ionysius OF ALEXANDRIA, often surnamed 'the Great,' was the greatest pupil of Origen, succeeded Heraclas as head of the Catechists' school in 232, became Bishop of Alexandria in 247, was banished during the persecutions of Decius (250) and Valerian (257), and died in 264. He distinguished himself by his wisdom and moderation in the great church controversies of his time, on the Novatian schism, on the baptism of heretics, on Chiliasm, and on the heresies of the Sabellians and Paul of Samosata. He was distinguished also as an exegete; the Apocalypse he refused to assign to the Apostle John on grounds which show that he possessed the critical faculty as well as an independent mind. Of his numerous writings only a few fragments remain; these were collected by Routh in vols. i. and iv. of his Reliquiæ Sacræ (Oxford, 1814), and in vol. x. of Mai's Auctores Classici (Rome, 1838). See Dittrich, Dionysius der Grosse (1867), and Morize, Denis d'Alexandrie (1881).

Dionysius OF HALICARNASSUS, a learned critic, historian, and rhetorician, was born about 50 B.C. He came to Rome about 29 B.C., and lived there on terms of intimacy with many distinguished contemporaries till his death, 7 B.C. His most valuable work is unquestionably his Greek Archaologia, a history of Rome down to 264 B.C., a mine of information about the constitution, religion, history, laws, and private life of the Romans. Of the twenty books of which it originally consisted, we possess only the first nine in a complete form, the tenth and eleventh nearly so, coming down but to 441 B.C.; of the rest, only a few fragments are extant. He was a greater rhetorician and critic than historian, and his extant works on oratory, on the criticism in detail of the great Greek orators, on the characteristics of poets and historians from the time of Homer to Euripides, and upon Thucydides and Dinarchus, possess great interest and value.

There are editions by Reiske (1774-76), Schwartz (1877), and Jacoby (2 vols. 1885-88).

Dionysius, surnamed THRAX ('the Thracian'), a native of Alexandria, who taught at Rhodes and at Rome about 100 B. C. the foundation of all subsequent European works His Techne Grammatike is on grammar. The best edition is that of Uhlig (Leip. 1884).

Dionysius THE AREOPAGITE (i.e. member of the Areopagus, q.v.), one of the few Athenians who, according to Acts, xvii. 34, were converted by the preaching of the Apostle Paul. A later tradition makes him the first Bishop of Athens, and a martyr of the church. The celebrated Greek writings which bear his name, and, connecting Neoplatonism with Christianity, laid the foundation for the mystical theology of the church, were not written by him, but attributed to him after a fashion not uncommon in antiquity. They are first mentioned in 533, when they were appealed to by the Monophysite sect of the Severians against the authority of the Council of Chalcedon. From the 6th century they were generally accepted as genuine, and exercised a very great influence on the development of theology. They include writings On the Heavenly Hierarchy, On the Ecclesiastical Hier archy, On Divine Names, On Mystical Theology, and a series of ten Epistles. In the Western Church they are first referred to in one of the Homilies of Gregory the Great. In the 9th century Erigena, at Charles the Bald's command, prepared an annotated Latin translation; and he and many of the scholastic theologians who followed him drew much of their inspiration from this source. The date assigned to the pseudo-Dionysian writings is fixed by Kanakis as early as 120, by Frothingham as late as 520. Harnack holds that it has not yet been decided at what period between 350 and 500 they were written, and adheres provisionally to the second half of the 4th century, with a final recension about the year 500. This great unknown thinker was probably an Alexandrian. His fundamental thought is the

absolute transcendence of God, which he attempts to connect with Pantheism by regarding God as absolute causality, and as multiplying himself through his indwelling love in all things. His theology is twofold on the one hand, descending from God to created things, and concluding from these the absolute inexhaustible being of the One; on the other hand, rising from things to God, denying of him everything that is conceivable, and finding him exalted above truth and error, being and notbeing. "The divine darkness is unapproachable light. The Incarnation is part of the self-unfolding of God in the world, and the redemption of the individual is mediated by the three degrees of the heavenly hierarchy, and by the three degrees of the church's hierarchy-bishops, priests, and deacons, and the media between them are the six 'mysteries' or symbolical priestly actions, to each of which is attributed a special mysterious significance. The standard edition is that of the Jesuit Balthasar Corderius (Antwerp, 1634; Brescia, 1854; and reprinted in Migne's collection). There are translations in German by Engelhardt (1823), and French by Darboy (1845). See DENIS (ST); and the studies by Hipler (1861), Niemeyer (1869), and Schneider (1884); Dorner's Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. ii. vol. i.; Harnack's Dogmengeschichte, vol. ii.; and Westcott in the Contemporary (1867).

