THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME VIII SLICE V
Dinard to Dodsworth

Articles in This Slice

DINARD, a seaside town of north-western France, in the department of Ille-et-Vilaine. The town, which is the chief watering-place of Brittany, is situated on a rocky promontory at the mouth of the Rance opposite St Malo, which is about 1 m. distant. It is a favourite resort of English and Americans as well as of the French, its attractions being the beauty of its situation, the mildness of the climate and the good bathing. It has two casinos and numerous luxurious hotels and elegant villas. Together with the adjoining watering-place of St Enogat, Dinard has a population of 4882 (1906).

DINDIGUL, a town of British India, in the Madura district of Madras, 880 ft. above the sea, 40 m. from Madura by rail. Pop. (1901) 25,182. Dindigul has risen into importance as the centre of a trade in tobacco and manufacture of cigars, which are exported to England. There are two large European cigar factories here. The town has manufactures oe silk, muslim#and blankets, and an export trade in hides and cardamoms; and there is a large native Christian population, with two churches. The ancient fort, well preserved, stands on a rock rising 350 ft. above the town; this was formerly a position of great strategic importance, commanding passes into Madura from Coimbatore, and figured prominently in the military operations of the Mahrattas in the 17th and 18th centuries, and of Hyder Ali in 1755 seq., being thrice captured by the British (1767, 1783, 1790). After the two first captures it was restored to Hyder Ali under treaty; after the third it was ceded to the East India Company.

KARL WILHELM DINDORF (1802-1883), German classical scholar, was born at Leipzig on the 2nd of January 1802. From his earliest years he showed a strong taste for classical studies, and after completing F. Invernizi’s edition of Aristophanes at an early age, and editing several grammarians and rhetoricians, was in 1828 appointed extraordinary professor of literary history in his native city. Disappointed at not obtaining the ordinary professorship when it became vacant in 1833, he resigned his post in the same year, and devoted himself entirely to study and literary work. His attention had at first been chiefly given to Athenaeus, whom he edited in 1827, and to the Greek dramatists, all of whom he edited separately and combined in his Poetae scenici Graeci (1830 and later editions). He also wrote a work on the metres of the Greek dramatic poets, and compiled special lexicons to Aeschylus and Sophocles. He edited Procopius for Niebuhr’s Corpus of the Byzantine writers, and between 1846 and 1851 brought out at Oxford an important edition of Demosthenes; he also edited Lucian and Josephus for the Didot classics. His last important editorial labour was his Eusebius of Caesarea (1867-1871). Much of his attention was occupied by the republication of Stephanus’s Thesaurus (Paris, 1831-1865), chiefly executed by him and his brother Ludwig, a work of prodigious labour and utility. His reputation suffered somewhat through the imposture practised upon him by the Greek Constantine Simonides, who succeeded in deceiving him by a fabricated fragment of the Greek historian Uranius. The book was printed, and a few copies had been circulated, when the forgery was discovered, just in time to prevent its being given to the world under the auspices of the university of Oxford. Shortly after the death of his brother, he lost all his property and his library by rash speculations. He died on the 1st of August 1883.

His brother Ludwig (1805-1871) was born at Leipzig on the 3rd of January 1805, and died there on the 6th of September 1871. He never held any academical position, and led so secluded a life that many doubted his existence, and declared that he was a mere pseudonym. The important share which he took in the edition of the Thesaurus is nevertheless authenticated by his own signature to his contributions. He also published valuable editions of Polybius, Dio Cassius and other Greek historians.

D’INDY, PAUL-MARIE-THÉODORE-VINCENT (1851-  ), French musical composer, was born in Paris, on the 27th of March 1851. He studied composition and the organ at the Paris Conservatoire under César Franck, and obtained the grand prize offered by the city of Paris in 1885 with Le Chant de la Cloche, a dramatic legend after Schiller. His principal works, beside the above, are the symphonic trilogy Wallenstein, the symphonic works entitled Saugefleurie, La Forêt enchantée, Istar, Symphonie sur un air montagnard français; overture to Anthony and Cleopatra; Ste Marie Magdeleine, a cantata; Attendez-moi sous l’orme, a one-act opera; Fervaal, a musical drama in three acts. Vincent d’Indy is perhaps the most prominent among the disciples of César Franck. Imbued with very high aims, he was always guided by a lofty ideal, and few musicians have attained so complete a mastery over the art of instrumentation. His music, however, lacks simplicity, and can never become popular in the widest sense. His opera Fervaal, which is styled “action musicale”, is constructed upon the system of Leit-motifs. Its legendary subject recalls both Parsifal and Tristan, and the music is also suggestive of Wagnerian influence. D’Indy can scarcely be considered so typical a representative of modern French music as his juniors Alfred Bruneau, the composer of Le Rêve, L’Attaque du moulin, Messidor, or Gustave Charpentier, the author of Louise, who chose subjects of modern life for their operatic works.

DINEIR, a small town in Asia Minor, built amidst the ruins of Celaenae-Apamea, near the sources of the Maeander (Menderes). It is the terminus of the Smyrna-Aidin-Dineir railway. Pop. 1400. (See [Apamea].)

DINGELSTEDT, FRANZ VON (1814-1881), German poet and dramatist, was born at Halsdorf, in Hesse Cassel, on the 30th of June 1814. Having studied at the university of Marburg, he became in 1836 a master at the Lyceum in Cassel, from which he was transferred to Fulda in 1838. In 1839 he produced a novel, Unter der Erde, which obtained considerable success, and in 1841 published the book by which he is best remembered, the Lieder eines kosmopolitischen Nachtwächters. These poems, animated as they are by a spirit of bitter opposition to everything that savours of despotism, were an effective contribution to the political poetry of the day. The popularity of this book determined Dingelstedt to take up a literary career, and in 1841 he obtained an appointment on the staff of the Augsburger allgemeine Zeitung. In 1843, however, the satirist of German princes accepted, to the general surprise, the appointment of private librarian to the king of Württemberg, and in the same year he married the celebrated Bohemian opera singer, Jenny Lutzer. In 1845 he published a volume of poems, some of which, treating of modern life, possessed great literary rather than strictly poetical merit. A subsequent collection, published in 1852, attracted little attention. The success of his tragedy Das Haus der Barneveldt (1850) obtained for him the position of intendant at the court theatre at Munich, where he soon became the centre of literary society. He incurred, however, the animosity of the Jesuit clique at the court, and in 1856 was suddenly dismissed on the most frivolous charges. A similar position was offered to him at Weimar through the influence of Liszt, and he remained there until 1867. His administration was most successful, and he especially distinguished himself by presenting all Shakespeare’s historical plays upon the stage in an unbroken cycle. In 1867 he became director of the court opera house in Vienna, and in 1872 of the Hofburgtheater, a position he held until his death on the 15th of May 1881. Among his other works may be noticed an autobiographical sketch of his Munich career, entitled Münchener Bilderbogen (1879), Die Amazone, an art novel of considerable merit (1869), translations of several of Shakespeare’s comedies, and several writings dealing with questions of practical dramaturgy. He was ennobled in 1867 by the king of Bavaria and in 1876 was created Freiherr by the emperor of Austria.

Dingelstedt’s Sämtliche Werke appeared in 12 vols. (1877-1878), but this edition is far from complete. On his life see, besides the autobiography mentioned above, J. Rodenberg, Heimaterinnerungen an F. Dingelstedt (Berlin, 1882), and by the same author, F. Dingelstedt, Blätter aus seinem Nachlass (2 vols., 1891). Also an essay by A. Stern in Zur Literatur der Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1880).

DINGHY, or Dingey (from the Hindu dēngī a small boat, the diminutive of denga, a sloop or coasting vessel), a boat of greatly varying size and shape, used on the rivers of India; the term is applied also, in certain districts, to a larger boat used for coasting purposes. The name was adopted by the merchantmen trading with India, and is now generally used to designate the small extra boat kept for general purposes on a man-of-war or merchant vessel, and also, on the Thames, for small pleasure boats built for one or two pairs of sculls.

DINGLE, a seaport and market town of county Kerry, Ireland, in the west parliamentary division, the terminus of the Tralee and Dingle railway. Pop. (1901) 1786. This may be considered the most westerly town in the United Kingdom unless Knightstown at Valencia Island be excepted; it lies on the south side of the northernmost of the great promontories which protrude into the Atlantic on the south-western coast of Ireland, on the fine natural harbour of Dingle Bay, in a wild hilly district abundant in relics of antiquity. The town, which is the centre of a considerable fishing industry, especially in mackerel, was in the 16th century of no little importance as a seaport; it had also a noted manufacture of linen. It was incorporated by Queen Elizabeth, and returned two members to the Irish parliament until the Union.

DINGO, a name applied apparently by Europeans to the warrigal, or native Australian dog, the Canis dingo of J. F. Blumenbach. The dingo is a stoutly-built, rather short-legged, sandy-coloured dog, intermediate in size between a jackal and a wolf, and measuring about 51 in. in total length, of which the tail takes up about eleven. In general appearance it is very like some of the pariah dogs of India and Egypt; and, except on distributional grounds, there is no reason for regarding it as specifically distinct from such breeds. Dingos, which are found both wild and tame, interbreed freely with European dogs introduced into the country, and it may be that the large amount of black on the back of many specimens may be the result of crossing of this nature.

The main point of interest connected with the dingo relates to its origin; that is to say, whether it is a member of the indigenous Australian fauna (among which it is the only large placental mammal), or whether it has been introduced into the country by man. There seems to be no doubt that fossilized remains of the dingo occur intermingled with those of the extinct Australian mammals, such as giant kangaroos, giant wombats and the still more gigantic Diprotodon. And since remains of man have apparently not yet been detected in these deposits, it has been thought by some naturalists that the dingo must be an indigenous species. This was the opinion of Sir Frederick McCoy, by whom the deposits in question were regarded as probably of Pliocene age. A similar view is adopted by D. Ogilvy in a Catalogue of Australian Mammals, published at Sydney in 1892; the writer going however one step further and expressing the belief that the dingo is the ancestor of all domesticated dogs. The latter contention cannot for a moment be sustained; and there are also strong arguments against the indigenous origin of the dingo. That the animal now occurs in a wild state is no argument whatever as to its being indigenous, seeing that a domesticated breed introduced by man into a new country abounding in game would almost certainly revert to the wild state. The apparent absence of human remains in the beds yielding dingo teeth and bones (which are almost certainly not older than the Pleistocene) is of only negative value, and liable to be upset by new discoveries. Then, again (as has been pointed out by R. I. Pocock in the first part of the Kennel Encyclopaedia, 1907), the absence of any really wild species of the typical group of the genus Canis between Burma and Siam on the one hand and Australia on the other is a very strong argument against the dingo being indigenous, seeing that, whether brought by man or having travelled thither of its own accord, the dingo must have reached its present habitat by way of the Austro-Malay archipelago. If it had followed that route in the course of nature, it is inconceivable that it would not still be found on some portions of the route. On the supposition that the dingo was introduced by man, we have now fairly decisive evidence that the native Australian, in place of being (as formerly supposed) a member of the negro stock, is a low type of Caucasian allied to the Veddahs of Ceylon and the Toalas of Celebes. Consequently the Australian natives must be presumed to have reached the island-continent by way of Malaya; and if this be admitted, nothing is more likely than that they should have been accompanied by pariah dogs of the Indian type. Confirmation of this is afforded by the occurrence in the mountains of Java of a pariah-like dog which has reverted to an almost completely wild condition; and likewise by the fact that the old voyagers met with dogs more or less similar to the dingo in New Guinea, New Zealand and the Solomon and certain other of the smaller Pacific islands. On the whole, then, the most probable explanation of the case is that the dingo is an introduced species closely allied to the Indian pariah dog. Whether the latter represents a truly wild type now extinct, cannot be determined. If so, all pariahs should be classed with the Australian warrigal under the name of Canis dingo. If, on the other hand, pariahs, and consequently the dingo, cannot be separated specifically from the domesticated dogs of western Europe, then the dingo should be designated Canis familiaris dingo.

