A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

DIONYSIUS.
and historians, and the author points out their excellences as well as their defects, with a view to
promote a wise imitation of the classic models, and
thus to preserve a pure taste in those branches of
literature. The work originally consisted of six
sections, of which we now possess only the first
three, on Lysias, Isocrates, and Isaeus. The other
sections treated of Demosthenes, Hyperides, and
Aeschines; but we have only the first part of the
fourth section, which treats of the oratorical power
of Demosthenes, and his superiority over other
orators. This part is known under the title rrepi
AEFCTriKjS AuocrO0EovVs SUELdTjrsos, which has become current ever since the time of Sylburg, though
it is not found in any MS. The beginning of
the treatise is mutilated, and the concluding part
of it is entirely wanting. Whether Dionysius
actually wrote on Hyperides and Aeschines, is not
known; for in these, as in other instances, he may
have intended and promised to write what he could
not afterwards fulfil either from want of leisure or
inclination. There is a very excellent German
translation of the part relating to Demosthenes,
with a valuable dissertation on Dionysius as an
aesthetic critic, by A. G. Becker. (Wolfenbiittel
and Leipzig, 1829, 8vo.) 5. A treatise addressed
to Ammaeus, entitled 'Er-L-roAhX rpds 'A-EpaIcov
7rpr'iT, which title, however, does not occur in
MSS., and instead of 7rpwdT' it ought to be called
7VtrroAi Se8vre'pa. This treatise or epistle, in
which the author shews that most of the orations of
Demosthenes had been delivered before Aristotle
wrote his Rhetoric, and that consequently Demosthenes had derived no instruction from Aristotle, is
of great importance for the history and criticism of
the works of Demosthenes. 6. 'ETro-roA,) irpos
UvaTov lojuTrnjiov, was, written by Dionysius with
a view to justify the unfavourable opinion which
he had expressed upon Plato, and which Pompeius
had censured. The latter part of this treatise is
much mutilated, and did not perhaps originally
belong to it. See Vitus Loers, de Dionys. Hal
judicio de Platonis oratione et genere dicendi, Treves,
1840, 4to. 7. IIepl TroO Oovumsi8ov Xapan7rpos
icae rTV hoiricv 7TO ewvyypagcPos t8iwjiia'rwv, was
written by Dionysius at the request of his friend
Q. Aelius Tubero, for the purpose of explaining
more minutely what he had written on Thucydides.
As Dionysius in this work looks at the great historian from his rhetorical point of view, his judgment is often unjust and incorrect. 8. lepIh T c
Trd 0ovIcKaiSov Is8iwjda'rv, is addressed to Ammaeus. The last three treatises are printed in a
very good edition by C. G. Kriiger under the title
Dionysii Historiographica, i. e. Epistolae ad Cn.
Pomp., Q. Ael. Tuber. et Ammaeum, Halle, 1823,
8vo. The last of the writings of this class still
extant is-9. AdEvapXos, avery valuable treatise on
the life and orations of Deinarchus. Besides these
works Dionysius himself mentions some others,
a few of which are lost, while others were perhaps
never written; though at the time he mentioned
them, Dionysius undoubtedly intended to compose
them. Among the former we may mention XapaKT~spes rWi dp'osviuv (Dionys. de Conpos. Verb. 11), of
which a few fragments are still extant, and Upay/-aTreia V7rp 7 rs roAXLrics (pihoooqCpas 7rpos TOVS Ka'a'rpeXovras aTs 'i dSbiiws. (Dionys. Jud. de Thucyd.
2.) A few other works, such as "on the orations
unjustly attributed to Lysias" (Lys. 14), "on the
tropical expressions in Plato and Demosthenes"

DIONYSIUS. 1041
(Dem. 32), and repl ris s icAhoy^s 7rYuC JVOPdrWV
(de Comp. Verb, 1), were probably never written,
as no ancient writer besides Dionysius himself
makes any mention of them. The work 7rep1 Epy7 -vElas, which is extant under the name of Demetrius
Phalereus, is attributed by some to Dionysius of
Halicarnassus; but there is no evidence for this
hypothesis, any more than there is for ascribing
to him the /ios 'Oi4pov which is printed in Gale's
Opuscula Mythologica.
b. Historical Works.-In this class of compositions,
to which Dionysius appears to have devoted his later
years, he was less successful than in his critical and
rhetorical essays, inasmuch as we everywhere find
the rhetorician gaining the ascendancy over the historian. The following historical works of his are
known: 1. Xpdvoi or Xpovucd. (Clem. Alex. Strom.
i. p. 320; Suid. s. v. Aiovvaeos; Dionys. A. R. i. 74.)
This work, which is lost, probably contained chronological investigations, though not concerning
Roman history. Photius (Bibl. Cod. 84) mentions
an abridgment (evo'ts) in five books, and Stephanus of Byzantium (s. vv. 'Apiceia and KopiaAAa)
quotes the same under the name of eMrroE/.). This
abridgment, in all probability of the Xpivot, was
undoubtedly the work of a late grammarian, and
not, as some have thought, of Dionysius himself.
The great historical work of Dionysius, of which
we still possess a considerable portion, is -
2. 'Pwua'ic 'ApXaioXoyia, which Photius (Bibl,
Cod. 83) styles i'vropimcK Ahoyoi. It consisted of
twenty books, and contained the history of Rome
from the earliest or mythical times down to the
year B. c. 264, in which the history of Polybius
begins with the Punic wars. The first nine books
alone are complete; of the tenth and eleventh we
have only the greater part; and of the remaining
nine we possess nothing but fragments and extracts,
which were contained in the collections made at the
command of the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and were first published by A. Mai from a
MS. in the library of Milan (1816, 4to.), and reprinted at Frankfurt, 1817, 8vo. Mai at first believed that these extracts were the abridgment of
which Photius (Bibl. Cod. 84) speaks; but this
opinion met with such strong opposition from
Ciampi (Biblioth. Ital. viii. p. 225, &c.), Visconti
(Journal des Savans, for June, 1817), and Struve
(Ueber die von Mai aufgefund Stiicke des Dionys.
von Halic. KInigsberg, 1820, 8vo.), that Mai,
when he reprinted the extracts in his Script. Vet.
Nova Collectio (ii. p. 475, &c., ed. Rome, 1827),
felt obliged in his preface (p. xvii.) to recant his
former opinion, and to agree with his critics in admitting that the extracts were remnants of the extracts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus from the
'Pwta'iý) 'ApXatohoyla. Respecting their value, see
Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, ii. p. 419, note 916, iii.
p. 524, note 934, Lectures on Rom. Hist. i. p. 47.
Dionysius treated the early history of Rome with
a minuteness which raises a suspicion as to his
judgment on historical and mythical matters,
and the eleven books extant do not carry the
history beyond the year B. c. 441, so that the
eleventh book breaks off very soon after the decemviral legislation. This peculiar minuteness in
the early history, however, was in a great measure the consequence of the object he had proposed to himself, and which, as he himself states,
was to remove the erroneous notions which the
Greeks entertained with regard to Rome's great3x