CALCHAS, son of Thestor, the most famous soothsayer among the Greeks at the time of the Trojan war. He foretold the duration of the siege, demanded the sacrifice of Iphigeneia and the return of Chryseis ; he suggested that Neoptolemus and Philoctetes should be fetched to Troy, and advised the construc tion of the wooden horse. It had been predicted that he should die when he met his superior in divination ; and the prophecy was fulfilled in the person of Mopsus, whom Calchas met after the war, at Clarus, or at Siris in Italy. Beaten in a trial of sooth saying, Calchas died of chagrin or committed suicide.
See Roscher's Lexikon, s.v.