(R. L.*)

DINGWALL, a royal and police burgh and county town of the shire of Ross and Cromarty, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 2519. It is situated near the head of Cromarty Firth where the valley of the Peffery unites with the alluvial lands at the mouth of the Conon, 18½ m. N.W. of Inverness by the Highland railway. Its name, derived from the Scandinavian Thingvöllr, “field or meeting-place of the thing,” or local assembly, preserves the Norse origin of the town; its Gaelic designation is Inverpefferon, “the mouth of the Peffery.” The 18th-century town house, and some remains of the ancient mansion of the once powerful earls of Ross still exist. There is also a public park. An obelisk, 57 ft. high, was erected over the grave of the 1st earl of Cromarty. The town belongs to the Wick district group of parliamentary burghs. It is a flourishing distributing centre and has an important corn market and auction marts. Some shipping is carried on at the harbour at the mouth of the Peffery, about a mile below the burgh. Branch lines of the Highland railway run to Strathpeffer and to Strome Ferry and Kyle of Lochalsh (for Skye). Alexander II. created Dingwall a royal borough in 1226, and its charter was renewed by James IV. On the top of Knockfarrel (Gaelic, cnoc, hill; faire, watch, or guard), a hill about 3 m. to the west, is a large and very complete vitrified fort with ramparts.

DINKA (called by the Arabs Jange), a widely spread negro people dwelling on the right bank of the White Nile to about 12° N., around the mouth of the Babr-el-Ghazal, along the right bank of that river and on the banks of the lower Sobat. Like the Shilluk, they were greatly harried from the north by Nuba-Arabic tribes, but remained comparatively free owing to the vast extent of their country, estimated to cover 40,000 sq. m., and their energy in defending themselves. They are a tall race with skins of almost blue black. The men wear practically no clothes, married women having a short apron, and unmarried girls a fringe of iron cones round the waist. They tattoo themselves with tribal marks, and extract the lower incisors; they also pierce the ears and lip for the attachment of ornaments, and wear a variety of feather, iron, ivory and brass ornaments. Nearly all shave the head, but some give the hair a reddish colour by moistening it with animal matter. Polygamy is general; some headmen have as many as thirty or more wives; but six is the average number. They are great cattle and sheep breeders; the men tend their beasts with great devotion, despising agriculture, which is left to the women; the cattle are called by means of drums. Save under stress of famine cattle are never killed for food, the people subsisting largely on durra. The Dinkas reverence the cow, and snakes, which they call “brothers.” Their folklore recognizes a good and evil deity; one of the two wives of the good deity created man, and the dead go to live with him in a great park filled with animals of enormous size. The evil deity created cripples. The Dinka came, in 1899, under the control of the Sudan government, justice being administered as far as possible in accord with tribal custom. A compendium of Dinka laws was compiled by Captain H. D. E. O’Sullivan.

See G. A. Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa (1874); W. Junker, Travels in Africa, Eng. edit. (London, 1890-1892); The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count Gleichen (London, 1905).

DINKELSBÜHL, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, on the Wörnitz, 16 m. N. from Nördlingen, on the railway to Dombühl. Pop. 5000. It is an interesting medieval town, still surrounded by old walls and towers, and has an Evangelical and two Roman Catholic churches. Notable is the so-called Deutsches Haus, the ancestral home of the counts of Drechsel-Deufstetten, a fine specimen of the German renaissance style of wooden architecture. There are a Latin and industrial school, several benevolent institutions, and a monument to Christoph von Schmid (1768-1854), a writer of stories for the young. The inhabitants carry on the manufacture of brushes, gloves, stockings and gingerbread, and deal largely in cattle.

Fortified by the emperor Henry I., Dinkelsbühl received in 1305 the same municipal rights as Ulm, and obtained in 1351 the position of a free imperial city, which it retained till 1802, when it passed to Bavaria. Its municipal code, the Dinkelsbuhler Recht, published in 1536, and revised in 1738, contained a very extensive collection of public and private laws.

DINNER, the chief meal of the day, eaten either in the middle of the day, as was formerly the universal custom, or in the evening. The word “dine” comes through Fr. from Med. Lat. disnare, for disjejunare, to break one’s fast (jejunium); it is, therefore, the same word as Fr. déjeuner, to breakfast, in modern France, to take the midday meal, dîner being used for the later repast. The term “dinner-wagon,” originally a movable table to hold dishes, is now used of a two-tier sideboard.

DINOCRATES, a great and original Greek architect, of the age of Alexander the Great. He tried to captivate the ambitious fancy of that king with a design for carving Mount Athos into a gigantic seated statue. This plan was not carried out, but Dinocrates designed for Alexander the plan of the new city of Alexandria, and constructed the vast funeral pyre of Hephaestion. Alexandria was, like Peiraeus and Rhodes (see [Hippodamus]), built on a regular plan; the streets of most earlier towns being narrow and confused.

DINOFLAGELLATA, so called by O. Bütschli (= the Cilioflagellata of E. Claparide and H. Lachmann), a group of Protozoa, characterized as Mastigophora, provided with two flagella, the one anterior extended in locomotion, the other coiled round its base, or lying in a transverse groove. The body is bounded by a firm pellicle, often supplemented by an armour (“lorica”) of cuticular cellulose plates, with usually a marked longitudinal groove from which the anterior flagellum springs, and an oblique or spiral transverse groove for the second flagellum. In Polykrikos (fig. 2, 9) there are eight transverse grooves each with its flagellum. The armour-plates are often exquisitely sculptured, and may be produced into spines or perpendicular plates to give greater surface extension, as we find in other plankton organisms. The cortical plasma may protrude pseudopodia in the longitudinal groove; it contains trichocysts in several species, true nematocysts in Polykrikos. It contains chromatophores in many species, coloured by a mixed lipochrome pigment which appears to be distinct from diatomin. The endoplasm is ramified between alveoli; it contains a large nucleus (in Polykrikos there are eight nuclei, accompanied by smaller, more numerous bodies regarded by O. Butschli as micro-nuclei). Besides the other spaces are definite rounded or oval vacuoles with a permanent pellicular wall termed by Schutt “pusules”; these open by a duct or ducts into the longitudinal groove. They enlarge and diminish, and are possibly excretory like the “contractile vacuoles” of other Protista; though it has been suggested that by their communication with the medium they subserve nutrition. Nutrition is of course holozoic or saprophytic in the colourless forms, holophytic in the coloured; but these divergent methods are exhibited by different species of the same genus, or even by individuals of one and the same species under different conditions. Binary fission has been widely observed, both in the active condition or after loss of the flagella: it differs from that of true Flagellates in not being longitudinal, but transverse or oblique (fig, 2, 2). Repeated fission (brood-formation) within a cyst has also been observed, as in Pyrocystis and Ceratium; and possibly the chains of Ceratium and other (fig. 2, 5 and 6) genera are due to the non-separation of the brood-cells. Conjugation of adults has been observed in several species, the most complete account being that of Zederbauer on Ceratium hirundinella (marine): either mate puts forth a tube which meets and opens into that of the other (as in some species of Chlamydomonas and Desmids); the two cell-bodies fuse in this tube, and encyst to form a resting zygospore. The Dinoflagellates are relatively large for Mastigophora, many attaining 50 µ (1/500”) in length. The majority are marine; but some genera (Ceratium, Peridinium) include fresh-water species. Many are highly phosphorescent and some by their abundance colour the water of the sea or pool which they dwell in. Like so many coloured Protista, they frequently possess a pigmented “eye-spot” in which may be sunk a spheroidal refractive body (“lens”).

Fig. 2.
From Delage and Hérouard’s Traité de zoologie concrete,by permission of Schleicher Frères.
1. Modified from Schütt, Ornithoceras. 2. Diagram of transverse fission of a Dinoflagellate. 3. After Schutt, Exuviaeella. 4. After Stein, Prorocentrum.	5, 6. Ceratium, single and series. 7. Pouchetia fusus (Schutt). 8. Citharistes. 9. After Butschli, Polykrikos.

The affinities of the Dinoflagellata are certainly with those Cryptomonadine Flagellates which possess two unequal flagella; the zoospores or young of the Cystoflagellates are practically colourless Dinoflagellates.

1. Gymnodiniaceae: body naked, or with a simple cellulose or gelatinous envelope; both grooves present. Pyrocystis (Murray), often encysted, spherical or crescentic, becoming free within cyst wall, and escaping whole or after brood-divisions as a form like Gymnodinium; Gymnodinium (Stein); Hemidinium (Stein); Pouchetia (Schütt) (fig. 2, 7) with complex eye-spot; to this group we may refer Polykrikos (Bütschli) (fig. 2, 9), with its metameric transverse grooves and flagella.

2. Prorocentraceae (Schütt) ( = the Adinida of Bergh); body surrounded by a firm shell of two valves without a girdle band; transverse groove absent; transverse flagellum coiled round base of longitudinal. Exuviaeella (Cienk.) (fig. 2, 3); Prorocentrum (Ehrb.) (fig. 2, 4).

3. Peridiniaceae (Schütt); body with a shell of plates, a girdle band along the transverse groove, in which the transverse flagellum lies. Genera, Peridinium (Ehrb.) (fig. 1), fresh-water and marine; Ceratium (Schrank) (fig. 2, 5, 6), fresh-water and marine; Citharistes (Stein); Ornithoceras (Claparède and Lachmann) (fig. 2, 1).

Literature.—R. S. Bergh, “Der Organismusder Cilioflagellaten,” Morphol. Jahrbuch, vii. (1881); F. von Stein, Organismus der Infusionsthiere, Abth. 3, 2. Hälfte; Die Naturgeschichte der arthrodelen Flagellaten (1883); Bütschli, “Mastigophora” (in Bronn’s Thierreich, i. Abth. 2), 1881-1887; G. Pouchet, various observations on Dinoflagellates, Journal de l’anatomie et de la physiologie (1885, 1887, 1891); F. Schütt, “Die Peridineen der Plankton Expedition” (Ergebnisse d. Pl. Exed. i. Th. vol. iv. 1895); and “Peridiniales” in Engler and Prantl’s Pflanzenfamilien, vol. i. Abt. 2 b. (1896); Zederbauer, Berichte d. deutschen botanischen Gesellschaft, vol. xx. (1900); Delage and Hérouard, Traité de zoologie concrète, vol. i. La Cellule et les protozoaires (1896).

(M. Ha.)

DINOTHERIUM, an extinct mammal, fossil remains of which occur in the Miocene beds of France, Germany, Greece and Northern India. These consist chiefly of teeth and the bones of the head. An entire skull, obtained from the Lower Pliocene beds of Eppelsheim, Hesse-Darmstadt, in 1836, measured 4½ ft. in length and 3 ft. in breadth, and indicates an animal exceeding the elephant in size. The upper jaw is apparently destitute of incisor and canine teeth, but possesses five molars on each side, with a corresponding number in the jaw beneath. The most remarkable feature, however, consists in the front part of the lower jaw being bent downwards and bearing two tusk-like incisors also directed downwards and backwards. Dinotherium is a member of the group Proboscidea, of the line of descent of the elephants.

