DIONYSIUS THE YOUNGER. 



DIOXYSIUS CATO. 



to rejoicing* and feasting for hi> poetical triumph. In a debauch 

 with bi friendi be ate and drank to intemperately that he fell sensc- 

 leaa, and noon after died ; some ny he waa poisoned, B.C. 367, in the 

 sixty-third year of his age, having been tyrant of Syracuse thirty- 

 tight jean. After the death of his fint wife he married two wirei 

 at once, namely, Doris of Locri, and Aristaneta, daughter of Hippa- 

 rinus, of Syracuse : by the*e women he had seven children, of whom 

 Dionysius, his elder aon by Doris, eucoeeded him in the sovereignty. 



Diooysius waa a clever statesman, and generally successful in his 

 nndettakinge; he did much to strengthen and extend the power of 

 Syracuse, and it was probably owing to him that all Sicily did not 

 fall into the bands of the Carthaginians after the taking of Agrigentum. 

 He was unscrupulous, rapacious, and vindictive, but several of the 

 stories stated of his cruelty and suspicious temper appear improbable, 

 or at least exaggerated. The works of Philistus, who had written his 

 life, and who U praised by Cicero, are lost. Diodorus, who is OUT 

 principal remaining authority concerning Dionysius, lived nearly three 

 centuries after, and was not a critical writer. The government of 

 Dionysius, like that of many others who are styled tyrants in ancient 

 history, was not a despotism ; it resembled rather that of the fint 

 Medici and other leaders of the Italian republics in the middle ages, 

 or that of the Stadtbolders in Holland. The popular forma still 

 remained, and we find Dionysiua repeatedly convoking the assembly 

 of the people on important occasions, when full freedom of speech 

 seems to have been allowed. 



Coin of Dionysius. 

 British Museum. Actual size. Silver. Weight 263 grains. 



DIONY'SIUS THE YOUNGER, son of Dionynius the Elder, suc- 

 ceeded him as tyrant of Syracuse, being acknowledged as such by the 

 people. His father bad left the state in a prosperous condition, but 

 young Dionysius bad neither his abilities nor his prudence and expe- 

 rience. He followed at first the advice of Dion, who, although a 

 republican in principle, bad remained faithful to his father, and who 

 now endeavoured to direct the inexperienced sou fur the good of his 

 i-<iii.try. For this purpose Dion invited his friend Plato to Syracuse 

 about in 364. Diouyi-ius received the philosopher with great respect, 

 and in deference to his advice reformed for a while his loose habits 

 and the manners of bis court. But a faction, led by Pbilistus, who 

 bad always been a supporter of the tyranny of the. elder DionyiuuB, 

 succeeded in prejudicing his nun against both Dion and Pluto. Dion 

 was exiled under pretence that he had written privately to the 

 senate of Carthage for the purpose of concluding a peace. Plato 

 urgently demanded of Dionysius the recall of Dion, and not being able 

 to obtain it, he left Syracuxe, after which Dionysius gave himself up 

 to debaui hery without restraint. Aristippus, who was then at bis 

 court, was the kind of philosopher best suited to the taste of Diony- 

 sius. Dion meantime was travelling through Greece, where his 

 character gained him nuu.erou* friends. Dionysius, moved by jealousy, 

 confiscated bis property, and obliged his wife to marry another. Upon 

 this Dion collected a small force at Zacyntbus, with which he sailed 

 fur Sicily, and entered Syracuse without resistance. Dionysius waa 

 absent at the time, but bis adherents retired to the citadel in the 

 Or tygia. Dionysius soon returned, and after some resistance, in which 

 old 1'bilistns, bis best supporter, was taken prisoner and put to death, 

 he quitted Syracuse, and retired to Locri, the country of his mother, 

 wbeie he had connections and friends. 



After the murder of Dion [Dtoir] several tyrants succeeded each 

 other in Syracuse, until Dionysius himself came and retook it about 

 B.C. 346. Dionjsius however, instead of improving by his ten years' 

 exile, had grown worse ; having usurped the supremo power in Locri, 

 be bad committed many atrocities, had put to death several citizens, 

 and a'-uned their wives and daughters. (Justinus, ..Ulisnus.) Upon 

 his return to Syracuse, his cruelty and profligacy drove away a great 

 number of )ople, who emigrated to various part* of Italy and Greece, 

 whilst others joined Iketas, tyrant of Leontini, and a former friend of 

 Dion. The latter sent messengers to Corinth to request assistance 

 against Ihonv.ius The Corinthians appointed as leader of the expe- 

 dition Tiuolcon, who bad already figured in the affairs of his own 

 country a> a determined opponent of tyranny. Timoleon landed in 

 Sicily nr. 344. notwithstanding the opposition of the Carthaginians 

 and of Iketas, who acted a perfidious part on this occasion ; he entered 

 Syracuse, an I soon after obliged Dionysius to surrender. Dionysius 

 wan sent to Corinth, where he spent the remainder of his life in the 

 com (.any of actors and low women ; some say that at one time he kept 

 school Justin (xii. 6) says that be purposely affected low habits in 

 order to disarm revenge, and that being despised, he might no longer 



be feared or hated for his former tyranny. Several repartees are 

 related of him in answer to those who taunted him upon his altered 

 fortunes, which are not destitute of wit or wisdom. 



