ANDRONICUS. — Prime minister of ANTIOchus IV (q.v.) Epiphanes, king of Syria, during the period when the latter went to Cilicia to suppress a revolt in Tarsus and Mallus (169 B.C.); cf. 2 Macc. 4:30-38. Instigated by the wicked Jewish high priest MENELAUS (q.v.), A. killed the pious Onias III (q.v.) in proportionate measure. Almost simultaneously he also killed a grandson of the king, son of the deceased brother and predecessor Seleucus IV (cf. Diodorus Siculus, XXX, 7, 2; John of Antioch, fragm. 58, in C. Müller, Fragmenta hist. graec., ed. Didot, IV, Paris 1868, pp. 558-559). For these two crimes (of which 2 Maccabees recounts only the first, while secular authors recount only the second), Antiochus, upon his return, had him executed.
BIBL.: Wilcken, s.V. in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencycl. der klass. Altertumswiss., I (1844), cols. 2162-2163, no. 12; G. Ricciotti, Storia d'Israele, II, 3rd ed., Turin 1938, pp. 265-266.