DINWIDDIE, ROBERT (1693-1770), English colonial governor of Virginia, was born near Glasgow, Scotland, in 1693. From the position of customs clerk in Bermuda, which he held in 1727-1738, he was promoted to be surveyor-general of the customs “of the southern ports of the continent of America,” as a reward for having exposed the corruption in the West Indian customs service. In 1743 he was commissioned to examine into the customs service in the Barbadoes and exposed similar corruption there. In 1751-1758 he was lieutenant-governor of Virginia, first as the deputy of Lord Albemarle and then, from July 1756 to January 1758, as deputy for Lord Loudon. He was energetic in the discharge of his duties, but aroused much animosity among the colonists by his zeal in looking after the royal quit-rents, and by exacting heavy fees for the issue of land-patents. It was his chief concern to prevent the French from building in the Ohio Valley a chain of forts connecting their settlements in the north with those on the Gulf of Mexico; and in the autumn of 1753 he sent George Washington to Fort Le Bœuf, a newly established French post at what is now Waterford, Pennsylvania, with a message demanding the withdrawal of the French from English territory. As the French refused to comply, Dinwiddie secured from the reluctant Virginia assembly a grant of £10,000 and in the spring of 1754 he sent Washington with an armed force toward the forks of the Ohio river “to prevent the intentions of the French in settling those lands.” In the latter part of May Washington encountered a French force at a spot called Great Meadows, near the Youghiogheny river, in what is now south-western Pennsylvania, and a skirmish followed which precipitated the French and Indian War. Dinwiddie was especially active at this time in urging the co-operation of the colonies against the French in the Ohio Valley; but none of the other governors, except William Shirley of Massachusetts, was then much concerned about the western frontier, and he could accomplish very little. His appeals to the home government, however, resulted in the sending of General Edward Braddock to Virginia with two regiments of regular troops; and at Braddock’s call Dinwiddie and the governors of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland met at Alexandria, Virginia, in April 1755, and planned the initial operations of the war. Dinwiddie’s administration was marked by a constant wrangle with the assembly over money matters; and its obstinate resistance to military appropriations caused him in 1754 and 1755 to urge the home government to secure an act of parliament compelling the colonies to raise money for their protection. In January 1758 he left Virginia and lived in England until his death on the 27th of July 1770 at Clifton, Bristol.

The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia (1751-1758), published in two volumes, at Richmond, Va., in 1883-1884, by the Virginia Historical Society, and edited by R. A. Brock, are of great value for the political history of the colonies in this period.

DIO CASSIUS (more correctly Cassius Dio), Cocceianus (c. a.d. 150-235), Roman historian, was born at Nicaea in Bithynia. His father was Cassius Apronianus, governor of Dalmatia and Cilicia under Marcus Aurelius, and on his mother’s side he was the grandson of Dio Chrysostom, who had assumed the surname of Cocceianus in honour of his patron the emperor Cocceius Nerva. After his father’s death, Dio Cassius left Cilicia for Rome (180) and became a member of the senate. During the reign of Commodus, Dio practised as an advocate at the Roman bar, and held the offices of aedile and quaestor. He was raised to the praetorship by Pertinax (193), but did not assume office till the reign of Septimius Severus, with whom he was for a long time on the most intimate footing. By Macrinus he was entrusted with the administration of Pergamum and Smyrna; and on his return to Rome he was raised to the consulship about 220. After this he obtained the proconsulship of Africa, and again on his return was sent as legate successively to Dalmatia and Pannonia. He was raised a second time to the consulship by Alexander Severus, in 229; but on the plea of ill health soon afterwards retired to Nicaea, where he died. Before writing his history of Rome (῾Ρωμαικά or ῾Ρωμαικὴ Ίστορία), Dio Cassius had dedicated to the emperor Severus an account of various dreams and prodigies which had presaged his elevation to the throne (perhaps the Ένόδια attributed to Dio by Suidas), and had also written a biography of his fellow-countryman Arrian. The history of Rome, which consisted of eighty books,—and, after the example of Livy, was divided into decades,—began with the landing of Aeneas in Italy, and was continued as far as the reign of Alexander Severus (222-235). Of this great work we possess books 36-60, containing the history of events from 68 b.c.-a.d. 47; books 36 and 55-60 are imperfect. We also have part of 35 and 36-80 in the epitome of John Xiphilinus, an 11th-century Byzantine monk. For the earlier period the loss of Dio’s work is partly supplied by the history of Zonaras, who followed him closely. Numerous fragments are also contained in the excerpts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Dio’s work is a most important authority for the history of the last years of the republic and the early empire. His industry was great and the various important offices he held afforded him ample opportunities for historical investigation. His style, though marred by Latinisms, is clearer than that of his model Thucydides, and his narrative shows the hand of the practised soldier and politician; the language is correct and free from affectation. But he displays a superstitious regard for miracles and prophecies; he has nothing to say against the arbitrary acts of the emperors, which he seems to take as a matter of course; and his work, although far more than a mere compilation, is not remarkable for impartiality, vigour of judgment or critical historical faculty.

The best edition with notes is that of H. S. Reimar (1750-1752), new ed. by F. G. Sturz (1824-1836); text by I. Melber (1890 foll.), with account of previous editions, and U. P. Boissevain (1895-1901); translation by H. B. Foster (Troy, New York, 1905 foll.), with full bibliography; see also W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1898), p. 675; E. Schwartz in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopadie, iii. pt. 2 (1899); C. Wachsmuth, Einleitung in das Studium der alten Geschichte (1895).

DIOCESE (formed on Fr. diocèse, in place of the Eng. form diocess—current until the 19th century—from Lat. dioecesis, med. Lat. variant diocesis, from Gr. διοίκησις, “housekeeping,” “administration,” διοικεῖν, “to keep house,” “to govern”), the sphere of a bishop’s jurisdiction. In this, its sole modern sense, the word diocese (dioecesis) has only been regularly used since the 9th century, though isolated instances of such use occur so early as the 3rd, what is now known as a diocese having been till then usually called a parochia (parish). The Greek word διοίκησις, from meaning “administration,” came to be applied to the territorial circumscription in which administration was exercised. It was thus first applied e.g. to the three districts of Cibyra, Apamea and Synnada, which were added to Cilicia in Cicero’s time (between 56 and 50 b.c.). The word is here equivalent to “assize-districts” (Tyrrell and Purser’s edition of Cicero Epist. ad fam. iii. 8. 4; xiii. 67; cf. Strabo xiii. 628-629). But in the reorganization of the empire, begun by Diocletian and completed by Constantine, the word “diocese” acquired a more important meaning, the empire being divided into twelve dioceses, of which the largest—Oriens—embraced sixteen provinces, and the smallest—Britain—four (see [Rome]: Ancient History; and W. T. Arnold, Roman Provincial Administration, pp. 187, 194-196, which gives a list of the dioceses and their subdivisions). The organization of the Christian church in the Roman empire following very closely the lines of the civil administration (see [Church History]), the word diocese, in its ecclesiastical sense, was at first applied to the sphere of jurisdiction, not of a bishop, but of a metropolitan.[1] Thus Anastasius Bibliothecarius (d. c. 886), in his life of Pope Dionysius, says that he assigned churches to the presbyters, and established dioceses (parochiae) and provinces (dioeceses). The word, however, survived in its general sense of “office” or “administration,” and it was even used during the middle ages for “parish” (see Du Cange, Glossarium, s. “Dioecesis” 2).

The practice, under the Roman empire, of making the areas of ecclesiastical administration very exactly coincide with those of the civil administration, was continued in the organization of the church beyond the borders of the empire, and many dioceses to this day preserve the limits of long vanished political divisions. The process is well illustrated in the case of English bishoprics. But this practice was based on convenience, not principle; and the limits of the dioceses, once fixed, did not usually change with the changing political boundaries. Thus Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, complains that not only his metropolitanate (dioecesis) but his bishopric (parochia) is divided between two realms under two kings; and this inconvenient overlapping of jurisdictions remained, in fact, very common in Europe until the readjustments of national boundaries by the territorial settlements of the 19th century. In principle, however, the subdivision of a diocese, in the event of the work becoming too heavy for one bishop, was very early admitted, e.g. by the first council at Lugo in Spain (569), which erected Lugo into a metropolitanate, the consequent division of diocese being confirmed by the king of the second council, held in 572. Another reason for dividing a diocese, and establishing a new see, has been recognized by the church as duly existing “if the sovereign should think fit to endow some principal village or town with the rank and privileges of a city” (Bingham, lib. xvii. c. 5). But there are canons for the punishment of such as might induce the sovereign so to erect any town into a city, solely with the view of becoming bishop thereof. Nor could any diocese be divided without the consent of the primate.

In England an act of parliament is necessary for the creation of new dioceses. In the reign of Henry VIII. six new dioceses were thus created (under an act of 1539); but from that time onward until the 19th century they remained practically unchanged. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act 1836, which created two new dioceses (Ripon and Manchester), remodelled the state of the old dioceses by an entirely new adjustment of the revenues and patronage of each see, and also extended or curtailed the parishes and counties in the various jurisdictions.

By the ancient custom of the church the bishop takes his title, not from his diocese, but from his see, i.e. the place where his cathedral is established. Thus the old episcopal titles are all derived from cities. This tradition has been broken, however, by the modern practice of bishops in the United States and the British colonies, e.g. archbishop of the West Indies, bishop of Pennsylvania, Wyoming, &c. (see [Bishop]).

See Hinschius, Kirchenrecht, ii. 38, &c.; Joseph Bingham, Origines ecclesiasticae, 9 vols. (1840); Du Cange, Glossarium, s. “Dioecesis”; New English Dictionary (Oxford, 1897), s. “Diocese.”

[1] For exceptions see Hinschius ii. p. 39, note 1.

DIO CHRYSOSTOM (c. a.d. 40-115), Greek sophist and rhetorician, was born at Piusa (mod. Brusa), a town at the foot of Mount Olympus in Bithynia. He was called Chrysostom (“golden-mouthed”) from his eloquence, and also to distinguish him from his grandson, the historian Dio Cassius; his surname Cocceianus was derived from his patron, the emperor Cocceius Nerva. Although he did much to promote the welfare of his native place, he became so unpopular there that he migrated to Rome, but, having incurred the suspicion of Domitian, he was banished from Italy. With nothing in his pocket but Plato’s Phaedo and Demosthenes’ De falsa legatione, he wandered about in Thrace, Mysia, Scythia and the land of the Getae. He returned to Rome on the accession of Nerva, with whom and his successor Trajan he was on intimate terms. During this period he paid a visit to Prusa, but, disgusted at his reception, he went back to Rome. The place and date of his death are unknown; it is certain, however, that he was alive in 112, when the younger Pliny was governor of Bithynia.

Eighty orations, or rather essays on political, moral and philosophical subjects, have come down to us under his name; the Corinthiaca, however, is generally regarded as spurious, and is probably the work of Favorinus of Arelate. Of the extant orations the following are the most important:—Borysthenitica (xxxvi.), on the advantages of monarchy, addressed to the inhabitants of Olbia, and containing interesting information on the history of the Greek colonies on the shores of the Black Sea; Olympica (xii.), in which Pheidias is represented as setting forth the principles which he had followed in his statue of Zeus, one passage being supposed by some to have suggested Lessing’s Laocoon; Rhodiaca (xxxi.), an attack on the Rhodians for altering the names on their statues, and thus converting them into memorials of famous men of the day (an imitation of Demosthenes’ Leptines); De regno (i.-iv.), addressed to Trajan, a eulogy of the monarchical form of government, under which the emperor is the representative of Zeus upon earth; De Aeschylo et Sophocle et Euripide (lii.), a comparison of the treatment of the story of Philoctetes by the three great Greek tragedians; and Philoctetes (lix.), a summary of the prologue to the lost play by Euripides. In his later life, Dio, who had originally attacked the philosophers, himself became a convert to Stoicism. To this period belong the essays on moral subjects, such as the denunciation of various cities (Tarsus, Alexandria) for their immorality. Most pleasing of all is the Euboica (vii.), a description of the simple life of the herdsmen and huntsmen of Euboea as contrasted with that of the inhabitants of the towns. Troica (xi.), an attempt to prove to the inhabitants of Ilium that Homer was a liar and that Troy was never taken, is a good example of a sophistical rhetorical exercise. Amongst his lost works were attacks on philosophers and Domitian, and Getica (wrongly attributed to Dio Cassius by Suïdas), an account of the manners and customs of the Getae, for which he had collected material on the spot during his banishment. The style of Dio, who took Plato and Xenophon especially as his models, is pure and refined, and on the whole free from rhetorical exaggeration. With Plutarch he played an important part in the revival of Greek literature at the end of the 1st century of the Christian era.