(Plutarch, Din* ; Diodoms, xvi) 



DIONY'SIUS, the sou of Alexander, an historian and critic, born 

 at Halicarnassus in the first century B.C. We know nothing of his 

 history beyond what he has told us of himself. He states (' Antiq.,' 

 p. 20 24) that he came to Italy at the termination of the civil war 

 between Augustus and Antony (B.C. 29), and that he spent the fol- 

 lowing two-aud-twenty years at Rome in learning the Latin language 

 and in collecting materials for his history. (Phot. ' Bibliotli.,' 

 co<). Ixxxvi.) He also says (' Antiq.,' p. 1725) that he lived in the 

 time of the great civil war. The principal work of Dionysius is his 

 ' Roman Antiquities,' which commenced with the early history of the 

 people of Italy, and terminated with the beginning of the first Punic 

 war, B.C. 265. (' Antiq.' i., p. 22.) It originally consisted of twenty 

 books, of which the first ten remain entire. The eleventh breaks off 

 in the year B.C. 812, but several fragments of the latter half of the 

 history are preserved in the collection of Constantinus Porphyroge- 

 netus, and to these a valuable addition was made in 1816 by Mai, 

 from an old manuscript. Besides, the fint three books of Appian 

 were founded entirely upon Dionysius ; and Plutarch's biography of 

 Camillus must also be considered as a compilation mostly taken from 

 the Roman Antiquities, so that perhaps upon the whole we have not 

 lost much of this work. With regard to the trustworthiness and 

 general value of Dionysius' 8 history, considerable doubts may be justly 

 entertained ; for though he has evidently written with much greater 

 care than Livy, and has studied Cato and the old annalists more 

 diligently than his Roman contemporary, yet he wrote with an object 

 which at once invalidates his claim to be considered a veracious and 

 impartial historian. Dionyeius wrote for the Greeks ; and his object 

 was to relieve them from the mortification which they felt at being 

 conquered by a race of barbarians, as they considered the Romans to 

 be ; and this he endeavoured to effect by twisting and forging testi- 

 monies and botching up the old legends, so as to make out a primd 

 facie proof of the Greek origin of the city of Rome, and he inserts 

 arbitrarily a great number of set speeches, evidently composed for 

 the same purpose. He indulges in a minuteness of detail which, 

 though it might be some proof of veracity in a contemporary history, 

 is a palpable indication of want of faith in the case of an ancient 

 history so obscure and uncertain as that of Rome. With nil liis 

 study and research, Dionysius was so imperfectly acquainted with the 

 Roman constitution that he often misrepresents the plainest statements 

 about it. (Niebuhr, ' Hist, home,' vol. ii., p. 13, Engl. tr.) For instance, 

 he imagines that the patricians had all the influence in the centuries, 

 and that the plebeians and equites had nothing to do with the first 

 class. ('Antiq.' vil S2-h7, x. 17. See Niobuhr, 'Hist Rome,' ii, 

 p. 178, Engl. tr.) He thought the original constitution of Home was 

 a monarchical democracy, and calls the curies the ' demus ' (8/jjuos). 

 He believed when he wrote his second book that the decrees of the 

 people were enacted by the curies and confirmed by thu senate 

 ('Antiq.' ii. 14), and not, as he afterwards discovered, the converse. 

 ('Antiq.' vii. 38.) In a word, though the critical historian may ba 

 able to extract much that is of great importance for the early history 

 of Rome from the garbled narrative and the dull trilling of Dionysius, 

 he cannot be regarded as a meritorious writer, or recommended to 

 the student of ancient history as a faithful guide. I >i.inj>ius also 

 wrote a treatise on rhetoric ; criticisms on the style of Thucydidea, 

 Lysias, Isocrates, Isajua, Dinarchus, Plato, and Demosthenes; a 

 treatise on the arrangement of words, and some other short essays. 

 His critical works are much more valuable than his history, and are 

 indeed written with considerable power. The criticism on Dinarchus 

 [DiKAHCHfs] displays good sense and judgment, and shows the great 

 pains which the author took to separate the genuine writings of the 

 Attic orators from the fabrications which passed under their name. 

 The best edition of Dionysius is that of Reiake, Lips.,' 1774-1777, 

 6 vols., in 8vo. Mai's fragments were first published at Milan in 1816, 

 and reprinted the following year at Frankfurt. They also appear in 

 the second volume of Mai's ' Nova Collectio,' Rome, 1827. His 

 rhetoric has been published separately by Schott, Lips., 8vo, 1804; 

 and his remarks on Thucydides by Kriiger, Hal. Sax., 8vo, 1823. 



DION'YSIUS of Byiantium lived before the year A.D. 196. His 

 voyage ('ApcdrAovt) in the Thracian Bosporus was extant in the 16th 

 century, for Gyllius, who died in 1665, has given extracts in Latin 

 from it in his work on the ' Thracian Bosporus.' A sini<le fragment 

 from this work is printed in Ducange's ' Constantinopolis Christiana, 

 and in Hudson's ' Minor Greek Geographers.' Perhaps there is some 

 confusion between this Dionysius and the author of the ' Periegesi.'), 

 whom Suidas (AiowJiriot) calls a Corinthian. 



DIONY'SIUS CATO. This is the name given to the author of a 

 Latin work in four books entitled ' Diouysii Catonis Disticha de 

 Moribus ad Kilium.' But the real name of the author is unknown, 

 and also the time when he lived. It is admitted however that he 

 lived before the time of the Emperor Valentinian. These Dis'icha, 

 which are in verse, are short moral precepts intended for the edifica- 

 tion of youth. 



There was a work by M. Cato (probably the younger Cato) entitled 

 ' Carmen de Moribus, from which Aulus Gellius (ii. 2) has given 