Dionysius the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse, was born about 430 B.C. He was originally a clerk in a public office, but early showed a passion for political and military distinction. When the Agrigentines, after the conquest of their city by the Carthaginians, charged the Syracusan generals with treachery, Dionysius supported their accusations, and induced the Syracusans to appoint new commanders, of whom he himself was one. But in a very short time he supplanted his colleagues also, and so made himself at twenty-five absolute ruler of the city. To strengthen his position he married the daughter of Hermocrates, the late head of the aristocratic party. After suppressing with ferocity several insurrections, and conquering some of the Greek towns of Sicily, he made preparations for a great war with the Carthaginians, which began in 397. At first fortune favoured Dionysius, but after a short time he suffered a series of reverses so calamitous, that all his allies abandoned him, and he was shut up in Syracuse apparently without hope of escape. When he was about to fall a victim to despair, a pestilence broke out in the Carthaginian fleet. Dionysius took courage, and suddenly attack ing his enemies by land and sea, obtained a complete victory. In the years 393 and 392 the Carthaginians renewed hostilities, but were defeated on both occasions, and Dionysius was enabled to conclude a most advantageous peace. He now turned his arms against Lower Italy, and in 387, after a siege of eleven months, captured Rhegium. From this time he continued to exercise the greatest influence over the Greek cities of Lower Italy, while his fleets swept the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic seas. But Dionysius was not contented with the reputation of being the first warrior and statesman of his age; he wished to shine as a poet also. He even ventured so far as to contend for the prize at the Olympic games, but the best reciters of the time, reading his poems with their utmost art, could not induce the judges to decide in his favour. Dionysius was more successful at Athens, where he several times obtained the second and third prizes for tragedy, his last production obtain ing the first. He also invited many poets and philosophers to his court, as Philoxenus and Plato, but these distinguished guests were not always safe from his capricious violence. He adorned Syracuse with splendid temples and public buildings. One of his works was the gloomy and

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terrible rock-hewn dungeon called Lautumiæ. 368 he renewed the war with the Carthaginians, whom he wished to drive out of Sicily altogether, but died suddenly next year, not without a suspicion that his physician had hastened nature to make favour with his son. Dionysius was a most vigorous but unscrupulous ruler. His last years were tormented with an excessive dread of treachery.

succeeded his father in 367 B.C., and celebrated his Dionysius the Younger, son of the preceding, accession by a splendid festival, which lasted ninety days. His political education had been designedly neglected by his father, and in consedissolute prince. Dion (q.v.), who was at once his quence he grew up an indolent, pleasure-loving, and father's son-in-law and brother-in-law, sought to improve him by the instructions of Plato, but his endeavours were frustrated by Philistus, the historian, who disgracefully encouraged the excesses of the youth. Dion was banished, but afterwards returning to Sicily, expelled Dionysius from Syracuse in 356. The latter fled to Locri, the birthplace of his mother, Doris, where he was hospitably received. He repaid the kindness of the Locrians by making himself master of their city, which he ruled despotically for several years. In 346 the internal dissensions of Syracuse enabled him to return thither, and here he ruled for three years until Timoleon came from Corinth to free Sicily. Dionysius soon had to surrender, and was allowed to spend the rest of his life at Corinth, where he haunted low company, spent his means, and had to keep a school for bread.

Dionysius Exiguus (or the Little'), so named either from his small stature, or by his own monkish humility, was a Scythian by birth, and became abbot of a monastery at Rome, where he died in 556. He was one of the most learned men

of his time, translated various theological writings from Greek into Latin, and is especially noted for his fixing of the Christian era (see CHRONOLOGY), and his collection of canons. See CANON LAW.

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Dionysus. The worship of Dionysus, who was originally the god of vegetation, and not till after the time of Homer the god of wine, was borrowed by the Greeks from the Thracians. When adopted as a Greek god he was naturally made the son of Zeus, the sky from which falls the rain that makes the vegetation grow. His mother, Semelē, was destroyed before his birth through her own folly in begging the sky-god to visit her in all his majesty of thunder and lightning. As the remainder of the period of gestation was accomplished in the thigh of Zeus, the paternity of Dionysus was made doubly sure by the myth, and Dionysus was called the twice born.' The spread of the worship of the god is mirrored in myths which represent him as bestowing blessings on those who accepted him, and madness on those who, like Lycurgus and Pentheus, resisted him. The peculiar characteristic of the cult is that it is orgiastic. Of the orgies as they were actually celebrated we may form an idea from the way in which at the present day in France (on the jour des brandons) the peasants carry torches, and utter loud cries, for the purpose of insuring fertility in vineyard and orchard; and in South Germany they dance and leap and make every kind of noise in order to 'rouse the corn,' to wake the spring'-the madder the dance and the cries, the more effectual the invocation. In mythology the orgies' are imagined as being performed by Maenades, Bacchantes, and others, who in their ecstasies rend animals to pieces, as they rush with their torches by night over the land. Part of the cult of Dionysus consisted in eating oxen and goats, which were regarded as the incar