[December], the twelfth month of the year, so called, i. e. tenth, by the Romans, as their year began with March.
[Dec`emvirs], the patricians of Rome, with Consular powers, appointed in 450 B.C. to prepare a code of laws for the Republic, which, after being agreed upon, were committed first to ten, then to twelve tables, and set up in the Forum that all might read and know the law they lived under.
[Decius], Roman emperor from 249 to 251; was a cruel persecutor of the Christians; perished in a morass fighting with the Goths, who were a constant thorn in his side all through his reign.
[Decius Mus], the name of three Romans, father, son, and grandson, who on separate critical emergencies (340, 295, 279 B.C.) devoted themselves in sacrifice to the infernal gods in order to secure victory to the Roman arms; the name is mostly employed ironically.
[Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire], the immortal work of Gibbon, of which the first volume was published in 1776.
[Decretals, The], a collection of laws added to the canon law of the Church of Rome, being judicial replies of the Popes to cases submitted to them from time to time for adjudication.
[Dee, John], an alchemist, born in London; a man of curious learning; earned the reputation of being a sorcerer; was imprisoned at one time, and mobbed at another, under this imputation; died in poverty; left 79 works, the majority of which were never printed, though still extant in MS. in the British Museum and other places of safe-keeping (1527-1608).
[Defauconpret], French littérateur; translator of the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper (1767-1843).
[Defender of the Faith], a title conferred by Pope Leo X. in 1521 upon Henry VIII. for his defence of the Catholic faith in a treatise against Luther, and retained ever since by the sovereigns of England, though revoked by Pope Paul III. in 1535 in consequence of Henry's apostasy.
[Deffand, Marie, Marquise du], a woman of society, famed for her wit and gallantry; corresponded with the eminent philosophes of the time, in particular Voltaire, as well as with Horace Walpole; her letters are specially brilliant, and display great shrewdness; she is characterised by Prof. Saintsbury as "the typical French lady of the eighteenth century"; she became blind in 1753, but retained her relish for society, though at length she entered a monastery, where she died (1697-1780).