Editions: J. J. Reiske (Leipzig, 1784); A. Emperius (Brunswick, 1844); L. Dindorf (Leipzig, 1857), H. von Arnim (Berlin, 1893-1896). The ancient authorities for his life are Philostratus, Vit. Soph. i. 7; Photius, Bibliotheca, cod. 209; Suidas, s.v.; Synesius, Δίων. On Dio generally see H. von Arnim, Leben und Werke des Dion von Prusa (Berlin, 1898); C. Martha, Les Moralistes sous l’empire romain (1865); W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1898), § 520; J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (2nd ed., 1906); W. Schmid in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, v. pt. 1 (1905). The Euboica has been abridged by J. P. Mahaffy in The Greek World under Roman Sway (1890), and there is a translation of Select Essays by Gilbert Wakefield (1800).

DIOCLETIAN (Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus) (a.d. 245-313), Roman emperor 284-305, is said to have been born at Dioclea, near Salona, in Dalmatia. His original name was Diocles. Of humble origin, he served with high distinction and held important military commands under the emperors Probus and Aurelian, and accompanied Carus to the Persian War. After the death of Numerianus he was chosen emperor by the troops at Chalcedon, on the 17th of September 284, and slew with his own hands Arrius Aper, the praefect of the praetorians. He thus fulfilled the prediction of a druidess of Gaul, that he would mount a throne as soon as he had slain a wild boar (aper). Having been installed at Nicomedia, he received general acknowledgment after the murder of Carinus. In consequence of the rising of the Bagaudae in Gaul, and the threatening attitude of the German peoples on the Rhine, he appointed Maximian Augustus in 286; and, in view of further dangers and disturbances in the empire, proclaimed Constantius Chlorus and Galerius Caesars in 293. Each of the four rulers was placed at a separate capital—Nicomedia, Mediolanum (Milan), Augusta Trevirorum (Trier), Sirmium. This amounted to an entirely new organization of the empire, on a plan commensurate with the work of government which it now had to carry on. At the age of fifty-nine, exhausted with labour, Diocletian abdicated his sovereignty on the 1st of May 305, and retired to Salona, where he died eight years afterwards (others give 316 as the year of his death). The end of his reign was memorable for the persecution of the Christians. In defence of this it may be urged that he hoped to strengthen the empire by reviving the old religion, and that the church as an independent state over whose inner life at least he possessed no influence, appeared to be a standing menace to his authority. Under Diocletian the senate became a political nonentity, the last traces of republican institutions disappeared, and were replaced by an absolute monarchy approaching to despotism. He wore the royal diadem, assumed the title of lord, and introduced a complicated system of ceremonial and etiquette, borrowed from the East, in order to surround the monarchy and its representative with mysterious sanctity. But at the same time he devoted his energies to the improvement of the administration of the empire; he reformed the standard of coinage, fixed the price of provisions and other necessaries of daily life, remitted the tax upon inheritances and manumissions, abolished various monopolies, repressed corruption and encouraged trade. In addition, he adorned the city with numerous buildings, such as the thermae, of which extensive remains are still standing (Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus, 39; Eutropius ix. 13; Zonaras xii. 31).

See A. Vogel, Der Kaiser Diocletian (Gotha, 1857), a short sketch, with notes on the authorities; T. Preuss, Kaiser Diocletian und seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1869); V. Casagrandi, Diocleziano (Faenza, 1876); H. Schiller, Gesch. der römischen Kaiserzeit, ii. (1887); T. Bernhardt, Geschichte Roms von Valerian bis zu Diocletians Tod (1867); A. J. Mason, The Persecution of Diocletian (1876); P. Allard, La Persécution de Dioclétien (1890); V. Schultze in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie, iv. (1898); Gibbon. Decline and Fall, chaps. 13 and 16; A. W. Hunzinger, Die Diocletianische Staatsreform (1899); O. Seeck, “Die Schatzungsordnung Diocletians” in Zeitschrift für Social- und Wirthschaftsgeschichte (1896), a valuable paper with notes containing references to sources; and O. Seeck, Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt, vol. i. cap. 1. On his military reforms see T. Mommsen in Hermes, xxiv., and on his tariff system, [Diocletian, Edict of].

DIOCLETIAN, EDICT OF (De pretiis rerum venalium), an imperial edict promulgated in a.d. 301, fixing a maximum price for provisions and other articles of commerce, and a maximum rate of wages. Incomplete copies of it have been discovered at various times in various places, the first (in Greek and Latin) in 1709, at Stratonicea in Caria, by W. Sherard, British consul at Smyrna, containing the preamble and the beginning of the tables down to No. 403. This partial copy was completed by W. Bankes in 1817. A second fragment (now in the museum at Aix in Provence) was brought from Egypt in 1809; it supplements the preamble by specifying the titles of the emperors and Caesars and the number of times they had held them, whereby the date of publication can be accurately determined. For other fragments and their localities see Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (iii., 1873, pp. 801 and 1055; and supplement i, 1893, p. 1909); special mention may be made of those of Elatea, Plataea and Megalopolis. Latin being the official language all over the empire, there was no official Greek translation (except for Greece proper), as is shown by the variations in those portions of the text of which more than one Greek version is extant. Further, all the fragments come from the provinces which were under the jurisdiction of Diocletian, from which it is argued that the edict was only published in the eastern portion of the empire; certainly the phrase universo orbi in the preamble is against this, but the words may merely be an exaggerated description of Diocletian’s special provinces, and if it had been published in the western portion as well, it is curious that no traces have been found of it. The articles mentioned in the edict, which is chiefly interesting as giving their relative values at the time, include cereals, wine, oil, meat, vegetables, fruits, skins, leather, furs, foot-gear, timber, carpets, articles of dress, and the wages range from the ordinary labourer to the professional advocate. The unit of money was the denarius, not the silver, but a copper coin introduced by Diocletian, of which the value has been fixed approximately at 1⁄5th of a penny. The punishment for exceeding the prices fixed was death or deportation. The edict was a well-intended but abortive attempt, in great measure in the interests of the soldiers, to meet the distress caused by several bad harvests and commercial speculation. The actual effect was disastrous: the restrictions thus placed upon commercial freedom brought about a disturbance of the food supply in non-productive countries, many traders were ruined, and the edict soon fell into abeyance.

See Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum, vii., a contemporary who, as a Christian, writes with natural bias against Diocletian; T. Mommsen, Das Edict Diocletians (1851); W. M. Leake, An Edict of Diocletian (1826); W. H. Waddington, L’Édit de Dioclétien (1864), and E. Lépaulle, L’Édit de maximum (1886), both containing introductions and ample notes; J. C. Rolfe and F. B. Tarbell in Papers of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, v. (1892) (Plataea); W. Loring in Journal of Hellenic Studies, xi. (1890) (Megalopolis); P. Paris in Bulletin de correspondance hellénique, ix. (1885) (Elatea). There is an edition of the whole by Mommsen, with notes by H. Blümner (1893).

DIODATI, GIOVANNI (1576-1649), Swiss Protestant divine, was born at Geneva on the 6th of June 1576, of a noble family originally belonging to Lucca, which had been expatriated on account of its Protestantism. At the age of twenty-one he was nominated professor of Hebrew at Geneva on the recommendation of Theodor Beza. In 1606 he became professor of theology, in 1608 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. 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 Paolo Sarpi, whom he endeavoured unsuccessfully to engage in a reformation movement. In 1618-1619 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 condemnation of the Arminians. In 1645 he resigned his professorship, and died at Geneva on the 3rd of October 1649. Diodati is chiefly famous as the author of the translation of the Bible into Italian (1603, edited with notes, 1607). He also undertook a translation of the Bible into French, which appeared with notes in 1644. Among his other works are his Annotationes in Biblia (1607), of which an English translation (Pious and Learned Annotations upon the Holy Bible) was published in London in 1648, and various polemical treatises, such as De fictitio Pontificiorum Purgatorio (1619); De justa secessione Reformatorum ab Ecclesia 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 CRONUS (4th century b.c.), Greek philosopher of the Megarian school. Practically nothing is known of his life. Diogenes Laërtius (ii. 111) tells a story that, while staying at the court of Ptolemy Soter, Diodorus was asked to solve a dialectical subtlety by Stilpo. Not being able to answer on the spur of the moment, he was nicknamed Κρόνος (the God, equivalent to “slowcoach”) by Ptolemy. The story goes that he died of shame at his failure. Strabo, however, says (xiv. 658; xvii. 838) that he took the name from Apollonius, his master. Like the rest of the Megarian school he revelled in verbal quibbles, proving that motion and existence are impossible. His was the famous sophism known as the Κυριεύων. The impossible cannot result from the possible; a past event cannot become other than it is; but if an event, at a given moment, had been possible, from this possible would result something impossible; therefore the original event was impossible. This problem was taken up by Chrysippus, who admitted that he could not solve it. Apart from these verbal gymnastics, Diodorus did not differ from the Megarian school. From his great dialectical skill he earned the title ὁ διαλεκτικός, or διαλεκτικώτατος, a title which was borne by his five daughters, who inherited his ability.

See Cicero, De Fato, 6, 7, 9; Aristotle, Metaphysica, θ 3; Sext. Empiric., adv. Math. x. 85; Ritter and Preller, Hist. philos. Gr. et Rom. chap. v. §§ 234-236 (ed. 1869); and bibliography appended to article [Megarian School].

DIODORUS SICULUS, Greek historian, born at Agyrium in Sicily, lived in the times of Julius Caesar and Augustus. From his own statements we learn that he travelled in Egypt between 60-57 b.c. and that he spent several years in Rome. The latest event mentioned by him belongs to the year 21 b.c. He asserts that he devoted thirty years to the composition of his history, and that he undertook frequent and dangerous journeys in prosecution of his historical researches. These assertions, however, find little credit with recent critics. The history, to which Diodorus gave the name βιβλιοθήκη ἱστορική (Bibliotheca historica, “Historical Library”), consisted of forty books, and was divided into three parts. The first treats of the mythic history of the non-Hellenic, and afterwards of the Hellenic tribes, to the destruction of Troy; the second section ends with Alexander’s death; and the third continues the history as far as the beginning of Caesar’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, Ethiopians and Greeks; and also the 11th to the 20th books inclusive, beginning with the second Persian War, and ending with the history of the successors of Alexander, previous to the partition of the Macedonian empire (302). The rest exists only in fragments preserved in Photius and the excerpts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. The faults of Diodorus arise partly from the nature of the undertaking, and the awkward form of annals into which he has thrown the historical portion of his narrative. He shows none of the critical faculties of the historian, merely setting down a number of unconnected details. His narrative contains frequent repetitions and contradictions, is without colouring, and monotonous; and his simple diction, which stands intermediate between pure Attic and the colloquial Greek of his time, enables us to detect in the narrative the undigested fragments of the materials which he employed. In spite of its defects, however, the Bibliotheca is of considerable value as to some extent supplying the loss of the works of older authors, from which it is compiled. Unfortunately, Diodorus does not always quote his authorities, but his general sources of information were—in history and chronology, Castor, Ephorus and Apollodorus; in geography, Agatharchides and Artemidorus. In special sections he followed special authorities—e.g. in the history of his native Sicily, Philistus and Timaeus.

