ANDROCLES, more correctly ANDROCLUS, a Roman slave, who lived about the time of Tiberius. He is the hero of a story by Aulus Gellius (v. 14) , which tells that Androclus had taken refuge from the cruelties of his master in a cave in Africa, when a lion entered the cave and showed him his swollen paw, from which Androclus extracted a large thorn. The grateful animal subsequently recognized him when he had been captured and thrown to the wild beasts in the circus, and, instead of attack ing him, began to caress him ; he was then set free. (Aelian, De Nat. An., vii. 48.) The story is the subject of the play, Androcles and the Lion, by G. Bernard Shaw.