Nicomedia, he received general acknowledgment after the murder of Carinus. He appointed Maximian Augustus in 286, and Constantius Chlorus and Galerius, Caesars in 292. Each of the four rules was placed at a separate capital Treves, Sirmium, Milan, Nicomedia. This amounted to an entirely new organization of the empire, on a plan commensurate with the work of government which it now had to effect. At the age of fifty-nine, exhausted with labour, he abdicated his sovereignty on May 1, 305, and retired to Salona, the, place of his birth, where he died eight years afterwards. His reign was memorable for the persecution
of the Christians.DIODATI, Giovanni (1576–1649), a Swiss theologian of the Reformed Church, was born at Geneva on the 6th June 1576 of a noble family originally belonging to Lucca, which had been expatriated for the profession of Protestantism. In his youth he distinguished himself as a biblical scholar, and at the age of twenty-one he was nominated Professor of Hebrew at Geneva on the recom mendation of Beza. In 1608 he became a pastor, or parish minister, at Geneva, and in the following year he succeeded Beza as professor of theology. As a preacher he was eloquent, bold, and fearless, with his full ^hare of the intolerance that prevailed among his party at Geneva. He held a high place among the reformers of Geneva, by whom he was sent on a mission to France in 1614. He had previously visited Italy, and made the acquaintance of Sarpi and Fulgenzio, whom he endeavoured unsuccessfully to engage in a reformation movement. In 1618-19 he attended the Synod of Dort, and took a prominent part in its deliberations, being one of the six divines appointed to draw up the account of its proceedings. He was a thorough Calvinist, and entirely sympathized with the con demnation of the Arminians. In 1645 he resigned his professorship, and he died at Geneva on the 3d October 1649. Diodati is chiefly celebrated as the author of the translation of the Bible into Italian which appeared in 1603. Another edition with notes was issued in 1607. As a translator he possessed the primary qualification of a competent knowledge of the original, but his work was rather a paraphrase than a translation, and his notes were those of a theologian rather than of a critic. He also un dertook a translation of the Bible into French, which appeared with notes in 1644. Among his other works were his Annotationes in Biblia (1607), of which an English translation was published in London in 1648, and various polemical treatises, such as De fictitio Pontificiorum Purgatorio, 1619; De justa Secessions Reformatorum ab Ecdesia Romana, 1628; De Antichristo, &c. He also published French translations of Sarpi s History of the Council of Trent, and of Edwin Sandys s Account of the State of Religion in the West.
DIODORUS, named Siculus, a Greek historian, born at Agyrium in Sicily. Of his life we know nothing except what he himself has narrated, that, in prosecution of his historical researches, he undertook frequent and dangerous journeys, and studied Latin at Rome. His history occupied thirty years in writing, and was at last completed in forty books. From internal evidence it is certain that it was written after the death of Julius Caesar; but the passages which show him to have survived the alteration of the calendar by Augustus are generally regarded as spurious. His history, to which, from its comprehensive plan, he has given the title of Bibliotheca, is divided into three parts. The first treats of the mythic history of the non-Hellenic, and afterwards of the Hellenic tribes ; the second section ends with Alexander s death ; and the third continues the history as far as the beginning of Cæsar's Gallic war. Of this extensive work there are still extant only the first five books, treating of the mythic history of the Egyptians, Assyrians, Æthiopians, and Greeks ; and also from the 11th to the 20th book inclusive, beginning with the second Persian war, and ending with the history of the successors of Alexander, previously to the partition of the Macedonian empire. The rest exists only in fragments which have been collected by Photius. The faults of Diodorus arise principally from the gigantic nature of the undertaking, the cumbrous nature of the materials, and the awkward form of annals into which he has thrown his narrative. He has been at little pains to sift his materials, and hence frequent repetitions and contradictions may be found in the body of the work. As a critic, he seems to have been altogether ignorant of the ethical advantages of history, and shrinks from administering praise or blame to the persons whose history he writes. In the chronology of the strictly historical period he is occasionally inaccurate ; and the poetical myths which take the place of the early history are related with all the gravity of historical detail. His narrative is without colouring, and monotonous ; and his simple and clear diction, which stands intermediate between pure Attic and the colloquial Greek of his time, enables us to detect in the narrative the undigested frag ments of the materials which he employed. The parti culars, however, which he has handed down are valuable, as enabling us in several points to rectify the errors of Livy.
DIOGENES, of Apollonia in Crete, a celebrated natural philosopher who nourished at Athens about 460 B.C. He was a pupil of Anaximenes and a contemporary of Anaxagoras. The fragments of his writings have been collected together by Panzerbieter. He believed air to be the source of all being, and all other substances to be derived from it by condensation and rarefaction. His chief advance upon the doctrines of his master is that he asserted air, the primal force, to be intelligence " the air which stirred within him not only prompted but instructed. The air as the origin of all things is necessarily an eternal, imperishable sub stance, but as soul it is also necessarily endowed with consciousness." Mr Lewes and Mr Grote assign to him a higher place in the evolution of philosophy than either Hegel or Schwegler.
Sinope in Pontus. Having been detected in adulterating coin, his father and he were compelled to leave their native city. According to another account, however, Icesias died in prison, and Diogenes fled to Athens with a single attendant. On his arrival in that city he dismissed his attendant with the piquant question, " If Manes could live without Diogenes, why not Diogenes without him 1 " and on the same principle he denuded himself of all superfluous dress, furniture, and even ideas. A wooden bowl, which, with his cloak and wallet, formed his only movables, is said to have been immediately discarded when he saw a boy drinking water from the hollow of his hand. The fame of Antisthenes soon attracted him to Cynosarges, and the pertinacity with which, for the sake of wisdom, he not only endured the scoffs but volunteered to submit to the blows of the great teacher, soon procured him a favourable reception from the whole Cynical school. The favourite pupil, however, soon outstripped his master in the extravagancies of his life, and the pungent keenness of his sarcasms. That he took up his abode in a cask belonging to the temple of Cybele is a circumstance liable to suspicion, from being more frequently alluded to by the
satirists than by the biographers of Diogenes. That he
