Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/1019

DTCAEARCHUS. tados was sai-l to have inventeil, were used to or- nament the pediments of temples. (See Did. of Ant. .1. r. Fastigium.) [P. S.] DICAEARCHUS (AtKofapxos). «" Aetolian, who played a conspicuous part in the Aetolian war against the Romans, lie was employed on several embassies, and afterwards engaged in the service of Philip of Macedonia, who sent him out to con- quer the Cyclades, and employed him with a fleet of twenty siiil to carry on piracy. He appears to have been a most audacious and insolent person, for on his expedition against the Cyclades he erected altars to 'Afff^fia and Hapavofila, wherever he landed. (Polyb. xvii. 10, xviii. 37, xx. 10, xxii. 14 ; Liv. xxxv. 12 ; Diod. Excerpt, de Virt. et Vit. p. 57'2 ; Brandstater, Die Gcschicht. des Aetol. lAtndes, p. 273.) [L. S.] DICAEARCHUS (AtKatapxos). 1. A cele- brated Peripatetic philosopher, geoginpher, and historian, and a contemporary of Aristotle and Theophrastus. He was the son of one Pheidias, and born at Messana in Sicily, though he passed the greater p;irt of his life in Greece Proper, and especially in Peloponnesus. He was a disciple of Aristotle (Cic. de Ley. iii. 6), and a friend of Theo- phrastus, to whom he dedicated some of his writ- ings. Most of Aristotle's disciples are mentioned also among those of Plato, but as this is not the case with Dicaearchus, Osann (Beitr'dge zurGriech. u. Rom. Lit. ii. p. 1, &c.) justly infers that Dicae- archus was one of Aristotle's younger disciples. From some allusions which we meet with in the fragments of his works, we miist conclude that he survived the year B. c. 296, and that he died about ij. c. 285. Dicaearchus was highly esteemed by the ancients as a philosopher and as a man of most extensive information upon a great variety of things. (Cic. Tusc. i. 18, de Of. ii. 5 ; Varro, de Re Rust. . 2.) His works, which were very numerous, are frequently referred to, and many fragments of them are still extant, which shew that their loss is one of the most severe in Greek literature. His works were partly geographical, partly political or histo- rical, and partly philosophical ; but it is difficult to draw up an accurate list of them, since many which are quoted as distinct works appear to have been only sections of greater ones. The fragments ex- tant, moreover, do not always enable us to form a clear notion of the works to which they once be- longed. Among his geographical works may be mentioned — I. On the heights of mountains. (Plin. //. N. ii. 65 ; Geminus, Elem. Adron. 14.) Sui- das (s. V. Aiicaiapxos) mentions KaTafxerp-qcxeis rwv ^v TliKoTTovvrj(j(f opwu, but the quotations in Pliny and Geminus shew that Dicaearchus's measurements of heights were not confined to Peloponnesus, and Suidas therefore probably quotes only a section of the whole work. 2. Ttjs irepioSos (Ly dus, de Me7is. p. 08. 17, ed. Bekker). This work was probably the text written in explanation of the geographical maps which Dicaearchus had constructed and given to Theophrastus, and which st'em to have compris- ed the whole world, as far as it was then known. (Cic. ad Ait. vi. 2; comp. Diog. Laert. v. 51.) 3. 'AyaypacpT} ttjs 'EAAaSoy. A work of this title, dedicated to Theophrastus, and consisting of 150 iambic verses, is still extant under the name of Dicaearchus ; but its form and spirit are both un- worthy of Dicaearchus, and it is in all prokibility the production of a much later writer, who made a nietricul paraphrase of that portion of the Vrj^ irepi- DICAEARCHUS. 1001 o5.'/s which referred to Greece. Buttmann is the only modem critic who has endeavoured to claim the work for Dicaearchus in his " de Dicaearcho ejusque operibus quae inscribuntur Bios 'EAAaSos et 'Avaypacpi^ ttjs 'EAAaSoj," Naumburg, 1832, 4to. But his attempt is not very successful, and has been ably refuted by Osann. {Allgem. Sckulzeilung for 1833, No. 140, &c.) 4. Bios ttjs 'EAA(£5oy, was the most important among the works of Dicae- archus, and contained an account of the geographical position, the history, and the moral and religious condition of Greece. It contsiined, in short, all the information necessary to obtain a full knowledge of the Greeks, their life, and their manners. It was probably subdivided into sections ; so that when we read of works of Dicaearchus irepJ ;uou- aiKrs, irepl ijlou(Tikwv aywvwv^ irtpl Aiovva-taKwv dyciuwv, and the like, we have probably to consider them only as portions of the great work, Bjos rrjs 'EAActSos. It is impossible to make out the plan of the work in detail with any accuracy : the at- tempt, however, has been made by Marx. (Creu- zer's Meletem. iii. 4, p. 173, &c.) We know that the work consisted of three books, of which the first contained the history and a geographical de- scription of Greece, so as to form a sort of intro- duction to the whole work. The second gave an account of the condition of the several Greek states ; and the third, of the private and domestic life, the theatres, games, religion, &c. of the Greeks. Of the second book a considerable fragment is still extant ; but in its present form it cannot be consi- dered the work of Dicaearchus himself, but it is a portion of an abridgment which some one made of the Bi'os TTJs 'EAAaSos. To this class of writings we may also refer — 5. 'H hs Tpocpwviov KardSaais, a work which consisted of several books, and, as we may infer from the fragments quoted from it, contained an account of the degenerate and licen- tious proceedings of the priests in the cave of Tro- phonius. (Cic. ad Ait. vi. 2, xiii. 31 ; Athen. xiii. p. 594, xiv. p. 641.) The geographical works of Dicaearchus were, according to Strabo (ii. p. 104), censured in many respects by Polybius; and Strabo himself (iii. p. 170) is dissatisfied with his descrip- tions of western and northern Europe, which coun- tries Dicaearchus had never visited. Of a political nature was — 6. TpiiroAiTiKSs (Athen. iv. p. 141; Cic. ad Att. xiii. 32), a work which has been the subject of much dispute. Passow, in a programme (Breslau, 1829), endeavoured to establish the opi- nion that it was a reply to Anaximenes's TpiKapavos or TpiTToAiTiKos, in wiiich the Lacedaemonians, Athenians, and Thebans, had been calumniated. Buttmann thought it to have been a comparison of the constitutions of Pellene(Pallene), Corinth, and Athens (comp. Cic. ad Att. ii. 2), and that Dicae- archus inflicted severe censure upon those states for their corrupt morals and their vicious constitu- tions. A third opinion is maintained by Osann (/. c p. 8, &c.), who taking his stand on a passage in Pliotius {Bibl. Cod. 37) where an itbos AiKcuap- X^kSv of a state is mentioned as a combination of the three forms of government, the democratical, aristocratical, and raonarchicxil, infers that Dicaear- chus in his T^tTToAtTiKo'j, explained the nature of that mixed constitution, and illustrated it by the example of Sparta. This opinion is greatly sup- ported by the contents of the fragments. Osaun goes even so far as to think that the discussion ou politics in the sixth book of Polybius is bused upon