Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/1107

Rh DUBIUS. Fab. 45.) There are five other mythical person- ages of this name. (Apollod. ii. 1. §5; Ilom. //. vi. 1:M) ; Apollod. iii. 5. § 1 ; Horn Jl. i. 2G3; Hesiod. Scut. Here. 179.) [L. S.] DRYMON (ApiJ^wi/). There are two persons of this name ; the one is mentioned by Tatian (p. 137» ed. Oxford, 1700) and Eusebius {Fracp. Evang. x. p. 495) as an author who lived before the time of Homer. But the reading in Tatian is uncertain, and we have no clue for any further in- vestigation about him. The second Drymon is mentioned by lamblichus among the celebrated Pythagoreans. {De Vit. Pytlu 36 ; comp. Fabric BiU. Grace, i. p. 29, &c.) [L. S.] DRY'OPE (ApvoTTv), a daughter of king Dryops, or, according to others, of Eurytus. While she tended the flocks of her father on Mount Oeta, she became the playmate of the Hamadryades, who taught her to sing hymns to the gods and to dance. On one occasion she was seen by Apollo, who, in order to gain possession of her, metamorphosed himself into a tortoise. The nymphs played with the animal, and Drj'ope took it into her lap. The god then changed himself into a serpent, which frightened the nymphs away, BO that he remained alone with Dryope. Soon after she married Andraemon, the son of Oxylus, but she became, by Apollo, the mother of Am- phissus, who, after he had grown up, built the town of Oeta, and a temple to Apollo. Once, when Dryope was in the temple, the Hamadryades carried her off and concealed her in a forest, and in her stead there was seen in the temple a well and a poplar. Dryope now became a nymph, and Amphissus built a temple to the nymphs, which no woman was allowed to approach. (Ov. Met. ix. 325, &c. ; Anton. Lib. 32 ; Steph. Byz. s. v. Apv6Trri.) Virgil {Aen. x. 551) mentions another personage of this name. [L. S.] DRYOPS {Apvop), a son of the river-god Sper- cheius, by the Danaid Polydora (Anton. Lib. 32), or, according to others, a son of Lycaon (probably a mistake for Apollo) by Dia, the daughter of Lycaon, who concealed her new-bom infant in a hollow oak tree {Spvs'^ Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 1283 ; Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 480). The Asinaeans in Messenia worshipped him as their ancestral hero, and as a son of Apollo, and celebrated a fes- tival in honour of him every other year. His heroum there was adorned with a very archaic statue of the hero. (Paus. iv. 34. § 6.) He had been king of the Dry opes, who derived their name from him, and were believed to have occupied the country from the valley of the Spercheius and Thermopylae, as far as Mount Parnassus. (Anton. Lib. 4 ; Hom. Hymn. vi. 34.) There are two other mythical personages of this name. (Hom.//. xx. 454 ; Diet, Cret iv. 7; Virg. Aen. X. 345.) [L. S.] DRYPETIS (ApuTT^Tis or ApuTrerts), daughter of Dareius, the last king of Persia, was given in marriage to Hephaestion by Alexander, at the same time that he himself married her sister, Sta- tira, or Barsine. (Arrian, Anab. vii. 4. § 6 ; Diod. xvii. 107.) She was murdered, together with her sister, soon after the death of Alexander, by the orders of Roxana and with the connivance of Per- diccas. (Plut. Alex, c ult.) [E. H. B.] DU'BIUS AVI'TUS, was praefect of Gaul and Lower Germany in the reign of the emperor Nero, and the successor of Paulinus in that post. DUCAS. 1089 When the Frisians had occupied and taken in- to cultivation a tract of land near the banks of the Rhine, Dubius Avitus demanded of them to quit it, or to obtain the sanction of the emperor. Two ambassadors accordingly went to Rome ; but, although they themselves were honoured and dis- tinguished by the Roman franchise, the Frisians were ordered to leave the country they had occu- pied, and those who resisted were cut down by the Roman cavalry. The same tract of country was then occupied by the Ampsivarii, who had been driven out of their own country by the Chauci, and implored the Romans to allow them a peaceful settlement. Dubius Avitus gave them a haughty answer, but offered to their leader. Boio- calus, who was a friend of Rome, a piece of land. Boiocalus declined the oifer, which he looked upon as a bribe to betray his countrymen ; and the Ampsivarii immediately formed an alliance with the Tenchteri and Bmcteri to resist the Romans by force of arms. Dubius Avitus then called in the aid of Curtilius Mancia and his army. He invaded the territory of the Tenchteri, who were so frightened that they renounced the alliance with the Ampsivarii, and their example was followed by the Bructeri, whereby the Ampsivarii were obliged to yield. (Tac. Ann. xiii. 54, 56 ; Plin. H.N.xxxir. 18.) [L. S.] DUCAS, MICHAEL (Mixari 6 Aou/cas), the grandson of another Michael Ducas, who lived during the reign of John Palaeologus the younger, and a descendant of the imperiad family of the Ducases, lived before and after the capture of Con- stantinople by Sultan Mohammed IL in 1453. This Michael Ducas was a distinguished historian, who held probably some high office under Con- stantine XII., the last emperor of Constantinople. After the capture of this city, he fled to Dorino Gateluzzi, prince of Lesbos, who employed him in various diplomatic functions, which he continued to discharge under Doraenico Gateluzzi, the son and successor of Dorino. In 1455 and 1456, he brought the tribute of the princes of Lesbos and Lemnos to Adrianople, and he also accompanied his master Domenico to Constantinople, where he was going to pay homage to Sultan Mohammed II. Owing to the prudence of Dorino and Domenico, and the diplomatic skill of Ducas, those two princes enjoyed a happy dependence ; but Dome- nico having died, his son and successor, Nicholas, incurred the hatred of Mohammed, who conquered Lesbos and united it to the Turkish empire in 1462. Ducas survived this event, but his further life is not known. The few particulars we know of him are obtained from his "History." This work begins with the death of John Palaeologus I., and goes down to the capture of Lesbos in 1462; it is divided into forty-five extensive chapters ; the first begins with a very short chronicle from Adam to John Palaeologus I., which seems to have been prefixed by some monk ; it finishes abruptly with some details of the conquest of Lesbos ; the end is mutilated. Ducas wrote most barbarous Greek, for he not only made use of an extraordinarj- num- ber of Turkish and other foreign words, but he introduced grammatical forms and peculiarities of style which are not Greek at alL He is the most difficult among the Byzantine historians, and it seems that he was totally unacquainted with the classical Greek writers. His defects, however, are merely in his language and style. He is a most 4 A