Editio princeps, by H. Stephanus (1559); of other editions the best are: P. Wesseling (1746), not yet superseded; L. Dindorf (1828-1831); (text) L. Dindorf (1866-1868, revised by F. Vogel, 1888-1893 and C. T. Fischer, 1905-1906). The standard works on the sources of Diodorus are C. G. Heyne, De fontibus et auctoribus historiarum Diodori, printed in Dindorf’s edition, and C. A. Volquardsen, Die Quellen der griechischen und sicilischen Geschichten bei Diodor (1868); A. von Mess, Rheinisches Museum (1906); see also L. O. Bröcker, Untersuchungen über Diodor (1879), short, but containing much information; O. Maass, Kleitarch und Diodor (1894-  ); G. J. Schneider, De Diodori fontibus, i.-iv. (1880); C. Wachsmuth, Einleitung in das Studium der alten Geschichte (1895); Greece; Ancient History, “Authorities.”

DIODOTUS, Seleucid satrap of Bactria, who rebelled against Antiochus II. (about 255) and became the founder of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom (Trogus, Prol. 41; Justin xli. 4, 5, where he is wrongly called Theodotus; Strabo xi. 515). His power seems to have extended over the neighbouring provinces. Arsaces, the chieftain of the nomadic (Dahan) tribe of the Parni, fled before him into Parthia and here became the founder of the Parthian kingdom (Strabo l.c.). When Seleucus II. in 239 attempted to subjugate the rebels in the east he seems to have united with him against the Parthians (Justin xli. 4, 9). Soon afterwards he died and was succeeded by his son Diodotus II., who concluded a peace with the Parthians (Justin l.c.). Diodotus II. was killed by another usurper, Euthydemus (Polyb. xi. 34, 2). Of Diodotus I. we possess gold and silver coins, which imitate the coins of Antiochus II.; on these he sometimes calls himself Soter, “the saviour.” As the power of the Seleucids was weak and continually attacked by Ptolemy II., the eastern provinces and their Greek cities were exposed to the invasion of the nomadic barbarians and threatened with destruction (Polyb. xi. 34, 5); thus the erection of an independent kingdom may have been a necessity and indeed an advantage to the Greeks, and this epithet well deserved. Diodotus Soter appears also on coins struck in his memory by the later Graeco-Bactrian kings Agathocles and Antimachus. Cf. A. v. Sallet, Die Nachfolger Alexanders d. Gr. in Baktrien und Indien; Percy Gardner, Catal. of the Coins of the Greek and Scythian Kings of Bactria and India (Brit. Mus.); see also [Bactria].

(Ed. M.)

DIOGENES, “the Cynic,” Greek philosopher, was born at Sinope about 412 b.c., and died in 323 at Corinth, according to Diogenes Laërtius, on the day on which Alexander the Great died at Babylon. His father, Icesias, a money-changer, was imprisoned or exiled on the charge of adulterating the coinage. Diogenes was included in the charge, and went to Athens with one attendant, whom he dismissed, saying, “If Manes can live without Diogenes, why not Diogenes without Manes?” Attracted by the ascetic teaching of Antisthenes, he became his pupil, despite the brutality with which he was received, and rapidly excelled his master both in reputation and in the austerity of his life. The stories which are told of him are probably true; in any case, they serve to illustrate the logical consistency of his character. He inured himself to the vicissitudes of weather by living in a tub belonging to the temple of Cybele. The single wooden bowl he possessed he destroyed on seeing a peasant boy drink from the hollow of his hands. On a voyage to Aegina he was captured by pirates and sold as a slave in Crete to a Corinthian named Xeniades. Being asked his trade, he replied that he knew no trade but that of governing men, and that he wished to be sold to a man who needed a master. As tutor to the two sons of Xeniades, he lived in Corinth for the rest of his life, which he devoted entirely to preaching the doctrines of virtuous self-control. At the Isthmian games he lectured to large audiences who turned to him from Antisthenes. It was, probably, at one of these festivals that he craved from Alexander the single boon that he would not stand between him and the sun, to which Alexander replied “If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.” On his death, about which there exist several accounts, the Corinthians erected to his memory a pillar on which there rested a dog of Parian marble. His ethical teaching will be found in the article [Cynics] (q.v.). It may suffice to say here that virtue, for him, consisted in the avoidance of all physical pleasure; that pain and hunger were positively helpful in the pursuit of goodness; that all the artificial growths of society appeared to him incompatible with truth and goodness; that moralization implies a return to nature and simplicity. He has been credited with going to extremes of impropriety in pursuance of these ideas; probably, however, his reputation has suffered from the undoubted immorality of some of his successors. Both in ancient and in modern times, his personality has appealed strongly to sculptors and to painters. Ancient busts exist in the museums of the Vatican, the Louvre and the Capitol. The interview between Diogenes and Alexander is represented in an ancient marble bas-relief found in the Villa Albani. Rubens, Jordaens, Steen, Van der Werff, Jeaurat, Salvator Rosa and Karel Dujardin have painted various episodes in his life.

The chief ancient authority for his life is Diogenes Laërtius vi. 20; see also Mayor’s notes on Juvenal, Satires, xiv. 305-314; and article [Cynics].

DIOGENES APOLLONIATES (c. 460 b.c.), Greek natural philosopher, was a native of Apollonia in Crete. Although of Dorian stock, he wrote in the Ionic dialect, like all the physiologi (physical philosophers). There seems no doubt that he lived some time at Athens, where it is said that he became so unpopular (probably owing to his supposed atheistical opinions) that his life was in danger. The views of Diogenes are transferred in the Clouds (264 ff.) of Aristophanes to Socrates. Like Anaximenes, he believed air to be the one source of all being, and all other substances to be derived from it by condensation and rarefaction. His chief advance upon the doctrines of Anaximenes is that he asserted air, the primal force, to be possessed of 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 substance, but as soul it is also necessarily endowed with consciousness.” In fact, he belonged to the old Ionian school, whose doctrines he modified by the theories of his contemporary Anaxagoras, although he avoided his dualism. His most important work was Περὶ φύσεως (De natura), of which considerable fragments are extant (chiefly in Simplicius); it is possible that he wrote also Against the Sophists and On the Nature of Man, to which the well-known fragment about the veins would belong; possibly these discussions were subdivisions of his great work.

Fragments in F. Mullach, Fragmenta philosophorum Graecorum, i. (1860); F. Panzerbieter, Diogenes Apolloniates (1830), with philosophical dissertation; J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (1892); H. Ritter and L. Preller, Historia philosophiae (4th ed., 1869), §§ 59-68; E. Krause, Diogenes von Apollonia (1909). See [Ionian School].

DIOGENES LAËRTIUS (or Laërtius Diogenes), the biographer of the Greek philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laërte in Cilicia, and by others from the Roman family of the Laërtii. Of the circumstances of his life we know nothing. He must have lived after Sextus Empiricus (c. a.d. 200), whom he mentions, and before Stephanus of Byzantium (c. a.d. 500), who quotes him. It is probable that he flourished during the reign of Alexander Severus (a.d. 222-235) and his successors. His own opinions are equally uncertain. By some he was regarded as a Christian; but it seems more probable that he was an Epicurean. The work by which he is known professes to give an account of the lives and sayings of the Greek philosophers. Although it is at best an uncritical and unphilosophical compilation, its value, as giving us an insight into the private life of the Greek sages, justly led Montaigne to exclaim that he wished that instead of one Laërtius there had been a dozen. He treats his subject in two divisions which he describes as the Ionian and the Italian schools; the division is quite unscientific. The biographies of the former begin with Anaximander, and end with Clitomachus, Theophrastus and Chrysippus; the latter begins with Pythagoras, and ends with Epicurus. The Socratic school, with its various branches, is classed with the Ionic; while the Eleatics and sceptics are treated under the Italic. The whole of the last book is devoted to Epicurus, and contains three most interesting letters addressed to Herodotus, Pythocles and Menoeceus. His chief authorities were Diocles of Magnesia’s Cursory Notice (Έπιδρομή) of Philosophers and Favorinus’s Miscellaneous History and Memoirs. From the statements of Burlaeus (Walter Burley, a 14th-century monk) in his De vita et moribus philosophorum the text of Diogenes seems to have been much fuller than that which we now possess. In addition to the Lives, Diogenes was the author of a work in verse on famous men, in various metres.

Bibliography.—Editio princeps (1533); H. Hübner and C. Jacobitz with commentary (1828-1833); C. G. Cobet (1850), text only. See F. Nietzsche, “De Diogenis Laërtii fontibus” in Rheinisches Museum, xxiii., xxiv. (1868-1869); J. Freudenthal, “Zu Quellenkunde Diog. Laërt.,” in Hellenistische Studien, iii. (1879); O. Maass, De biographis Graecis (1880); V. Egger, De fontibus Diog. Laërt. (1881). There is an English translation by C. D. Yonge in Bohn’s Classical Library.

DIOGENIANUS, of Heraclea on the Pontus (or in Caria), Greek grammarian, flourished during the reign of Hadrian. He was the author of an alphabetical lexicon, chiefly of poetical words, abridged from the great lexicon (Περὶ γλωσσῶν) of Pamphilus of Alexandria (fl. a.d. 50) and other similar works. It was also known by the title Περιεργοπένητες (for the use of “industrious poor students”). It formed the basis of the lexicon, or rather glossary, of Hesychius of Alexandria, which is described in the preface as a new edition of the work of Diogenianus. We still possess a collection of proverbs under his name, probably an abridgment of the collection made by himself from his lexicon (ed. by E. Leutsch and F. W. Schneidewin in Paroemiographi Graeci, i. 1839). Diogenianus was also the author of an Anthology of epigrams, of treatises on rivers, lakes, fountains and promontories; and of a list (with map) of all the towns in the world.

DIOGNETUS, EPISTLE TO, one of the early Christian apologies. Diognetus, of whom nothing is really known, has expressed a desire to know what Christianity really means—“What is this new race” of men who are neither pagans nor Jews? “What is this new interest which has entered into men’s lives now and not before?” The anonymous answer begins with a refutation of the folly of worshipping idols, fashioned by human hands and needing to be guarded if of precious material. The repulsive smell of animal sacrifices is enough to show their monstrous absurdity. Next Judaism is attacked. Jews abstain from idolatry and worship one God, but they fall into the same error of repulsive sacrifice, and have absurd superstitions about meats and sabbaths, circumcision and new moons. So far the task is easy; but the mystery of the Christian religion “think not to learn from man.” A passage of great eloquence follows, showing that Christians have no obvious peculiarities that mark them off as a separate race. In spite of blameless lives they are hated. Their home is in heaven, while they live on earth. “In a word, what the soul is in a body, this the Christians are in the world.... The soul is enclosed in the body, and yet itself holdeth the body together: so Christians are kept in the world as in a prison-house, and yet they themselves hold the world together.” This strange life is inspired in them by the almighty and invisible God, who sent no angel or subordinate messenger to teach them, but His own Son by whom He created the universe. No man could have known God, had He not thus declared Himself. “If thou too wouldst have this faith, learn first the knowledge of the Father. For God loved men, for whose sake He made the world.... Knowing Him, thou wilt love Him and imitate His goodness; and marvel not if a man can imitate God; he can, if God will.” By kindness to the needy, by giving them what God has given to him, a man can become “a god of them that receive, an imitator of God.” “Then shalt thou on earth behold God’s life in heaven; then shalt thou begin to speak the mysteries of God.” A few lines after this the letter suddenly breaks off.

Even this rapid summary may show that the writer was a man of no ordinary power, and there is no other early Christian writing outside the New Testament which appeals so strongly to modern readers. The letter has been often classed with the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, and in some ways it seems to mark the transition from the sub-apostolic age to that of the Apologists. Bishop Lightfoot, who speaks of the letter as “one of the noblest and most impressive of early Christian apologies,” places it c. a.d. 150, and inclines to identify Diognetus with the tutor of Marcus Aurelius. Harnack and others would place it later, perhaps in the 3rd century. There are some striking parallels in method and language to the Apology of Aristides (q.v.), and also to the early “Preaching of Peter.”

