Alciphron, a Greek writer, supposed to have been a contemporary of Lucian, flourishing about A. D. 170. He was the author of 113 fictitious letters, in which certain representative characters - fishermen, peasants, parasites, and courtesans - are made to portray, in the purest Attic, the opinions and idiosyncrasies of the classes to which they respectively belong. These letters are mostly given as if written from Athens or its vicinity, in the age immediately following that of Alexander the Great. The best edition of them is that of Seiler (Leipsic, 2d ed, 1856).