Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/1059

Rh DIONYSIUS. nnrt historians, and tlie author points out their ex- cellences as well as their defects, with a view to promote a wise imitation of the clasMc models, and thus to preserve a pure taste in those hranches of literature. The work originally consisted of six pections, of which we now possess only the first three, on Lysias, Isocrates and Isaeus. The other sections treated of Demosthenes, Ilyperides, 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 xepl XdcriKris Aiinoa04yovs SejfOTTjTot, which has be- come 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 Ilyperides and Aeschines, is not knojR'n ; 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 'EniaToKri itpos 'Afj-fxaToy TFpdrr}, which title, however, does not occur in MSS., and instead of irpciT-n it ought to be called •which the author shews that most of the orations of Demosthenes had been delivered before Aristotle wrote his Rhetoric, and that consequently Demos- thenes had derived no instruction from Aristotle, is of great importance for the history and criticism of the works of Demosthenes. 6. 'ETrjo-ToA?) irpvs TvaTov TlofJLinqiov^ was written by Dionysius with a view to justify the nnfovourable 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. Uepi rov QouKv^iSov x«pa/cT7jpos KOi Twc Kovnuv rov airyypaipeuis tSiw.uaTOJi', 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 his- torian from his rhetorical point of view, his judg- ment is often unjust and incorrect. 8. Utpl twv TOW &ovKvhiSov iSiw/xdruv, is addressed to Am- maeus. The last three treatises are printed in a very good edition by C. G. Krliger under the title Dionysii Historiograpkica^ i. e. Epislolae ad Cn. Pomp., Q. Ael. Tuber, et Animaeum, Halle, 1823, 8vo. The last of the writings of -this class still extant is — 9. Affvapx^s^ <'i very 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 fonner we may mention xopa«T7j- pes rwv dpnoviouv (Dionys. de Compos. Verb. 11), of which a few fragn)ents are still extant, and Upayixa- rda inrip ttjs ■iTotriKrjs <pio<To<pias irpos Touy Ka- TaTpfX"*^"* avTTjs dSiKoos. (Dionys. t^W.rfc Thtiryd. 2.) A few other works, such as "on the orations nnjuBtly attributed to Lysias" {Lys. 1 4), " on the tropical expressions in Plato and Demosthenes" DIONYSIUS. 1041 (Pan. 32), and ir«p rifs iKXoyrjs riv Svondrwv {de Com/i. Vcrlk 1 ), were probai)ly never written, as no ancient writer besides Dionysius himself makes any mention of them. The work ir«pl ipfj^ri- vflas, which is extant under the name of Demetrius Phalcreus, is attributed by some to Dionysius o{ Ilalicarnassus; but there is no evidence for this hypothesis, any more than there is for ascribing to him the $ios 'On^pov which is printed in Gale's 0]}iiscula Mylholf/gira. 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 his- torian. The following historical works of his are known : 1. Xpovoi or xpoviKd. (Clem. Atx.8irom. i. p. 320; Suid. s. v. Aiovvaios; Dionys. A. H. i. 74.) This woik, which is lost, probably contained chro- nological investigations, though not concerning Roman history. Photius {Bibl. Cod. 84) mentions an abridgment (auroipis) in five books, and Stepha- nus of Byzantmra (». rr. ApiKfia and KopioAAo) quotes the same under the name of emToixilj. This abridgment, in all probability of the xp^^'^'^i was undoubtedly the work of a late grammarian, air not, as some have thought, of Dionysius himself. The great historical work of Dionysius, of which we still possess a considerable portion, is ^ 2. 'Pw/zaiV?) 'ApxatoKoyia^ which Photius {Bibl. Cod. 83) styles laropiKol Xoyoi. 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 PoJybius begins with the Punic wars. The first nir.c 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 .ind extracts, which were contained in the collections made at the command of the emperor Constantine Porphyroge- nitus, and were first published by A. Mai from a MS. in the library of Milan (1816, 4to.), and re- printed at Frankfurt, 1817, 8vo. Mai at first be- lieved that these extracts were the abridgment of which Photius (Bibl. Cod. 8i) speaks; but thip opinion met with such strong opposition from Ciampi {Biblioth. Hal. viii. p. 225, &c.), Visconti (Journal des Savans, for June, 1817), and Struve ( Ueber die von Mai aufgefund St'ucke des Dionys. von Halic. Konigsberg, 1820, 8vo.), that Mai, when he reprinted the extracts in his Script. Vet. Nora 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 ad- mitting that the extracts were remnants of the ex- tracts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus from the 'PutuaiK-fj 'Apxatooyia. Respecting their value, see Niehuhr, Hist, of Home, ii. p. 419, note 916, iii. p. 52.4, 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 de- ceraviral legislation. This peculiar minuteness in the early history, however, was in a great mea- sure the consequence of the object he had pro- posed to himself, and which, as he himself states, was to remove the erroneous notions which the Greeks entertained with regard to Rome's great- 3a
 * -iri(rToA7) SevTfpa. This treatise or epistle, in