The one manuscript which contained this letter perished by fire at Strassburg in 1870, but happily it had been accurately collated by Reuss nine years before. It formed part of a collection of works supposed to be by Justin Martyr, and to this mistaken attribution its preservation is no doubt due. Both thought and language mark the author off entirely from Justin. The end of the letter is lost, but there followed in the codex the end of a homily,[1] which was attached without a break to the epistle: this points to the loss in some earlier codex of pages containing the end of the letter and the beginning of the homily.

The Epistle may be read in J. B. Lightfoot’s Apostolic Fathers (ed. min.), where there is also a translation into English.

(J. A. R.)

[1] Chapters xi. and xii., which Lightfoot suggested might be the work of Pantaenus.

DIOMEDES, in Greek legend, son of Tydeus, one of the bravest of the heroes of the Trojan War. In the Iliad he is the favourite of Athena, by whose aid he not only overcomes all mortals who venture to oppose him, but is even enabled to attack the gods. In the post-Homeric story, he made his way with Odysseus by an underground passage into the citadel of Troy and carried off the Palladium, the presence of which within the walls secured Troy against capture (Virgil, Aeneid, ii. 164). On his return to Argos, finding that his wife had been unfaithful, he removed to Aetolia, and thence to Daunia (Apulia), where he married the daughter of King Daunus. He was buried or mysteriously disappeared on one of the islands in the Adriatic called after him Diomedeae, his sorrowing companions being changed into birds by the gods out of compassion (Ovid, Metam. xiv. 457 ff.). He was the reputed founder of Argyrippa (Arpi) and other Italian cities (Aeneid, xi. 243 ff.). He was worshipped as a hero not only in Greece, but on the coast of the Adriatic, as at Thurii and Metapontum. At Argos, his native place, during the festival of Athena, his shield was carried through the streets as a relic, together with the Palladium, and his statue was washed in the river Inachus.

DIOMEDES, Latin grammarian, flourished at the end of the 4th century a.d. He was the author of an extant Ars grammatica in three books, dedicated to a certain Athanasius. The third book is the most important, as containing extracts from Suetonius’s De poëtis. Diomedes wrote about the same time as Charisius (q.v.) and used the same sources independently. The works of both grammarians are valuable, but whereas much of Charisius has been lost, the Ars of Diomedes has come down to us complete. In book i. he treats of the eight parts of speech; in ii. of the elementary ideas of grammar and of style; in iii. of quantity and metres.

The best edition is in H. Keil’s Grammatici Latini, i.; see also C. von Paucker, Kleinere Studien, i. (1883), on the Latinity of Diomedes.

DION, tyrant of Syracuse (408-353 b.c.), the son of Hipparinus, and brother-in-law of Dionysius the Elder. In his youth he was an admirer and pupil of Plato, whom Dionysius had invited to Syracuse; and he used every effort to inculcate the maxims of his master in the mind of the tyrant. The stern morality of Dion was distasteful to the younger Dionysius, and the historian Philistus, a faithful supporter of despotic power, succeeded in procuring his banishment on account of alleged intrigues with the Carthaginians. The exiled philosopher retired to Athens, where he was at first permitted to enjoy his revenues in peace; but the intercession of Plato (who had again visited Syracuse to procure Dion’s recall) only served to exasperate the tyrant, and at length provoked him to confiscate the property of Dion, and give his wife to another. This last outrage roused Dion. Assembling a small force at Zacynthus, he sailed to Sicily (357) and was received with demonstrations of joy. Dionysius, who was in Italy, returned to Sicily, but was defeated and obliged to flee. Dion himself was soon after supplanted by the intrigues of Heracleides, and again banished. The incompetency of the new leader and the cruelties of Apollocrates, the son of Dionysius, soon led to his recall. He had, however, scarcely made himself master of Sicily when the people began to express their discontent with his tyrannical conduct, and he was assassinated by Callippus, an Athenian who had accompanied him in his expedition.

See Lives by Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos (cf. Diod. Sic. xvi. 6-20) and in modern times by T. Lau (1860); see also [Syracuse] and [Sicily] : History.

DIONE, in the earliest Greek mythology, the wife of Zeus. As such she is associated with Zeus Naïus (the god of fertilizing moisture) at Dodona (Strabo vii. p. 329), by whose side she sits, adorned with a bridal veil and garland and holding a sceptre. As the oracle declined in importance, her place as the wife of Zeus was taken by Hera. It is probable that in very early times the cult of Dione existed in Athens, where she had an altar before the Erechtheum. After her admission to the general religious system of the Greeks, Dione was variously described. In the Iliad (v. 370) she is the mother by Zeus of Aphrodite, who is herself in later times called Dione (the epithet Dionaeus was given to Julius Caesar as claiming descent from Venus). In Hesiod (Theog. 353) she is one of the daughters of Oceanus; in Pherecydes (ap. schol. Iliad, xviii. 486), one of the nymphs of Dodona, the nurses of Dionysus; in Euripides (frag. 177), the mother of Dionysus; in Hyginus (fab. 9. 82), the daughter of Atlas, wife of Tantalus and mother of Pelops and Niobe. Others make her a Titanid, the daughter of Uranus and Gaea (Apollodorus i. 1). Speaking generally, Dione may be regarded as the female embodiment of the attributes of Zeus, to whose name her own is related as Juno (= Jovino) to Jupiter.

DIONYSIA, festivals in honour of the god Dionysus generally, but in particular the festivals celebrated in Attica and by the branches of the Attic-Ionic race in the islands and in Asia Minor. In Attica there were two festivals annually. (1) The lesser Dionysia, or τὰ κατ᾽ ἀγρούς, was held in the country places for four days (about the 19th to the 22nd of December) at the first tasting of the new wine. It was accompanied by songs, dance, phallic processions and the impromptu performances of itinerant players, who with others from the city thronged to take part in the excitement of the rustic sports. A favourite amusement was the Ascoliasmus, or dancing on one leg upon a leathern bag (ἀσκός), which had been smeared with oil. (2) The greater Dionysia, or τὰ ἐν ἄστει, was held in the city of Athens for six days (about the 28th of March to the 2nd of April). This was a festival of joy at the departure of winter and the promise of summer, Dionysus being regarded as having delivered the people from the wants and troubles of winter. The religious act of the festival was the conveying of the ancient image of the god, which had been brought from Eleutherae to Athens, from the ancient sanctuary of the Lenaeum to a small temple near the Acropolis and back again, with a chorus of boys and a procession carrying masks and singing the dithyrambus. The festival culminated in the production of tragedies, comedies and satyric dramas in the great theatre of Dionysus. Other festivals in honour of Dionysus were the Anthesteria (q.v.); the Lenaea (about the 28th to the 31st of January), or festival of vats, at which, after a great public banquet, the citizens went through the city in procession to attend the dramatic representations; the Oschophoria (October-November), a vintage festival, so called from the branches of vine with grapes carried by twenty youths from the ephebi, two from each tribe, in a race from the temple of Dionysus in Athens to the temple of Athena Sciras in Phalerum.

See A. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen (1898); L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie; L. C. Purser in Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities (3rd ed., 1890); article Dionysos in W. H. Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; and the exhaustive account with bibliography by J. Girard in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités.

DIONYSIUS, pope from 259 to 268. To Dionysius, who was elected pope in 259 after the persecution of Valerian, fell the task of reorganizing the Roman church, which had fallen into great disorder. At the protest of some of the faithful at Alexandria, he demanded from the bishop of Alexandria, also called Dionysius, explanations touching his doctrine. He died on the 26th of December 268.

DIONYSIUS (c. 432-367 b.c.), tyrant of Syracuse, began life as a clerk in a public office, but by courage and diplomacy succeeded in making himself supreme (see [Syracuse]). He carried on war with Carthage with varying success; his attempts to drive the Carthaginians entirely out of the island failed, and at his death they were masters of at least a third of it. He also carried on an expedition against Rhegium and its allied cities in Magna Graecia. In one campaign, in which he was joined by the Lucanians, he devastated the territories of Thurii, Croton and Locri. After a protracted siege he took Rhegium (386), and sold the inhabitants as slaves. He joined the Illyrians in an attempt to plunder the temple of Delphi, pillaged the temple of Caere on the Etruscan coast, and founded several military colonies on the Adriatic. In the Peloponnesian War he espoused the side of the Spartans, and assisted them with mercenaries. He also posed as an author and patron of literature; his poems, severely criticized by Philoxenus, were hissed at the Olympic games; but having gained a prize for a tragedy on the Ransom of Hector at the Lenaea at Athens, he was so elated that he engaged in a debauch which proved fatal. According to others, he was poisoned by his physicians at the instigation of his son. His life was written by Philistus, but the work is not extant. Dionysius was regarded by the ancients as a type of the worst kind of despot—cruel, suspicious and vindictive. Like Peisistratus, he was fond of having distinguished literary men about him, such as the historian Philistus, the poet Philoxenus, and the philosopher Plato, but treated them in a most arbitrary manner.

See Diod. Sic. xiii., xiv., xv.; J. Bass, Dionysius I. von Syrakus (Vienna, 1881), with full references to authorities in footnotes; articles [Sicily] and [Syracuse].

His son Dionysius, known as “the Younger,” succeeded in 367 b.c. He was driven from the kingdom by Dion (356) and fled to Locri; but during the commotions which followed Dion’s assassination, he managed to make himself master of Syracuse. On the arrival of Timoleon he was compelled to surrender and retire to Corinth (343), where he spent the rest of his days in poverty (Diodorus Siculus xvi.; Plutarch, Timoleon).

See [Syracuse] and [Timoleon]; and, on both the Dionysii, articles by B. Niese in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, v. pt. 1 (1905).

DIONYSIUS AREOPAGITICUS (or “the Areopagite”), named in Acts xvii. 34 as one of those Athenians who believed when they had heard Paul preach on Mars Hill. Beyond this mention our only knowledge of him is the statement of Dionysius, bishop of Corinth (fl. a.d. 171), recorded by Eusebius (Church Hist. iii. 4; iv. 23), that this same Dionysius the Areopagite was the first “bishop” of Athens. Some hundreds of years after the Areopagite’s death, his name was attached by the Pseudo-Areopagite to certain theological writings composed by the latter. These were destined to exert enormous influence upon medieval thought, and their fame led to the extension of the personal legend of the real Dionysius. Hilduin, abbot of St Denys (814-840), identified him with St Denys, martyr and patron-saint of France. In Hilduin’s Areopagitica, the Life and Passion of the most holy Dionysius (Migne, Patrol. Lat. tome 106), the Areopagite is sent to France by Clement of Rome, and suffers martyrdom upon the hill where the monastery called St Denys was to rise in his honour. There is no earlier trace of this identification, and Gregory of Tours (d. 594) says (Hist. Francorum, i. 18) that St Denys came to France in the reign of Decius (a.d. 250), which falls about midway between the presumptive death of the real Areopagite and the probable date of the writings to which he owed his adventitious fame.

Traces of the influence of these writings appear in the works of Eastern theologians in the early part of the 6th century. They also were cited at the council held in Constantinople in 533, which is the first certain dated reference to them. In the West, Gregory the Great (d. 604) refers to them in his thirty-fourth sermon on the gospels (Migne, Pat. Lat. tome 76, col. 1254). They did not, however, become generally known in the Western church till after the year 827, when the Byzantine emperor Michael the Stammerer sent a copy to Louis the Pious. It was given over to the care of the above-mentioned abbot Hilduin. In the next generation the scholar and philosopher Joannes Scotus Erigena (q.v.) translated the Dionysian writings into Latin. This appears to have been the only Latin translation until the 12th century when another was made, followed by several others.

