia is the largest and second most populous Greek region...

 and Thessalian

Thessaly

Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....

 descent. He was the son born to the diadochus

Diadochi

The Diadochi were the rival generals, family and friends of Alexander the Great who fought for the control of Alexander's empire after his death in 323 BC...

 Lysimachus

Lysimachus

Lysimachus was a Macedonian officer and diadochus of Alexander the Great, who became a basileus in 306 BC, ruling Thrace, Asia Minor and Macedon.-Early Life & Career:...

 from his first wife the Queen consort

Queen consort

A queen consort is the wife of a reigning king. A queen consort usually shares her husband's rank and holds the feminine equivalent of the king's monarchical titles. Historically, queens consort do not share the king regnant's political and military powers. Most queens in history were queens consort...

, Nicaea a daughter of the powerful regent

Regent

A regent, from the Latin regens "one who reigns", is a person selected to act as head of state because the ruler is a minor, not present, or debilitated. Currently there are only two ruling Regencies in the world, sovereign Liechtenstein and the Malaysian constitutive state of Terengganu...

 Antipater

Antipater

Antipater was a Macedonian general and a supporter of kings Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great. In 320 BC, he became Regent of all of Alexander's Empire. Antipater was one of the sons of a Macedonian nobleman called Iollas or Iolaus and his family were distant collateral relatives to the...

. His full blooded siblings were his younger sisters:Eurydice

Eurydice (wife of Antipater II of Macedon)

Eurydice was a Greek Princess who was of Macedonian and Thessalian descent.She was the first daughter and second child born to the diadochus who was King of Thrace, Asia Minor and Macedonia, Lysimachus from his first wife the Queen consort, Nicaea of Macedon. Eurydice had one older brother called...

 and Arsinoe I.

Agathocles was sent by his father against the Getae

Getae

The Getae was the name given by the Greeks to several Thracian tribes that occupied the regions south of the Lower Danube, in what is today northern Bulgaria, and north of the Lower Danube, in Romania...

, about 292 BC, but was defeated and taken prisoner. He was kindly treated by Dromichaetes

Dromichaetes

Dromichaetes was king of the Getae on both sides of the lower Danube around 300 BC.- Background :The Getae had been federated in the Odrysian kingdom in the 5th century BC. It is not known how the relations between Getae and Odrysians developed...

 the king of the Getae, and sent back to his father with presents; but Lysimachus, notwithstanding, marched against the Getae, and was taken prisoner himself. He too was also released by Dromichaetes, who received in consequence the daughter of Lysimachus in marriage. According to some authors it was only Agathocles and according to others only Lysimachus, who was taken prisoner.

In 287 BC Agathocles was sent by his father against Demetrius I Poliorcetes

Demetrius I of Macedon

Demetrius I , called Poliorcetes , son of Antigonus I Monophthalmus and Stratonice, was a king of Macedon...

, who had marched into Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

 to deprive Lysimachus of Lydia

Lydia

Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....

 and Caria

Caria

Caria was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionian and Dorian Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there...

. In this expedition he was successful; he defeated Demetrius I and drove him out of his father's provinces. Agathocles was destined to be the successor of Lysimachus, and was popular among his subjects. His stepmother Arsinoe II, prejudiced the mind of his father against him and after an unsuccessful attempt to poison him, Lysimachus cast him into prison, where he was murdered (284 BC) by Ptolemy Keraunos

Ptolemy Keraunos

Ptolemy Keraunos was the King of Macedon from 281 BC to 279 BC. His epithet Keraunos is Greek for "Thunder" or "Thunderbolt".He was the eldest son of Ptolemy I Soter, ruler of Egypt, and his third wife Eurydice, daughter of the regent Antipater. His younger half-brother, also called Ptolemy,...

 (a paternal half-brother of Arsinoe II), who was a fugitive at the court of Lysimachus. His maternal cousin-wife and now widow Lysandra

Lysandra

Lysandra was a daughter of Ptolemy I Soter and Eurydice, a daughter of Antipater....

 with their children fled with Alexander (Agathocles' paternal half-brother) to Seleucus I Nicator

Seleucus I Nicator

Seleucus I was a Macedonian officer of Alexander the Great and one of the Diadochi. In the Wars of the Diadochi that took place after Alexander's death, Seleucus established the Seleucid dynasty and the Seleucid Empire...

 in Asia, who made war upon Lysimachus in consequence.

Louis Robert

Louis Robert

Louis Robert was a professor of Greek history and Epigraphy at the Collège de France, and author of many volumes and articles on Greek epigraphy , numismatics, and the historical geography of Greek lands...

 has suggested that coins ΑΓΑΘ of 300 BC belong to an Agathocleia city in Mysia

Mysia

Mysia was a region in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor or Anatolia . It was located on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara. It was bounded by Bithynia on the east, Phrygia on the southeast, Lydia on the south, Aeolis on the southwest, Troad on the west and by the Propontis on the north...

 founded by Agathocles.

Sources

• Smith, William
  William Smith (lexicographer)
  Sir William Smith Kt. was a noted English lexicographer.-Early life:Born at Enfield in 1813 of Nonconformist parents, he was originally destined for a theological career, but instead was articled to a solicitor. In his spare time he taught himself classics, and when he entered University College...
  
   (editor); Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
  The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology is an encyclopedia/biographical dictionary.- Characteristic :...
  
  , "Agathocles (2)", Boston
  Boston
  Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
  
  , (1867)
• Ptolemaic Genealogy: Arsinoe I
• H. Bengtson, Griechische Geschichte von den Anfängen bis in die römische Kaiserzeit, C.H.Beck, 1977
• M. Getzel, Hellenistic settlements in Europe, the islands and Asia Minor, Cohen University of California Press, 1995
• W. Heckel, Who’s who in the age of Alexander the Great: prosopography of Alexander’s empire, Wiley-Blackwell, 2006