DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSENSIS (" of Halicarnassus ")

This article appears in Volume V08, Page 286 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: DIO-DRO

DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSENSIS (" of Halicarnassus ") , Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, flourished during the reign of

Augustus

AUGUSTUS (a name 1 derived from Lat. augeo, increase, i.e. venerable, majestic, Gr. Ee0avr6s)

. He went to Rome after the termination of the civil wars, and spent twenty-two years in studying the Latin language and literature and preparing materials for his history. During this period he gave lessons in rhetoric, and enjoyed the society of many distinguished men. The date of his death is unknown. His

great

GREAT

work

WORK

, entitled `PmaIKil apXawXoyia (Roman Antiquities), embraced the history of Rome from the mythical period to the beginning of the first Punic War. It was divided into twenty books,of which the first nine remain entire, the tenth and eleventh are nearly complete, and the remaining books exist in fragments in the excerpts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus and an epitome discovered by Angelo Mai in a

Milan

MILAN
MILAN (Ital. Milano, Ger. Mailand, anc. Mediolanum, q.v.)

MS. The first three books of Appian, and Plutarch's Life of Camillus also embody much of

Dionysius

DIONYSIUS
DIONYSIUS (c. 432–367 B.C.)

. His

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

object was to reconcile the Greeks to the

rule

RULE

of Rome, by dilating upon the good qualities of their conquerors. According to him, history is philosophy teaching by examples, and this idea he has carried out from the point of view of the Greek rhetorician. But he has carefully consulted the best authorities, and his

work

WORK

and that of Livy are the only connected and detailed extant accounts of early Roman history.

Dionysius

DIONYSIUS
DIONYSIUS (c. 432–367 B.C.)

was also the author of several rhetorical treatises, in which he shows that he has thoroughly studied the best Attic models:The Art of Rhetoric (which is rather a collection of
essays on the theory of rhetoric), incomplete, and certainly not all his work; The Arrangement of Words (IIEpt avvBEaews Lvoarwv), treating of the combination of words according to the different styles of oratory; On Imitation (IIEpi Atpejaeses), on the best models in the different kinds of literature and the way in which they are to be imitateda fragmentary work; Commentaries on the Attic Orators (IIEpi Twv apxaiwv prlrbpwv inro,uvrlaruagoi), which, however, only deal with Lysias, Isaeus, Isocrates and (by way of supplement) Dinarchus; On the admirable Style of

Demosthenes

DEMOSTHENES

(IIEpi Tfjs XEKTUCTJS tlri,uoaNeovs OeLvbTriros); and On the Character of Thucydides (IIEpi Too eo wai.3ov xapaKefiFos), a detailed but on the whole an unfair estimate. These two treatises are supplemented by letters to Cn. Pompeius and Ammaeus (two).
Complete edition by J. J. Reiske (1774-1777) ; of the Archaeologia by A. Kiessling and V. Prou (1886) and C. Jacoby (1885-1891); Opuscula by Usener and Radermacher (1899); Eng.

translation

TRANSLATION

by E.Spelman (1758). A full bibliography of the rhetorical works is given in W. Rhys Roberts's edition of the Three Literary Letters (1901) ; the same author published an edition of the De corn positione verborum (1910, with trans.) ; see also M. Egger, Denys d'Halicarnasse (1902), a very useful treatise. On the sources of Dionysius see O. Bocksch, " De fontibus

Dion

DION

. Halicarnassensis " in Leipziger Studien, xvii. (1895). Cf. also J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. i. (1906).

End of Article: DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSENSIS (" of Halicarnassus ")

If you wish, you can link directly to this article.

<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/DIO_DRO/DIONYSIUS_HALICARNASSENSIS_of_.html">
DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSENSIS (" of Halicarnassus ")
</a>

(Previous)
DIONYSIUS EXIGUUS

(Next)
DIONYSIUS PERIEGETES

JCSM was founded in 1997 and exists to help the community and bring people into a life-changing and productive relationship with Jesus Christ. JCSM offers over 200,000 free web pages, including its weekly inspirational emails that were sent continuously for over a decade.

Jesus Christ Saves Ministries
P.O. Box 9297
San Diego, CA 92169
1-888-887-0417 or Email