Thus, the author, date and place of composition of these writings are unknown. External evidence precludes a date later than the year 500, and the internal evidence from the writings themselves precludes any date prior to 4th-century phases of Neo-platonism. The extant writings of the Pseudo-Areopagite are: (a) Περὶ τῆς οὐρανίας ἱεραρχίας, Concerning the Celestial Hierarchy, in fifteen chapters. (b) Περὶ τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἱεραρχίας , Concerning the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, in seven chapters. (c) Περὶ θείων ὀνομάτων, Concerning Divine Names, in thirteen chapters. (d) Περὶ μυστικῆς θεολογίας, Concerning Mystic Theology, in five chapters. (e) Ten letters addressed to various worthies of the apostolic period.

Although these writings seem complete, they contain references to others of the same author. But of the latter nothing is known, and they may never have existed.

The writings of the Pseudo-Areopagite are of great interest, first as a striking presentation of the heterogeneous elements that might unite in the mind of a gifted man in the 5th century, and secondly, because of their enormous influence upon subsequent Christian theology and art. Their ingredients—Christian, Greek, Oriental and Jewish—are not crudely mingled, but are united into an organic system. Perhaps theological philosophic fantasy has never constructed anything more remarkable. The system of Dionysius was a proper product of its time,—lofty, apparently complete, comparable to the Enneads of Plotinus which formed part of its materials. But its materials abounded everywhere, and offered themselves temptingly to the hand strong enough to build with them. There was what had entered into Neo-platonism, both in its dialectic form as established by Plotinus, and in its magic-mystic modes devised by Iamblichus (d. c. 333). There was Jewish angel lore and Eastern mood and fancy; and there was Christianity so variously understood and heterogeneously constituted among Syro-Judaic Hellenic communities. Such Christianity held materials for formula and creed; also principles of liturgic and sacramental doctrine and priestly function; also a mass of popular beliefs as to intermediate superhuman beings who seemed nearer to men than any member of the Trinity.

Out of this vast spiritual conglomerate, Pseudo-Dionysius formed his system. It was not juristic,—not Roman, Pauline or Augustinian. Rather he borrowed his constructive principles from Hellenism in its last great creation, Neo-platonism. That had been able to gather and arrange within itself the various elements of latter-day paganism. The Neo-platonic categories might be altered in name and import, and yet the scheme remain a scheme; since the general principle of the transmission of life from the ultimate Source downward through orders of mediating beings unto men, might readily be adapted to the Christian God and his ministering angels. Pseudo-Dionysius had lofty thoughts of the sublime transcendence of the ultimate divine Source. That source was not remote or inert; but a veritable Source from which life streamed to all lower orders of existence,—in part directly, and in part indirectly as power and guidance through the higher orders to the lower. Life, creation, every good gift, is from God directly; but his flaming ministers also intervene to guide and aid the life of man; and the life which through love floods forth from God has its counterflow whereby it draws its own creations to itself. God is at once absolutely transcendent and universally immanent. To live is to be united with God; evil is the nonexistent, that is, severance from God. Whatever is, is part of the forth-flowing divine life which ever purifies, enlightens and perfects, and so draws all back to the Source.

The transcendent Source, as well as the universal immanence, is the Triune God. Between that and men are ranged the three triads of the Celestial Hierarchy: Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; Dominations, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Collectively their general office is to raise mankind to God through purification, illumination and perfection; and to all may be applied the term angel. The highest triad, which is nearest God, contemplates the divine effulgence, and reflects it onward to the second; the third, and more specifically angelic triad, immediately ministers to men. The sources of these names are evident: seraphim and cherubim are from the Old Testament; later Jewish writings gave names to archangels and angels, who also fill important functions in the New Testament. The other names are from Paul (Eph. i. 21; Col. i. 16).

Such is the system of Pseudo-Dionysius, as presented mainly in The Celestial Hierarchy. That work is followed by The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, its counterpart on earth. What the primal triune Godhead is to the former, Jesus is to the latter. The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy likewise is composed of Triads. The first includes the symbolic sacraments: Baptism, Communion, Consecration of the Holy Chrism. Baptism signifies purification; Communion signifies enlightening; the Holy Chrism signifies perfecting. The second triad is made up of the three orders of Bishops, Presbyters and Deacons, or rather, as the Areopagite names them: Hierarchs, Light-bearers, Servitors. The third triad consists of monks, who are in a state of perfection, the initiated laity, who are in a state of illumination, and the catechumens, in a state of purification. All worship, in this treatise, is a celebration of mysteries, and the pagan mysteries are continually suggested by the terms employed.

The work Concerning the Divine Names is a noble discussion of the qualities which may be predicated of God, according to the warrant of the terms applied to him in Scripture. The work Concerning Mystic Theology explains the function of symbols, and shows that he who would know God truly must rise above them and above the conceptions of God drawn from sensible things.

The works of Pseudo-Dionysius began to influence theological thought in the West from the time of their translation into Latin by Erigena. Their use may be followed through the writings of scholastic philosophers, e.g. Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and many others. In poetry we find their influence in Dante, Spenser, Milton. The fifteenth chapter of The Celestial Hierarchy constituted the canon of symbolical angelic lore for the literature and art of the middle ages. Therein the author explains in what respect theology ascribes to angels the qualities of fire, why the thrones are said to be fiery (πυρίνους); why the seraphim are burning (ἐμπρηστάς) as their name indicates. The fiery form signifies, with Celestial Intelligences, likeness to God. Dionysius explains the significance of the parts of the human body when given to celestial beings: feet are ascribed to angels to denote their unceasing movement on the divine business, and their feet are winged to denote their celerity. He likewise explains the symbolism of wands and axes, of brass and precious stones, when joined to celestial beings; and what wheels and a chariot denote when furnished to them,—and much more besides.

Bibliography.—There is an enormous literature on Pseudo-Dionysius. The reader may be first referred to the articles in Smith’s Dictionary of Christian Biography and Hauck’s Realencyklopadie fur protestantische Theologie (Leipzig, 1898). The bibliography in the latter is very full. Some other references, especially upon the later influence of these works, are given in H. O. Taylor’s Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages (Macmillan, 1903). The works themselves are in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca, tomes 3 and 4, with a Latin version. Erigena’s version is in Migne, Patrol. Lat. t. 122. Vita Dionysii by Hilduin is in Migne, Pat. Lat. 106. There is an English version by Parker (London, 1894 and 1897).

(H. O. T.)

DIONYSIUS EXIGUUS, one of the most learned men of the 6th century, and especially distinguished as a chronologist, was, according to the statement of his friend Cassiodorus, a Scythian by birth, “Scytha natione.” This may mean only that he was a native of the region bordering on the Black Sea, and does not necessarily imply that he was not of Greek origin. Such origin is indicated by his name and by his thorough familiarity with the Greek language. His surname “Exiguus” is usually translated “the Little,” but he probably assumed it out of humility. He was living at Rome in the first half of the 6th century, and is usually spoken of as abbot of a Roman monastery. Cassiodorus, however, calls him simply “monk,” while Bede calls him “abbot.” But as it was not unusual to apply the latter term to distinguished monks who were not heads of their houses, it is uncertain whether Dionysius was abbot in fact or only by courtesy. He was in high repute as a learned theologian, was profoundly versed in the Holy Scriptures and in canon law, and was also an accomplished mathematician and astronomer. We owe to him a collection of 401 ecclesiastical canons, including the apostolical canons and the decrees of the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon and Sardis, and also a collection of the decretals of the popes from Siricius (385) to Anastasius II. (498). These collections, which had great authority in the West (see [Canon Law]), were published by Justel in 1628. Dionysius did good service to his contemporaries by his translations of many Greek works into Latin; and by these translations some works, the originals of which have perished, have been handed down to us. His name, however, is now perhaps chiefly remembered for his chronological labours. It was Dionysius who introduced the method of reckoning the Christian era which we now use (see [Chronology]). His friend Cassiodorus depicts in glowing terms the character of Dionysius as a saintly ascetic, and praises his wisdom and simplicity, his accomplishments and his lowly-mindedness, his power of eloquent speech and his capacity of silence. He died at Rome, some time before a.d. 550.

His works have been published in Migne, Patrologia Latina, tome 67; see especially A. Tardif, Histoire des sources du droit canonique (Paris, 1887), and D. Pitra, Analecta novissima, Spicilegii Solesmensis continuatio, vol. i. p. 36 (Paris, 1885).

DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSENSIS (“of Halicarnassus”), Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, flourished during the reign of Augustus. He went to Rome after the termination of the civil wars, and spent twenty-two years in studying the Latin language and literature and preparing materials for his history. During this period he gave lessons in rhetoric, and enjoyed the society of many distinguished men. The date of his death is unknown. His great work, entitled ῾Ρωμαῗκὴ ἀρχαιολογία (Roman Antiquities), embraced the history of Rome from the mythical period to the beginning of the first Punic War. It was divided into twenty books,—of which the first nine remain entire, the tenth and eleventh are nearly complete, and the remaining books exist in fragments in the excerpts of Constantine Porphyrogenitus and an epitome discovered by Angelo Mai in a Milan MS. The first three books of Appian, and Plutarch’s Life of Camillus also embody much of Dionysius. His chief object was to reconcile the Greeks to the rule of Rome, by dilating upon the good qualities of their conquerors. According to him, history is philosophy teaching by examples, and this idea he has carried out from the point of view of the Greek rhetorician. But he has carefully consulted the best authorities, and his work and that of Livy are the only connected and detailed extant accounts of early Roman history.

Dionysius was also the author of several rhetorical treatises, in which he shows that he has thoroughly studied the best Attic models:—The Art of Rhetoric (which is rather a collection of essays on the theory of rhetoric), incomplete, and certainly not all his work; The Arrangement of Words (Περὶ συνθέσεως ὀνομάτων), treating of the combination of words according to the different styles of oratory; On Imitation (Περὶ μιμήσεως), on the best models in the different kinds of literature and the way in which they are to be imitated—a fragmentary work; Commentaries on the Attic Orators (Περὶ τῶν ἀρχαίων ῥητόρων ὑπομνηματισμοί), which, however, only deal with Lysias, Isaeus, Isocrates and (by way of supplement) Dinarchus; On the admirable Style of Demosthenes (Περὶ τῆς λεκτικῆς Δημοσθένους δεινότητος); and On the Character of Thucydides (Περὶ τοῦ Θουκυδίδου χαρακτῆρος), a detailed but on the whole an unfair estimate. These two treatises are supplemented by letters to Cn. Pompeius and Ammaeus (two).

Complete edition by J. J. Reiske (1774-1777); of the Archaeologia by A. Kiessling and V. Prou (1886) and C. Jacoby (1885-1891); Opuscula by Usener and Radermacher (1899); Eng. translation by E. Spelman (1758). A full bibliography of the rhetorical works is given in W. Rhys Roberts’s edition of the Three Literary Letters (1901); the same author published an edition of the De compositione verborum (1910, with trans.); see also M. Egger, Denys d’Halicarnasse (1902), a very useful treatise. On the sources of Dionysius see O. Bocksch, “De fontibus Dion. Halicarnassensis” in Leipziger Studien, xvii. (1895). Cf. also J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. i. (1906).

DIONYSIUS PERIEGETES, author of a Περιήγησις τῆς οἰκουμένης, a description of the habitable world in Greek hexameter verse, written in a terse and elegant style. Nothing certain is known of the date or nationality of the writer, but there is some reason for believing that he was an Alexandrian, who wrote in the time of Hadrian (some put him as late as the end of the 3rd century). The work enjoyed a high degree of popularity in ancient times as a school-book; it was translated into Latin by Rufus Festus Avienus, and by the grammarian Priscian. The commentary of Eustathius is valuable.

The best editions are by G. Bernhardy (1828) and C. Müller (1861) in their Geographici Graeci minores; see also E. H. Bunbury, Ancient Geography (ii. p. 480), who regards the author as flourishing from the reign of Nero to that of Trajan, and U. Bernays, Studien zu Dion. Perieg. (1905). There are two old English translations: T. Twine (1572, black letter), J. Free (1789, blank verse).

DIONYSIUS TELMAHARENSIS (“of Tell-Maḥrē”), patriarch or supreme head of the Syrian Jacobite Church during the years 818-848, was born at Tell-Maḥrē near Raḳḳa (ar-Raḳḳah) on the Balīkh. He was the author of an important historical work, which has seemingly perished except for some passages quoted by Barhebraeus and an extract found by Assemani in Cod. Vat. 144 and published by him in the Bibliotheca orientalis (ii. 72-77). He spent his earlier years as a monk at the convent of Ḳen-neshrē on the upper Euphrates; and when this monastery was destroyed by fire in 815, he migrated northwards to that of Kaisūm in the district of Samosāta. At the death of the Jacobite patriarch Cyriacus in 817, the church was agitated by a dispute about the use of the phrase “heavenly bread” in connexion with the Eucharist. An anti-patriarch had been appointed in the person of Abraham of Ḳartamīn, who insisted on the use of the phrase in opposition to the recognized authorities of the church. The council of bishops who met at Raḳḳa in the summer of 818 to choose a successor to Cyriacus had great difficulty in finding a worthy occupant of the patriarchal chair, but finally agreed on the election of Dionysius, hitherto known only as an honest monk who devoted himself to historical studies. Sorely against his will he was brought to Raḳḳa, ordained deacon and priest on two successive days, and raised to the supreme ecclesiastical dignity on the 1st of August. From this time he showed the utmost zeal in fulfilling the duties of his office, and undertook many journeys both within and without his province. The ecclesiastical schism continued unhealed during the thirty years of his patriarchate. The details of this contest, of his relations with the caliph Ma’mūn, and of his many travels—including a journey to Egypt, on which he viewed with admiration the great Egyptian monuments,—are to be found in the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of Barhebraeus.[1] He died in 848, his last days having been especially embittered by Mahommedan oppression. We learn from Michael the Syrian that his Annals consisted of two parts each divided into eight chapters, and covered a period of 260 years, viz. from the accession of the emperor Maurice (582-583) to the death of Theophilus (842-843).

In addition to the lost Annals, Dionysius was from the time of Assemani until 1896 credited with the authorship of another important historical work—a Chronicle, which in four parts narrates the history of the world from the creation to the year a.d. 774-775 and is preserved entire in Cod. Vat. 162. The first part (edited by Tullberg, Upsala, 1850) reaches to the epoch of Constantine the Great, and is in the main an epitome of the Eusebian Chronicle.[2] The second part reaches to Theodosius II. and follows closely the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates; while the third, extending to Justin II., reproduces the second part of the History of John of Asia or Ephesus, and also contains the well-known chronicle attributed to Joshua the Stylite. The fourth part[3] is not like the others a compilation, but the original work of the author, and reaches to the year 774-775—apparently the date when he was writing. On the publication of this fourth part by M. Chabot, it was discovered and clearly proved by Nöldeke (Vienna Oriental Journal, x. 160-170), and Nau (Bulletin critique, xvii. 321-327), who independently reached the same conclusion, that Assemani’s opinion was a mistake, and that the chronicle in question was the work not of Dionysius of Tell-Maḥrē but of an earlier writer, a monk of the convent of Zuḳnīn near Āmid (Diarbekr) on the upper Tigris. Though the author was a man of limited intelligence and destitute of historical skill, yet the last part of his work at least has considerable value as a contemporary account of events during the middle period of the 8th century.

(N. M.)

[1] Ed. Abbeloos and Lamy, i. 343-386; cf. Wright, Syriac Literature, 196-200, and Chabot’s introduction to his translation of the fourth part of the Chronicle of (pseudo) Dionysius.

[2] See the studies by Siegfried and Gelzer, Eusebii canonum epitome ex Dionysii Telmaharensis chronico petita (Leipzig, 1884), and von Gutschmid, Untersuchungen über die syrische Epitome der Eusebischen Canones (Stuttgart, 1886).

[3] Text and translation by J.-B. Chabot (Paris, 1895).

DIONYSIUS THRAX (so called because his father was a Thracian), the author of the first Greek grammar, flourished about 100 b.c. He was a native of Alexandria, where he attended the lectures of Aristarchus, and afterwards taught rhetoric in Rhodes and Rome. His Τέχνη γραμματική, which we possess (though probably not in its original form), begins with the definition of grammar and its functions. Dealing next with accent, punctuation marks, sounds and syllables, it goes on to the different parts of speech (eight in number) and their inflections. No rules of syntax are given, and nothing is said about style. The authorship of Dionysius was doubted by many of the early middle-age commentators and grammarians, and in modern times its origin has been attributed to the oecumenical college founded by Constantine the Great, which continued in existence till 730. But there seems no reason for doubt; the great grammarians of imperial times (Apollonius Dyscolus and Herodian) were acquainted with the work in its present form, although, as was natural considering its popularity, additions and alterations may have been made later. The τέχνη was first edited by J. A. Fabricius from a Hamburg MS. and published in his Bibliotheca Graeca, vi. (ed. Harles). An Armenian translation, belonging to the 4th or 5th century, containing five additional chapters, was published with the Greek text and a French version, by M. Cirbied (1830). Dionysius also contributed much to the criticism and elucidation of Homer, and was the author of various other works—amongst them an account of Rhodes, and a collection of Μελέται (literary studies), to which the considerable fragment in the Stromata (v. 8) of Clement of Alexandria probably belongs.

Editions, with scholia, by I. Bekker in Anecdota Graeca, ii. and G. Uhlig (1884), reviewed exhaustively by P. Egenolff in Bursian’s Jahresbericht, vol. xlvi. (1888); Scholia, ed. A. Hilgard (1901); see also W. Hörschelmann, De Dionysii Thracis interpretibus veteribus (1874); J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship, i. (1906).

DIONYSUS (probably = “son of Zeus,” from Διός and νῦσος, a Thracian word for “son”), in Greek mythology, originally a nature god of fruitfulness and vegetation, especially of the vine; hence, distinctively, the god of wine. The names Bacchus (Βάκχος, in use among the Greeks from the 5th century), Sabazius, and Bassareus, are also Thracian names of the god. The two first (like Iacchus, Bromius and Euios) have been connected with the loud “shout” (σαβάζειν = βάζειν = εὐάζειν) of his worshippers, Bassareus with βασσάραι, the fox-skin garments of the Thracian Bacchanals. It has been suggested (J. E. Harrison Prolegomena to Greek Religion) that Sabazius and Bromius = “beer-god,” “god of a cereal intoxicant” (cf. Illyrian sabaia and modern Greek βρῶμι, “oats”), while W. Ridgeway (Classical Review, January 1896), comparing Apollo Smintheus, interprets Bassareus as “he who keeps away the foxes from the vineyards” (for various interpretations of these and other cult-titles, see O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie, ii. pp. 1408, 1532, especially the notes).

In Homer, notwithstanding the frequent mention of the use of wine, Dionysus is never mentioned as its inventor or introducer, nor does he appear in Olympus; Hesiod is the first who calls wine the gift of Dionysus. On the other hand, he is spoken of in the Iliad (vi. 130 foll., a passage belonging to the latest period of epic), as “raging,” an epithet that indicates that in those comparatively early times the orgiastic character of his worship was recognized. In fact, Dionysus may be regarded under two distinct aspects: that of a popular national Greek god of wine and cheerfulness, and that of a foreign deity, worshipped with ecstatic and mysterious rites introduced from Thrace. According to the usual tradition, he was born at Thebes—originally the local centre of his worship in Greece—and was the son of Zeus, the fertilizing rain god, and Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, a personification of earth. Before the child was mature, Zeus appeared to Semele at her request in his majesty as god of lightning, by which she was killed, but the infant was saved from the flames by Zeus (or Hermes). The epithet περικιόνιος, originally referring to an ivy-crowned, pillar-shaped fetish of the god, afterwards gave rise to the legend of a miraculous growth of ivy “round the pillars” of the royal palace, whereby the infant Dionysus was preserved from the flames. Zeus took him up, enclosed him within his own thigh till he came to maturity, and then brought him to the light, so that he was twice born; it was to celebrate this double birth that the dithyrambus (also used as an epithet of the god) was sung (see Etym. Mag. s.v.). It has been suggested that this is an allusion to the couvade of certain barbarous tribes, amongst whom it is customary, when a child is born, for the husband to take to his bed and receive medical treatment, as if he shared the pains of maternity (see [Couvade], and references there). Dionysus was then conveyed by Hermes to be brought up by the nymphs of Nysa, a purely imaginary spot, afterwards localized in different parts of the world, which claimed the honour of having been the birthplace of the god. As soon as Dionysus was grown up, he started on a journey through the world, to teach the cultivation of the vine and spread his worship among men. While so engaged he met with opposition, even in his own country, as in the case of Pentheus, king of Thebes, who opposed the orgiastic rites introduced by Dionysus among the women of Thebes, and, having been discovered watching one of these ceremonies, was mistaken for some animal of the chase, and slain by his own mother (see A. G. Bather, Journ. Hell. Studies, xiv. 1894). A similar instance is that of Lycurgus, a Thracian king, from whose attack Dionysus saved himself by leaping into the sea, where he was kindly received by Thetis. Lycurgus was blinded by Zeus and soon died, or became frantic and hewed down his own son, mistaking him for a vine. At Orchomenus, the three daughters of Minyas refused to join the other women in their nocturnal orgies, and for this were transformed into birds (see [Agrionia]). These and similar stories point to the vigorous resistance offered to the introduction of the mystic rites of Dionysus, in places where an established religion already existed. On the other hand, when the god was received hospitably he repaid the kindness by the gift of the vine, as in the case of Icarius of Attica (see [Erigone]).

The worship of Dionysus was actively conducted in Asia Minor, particularly in Phrygia and Lydia. Here, as Sabazius, he was associated with the Phrygian goddess Cybele, and was followed in his expeditions by a thiasos (retinue) of centaurs, and satyrs, with Pan and Silenus. In Lydia his triumphant return from India was celebrated by an annual festival on Mount Tmolus; in Lydia he assumed the long beard and long robe which were afterwards given him in his character of the “Indian Bacchus,” the conqueror of the East, who, after the campaigns of Alexander, was reported to have advanced as far as the Ganges. The other incidents in which he appears in a purely triumphal character are his transforming into dolphins the Tyrrhene pirates who attacked him, as told in the Homeric hymn to Dionysus and represented on the monument of Lysicrates at Athens, and his part in the war of the gods against the giants. The former story has been connected with the sailors’ custom of hanging vine leaves, ivy and bunches of grapes round the masts of vessels in honour of vintage festivals. The adventure with the pirates occurred on his voyage to Naxos, where he found Ariadne abandoned by Theseus. At Naxos Ariadne (probably a Cretan goddess akin to Aphrodite) was associated with Dionysus as his wife, by whom he was the father of Oenopion (wine-drinker), Staphylus (grape), and Euanthes (blooming), and their marriage was annually celebrated by a festival. Having compelled all the world to recognize his divinity, he descended to the underworld to bring up his mother, who was afterwards worshipped with him under the name of Thyone (“the raging”), he himself being called after her Thyoneus.

Another phase in the myth of Dionysus originated in observing the decay of vegetation in winter, to suit which he was supposed to be slain and to join the deities of the lower world. This phase of his character was developed by the Orphic poets, he having here the name of Zagreus (“torn in pieces”), and being no longer the Theban god, but a son of Zeus and Persephone. The child was brought up secretly, watched over by Curetes; but the jealous Hera discovered where he was, and sent Titans to the spot, who, finding him at play, tore him to pieces, and cooked and ate his limbs, while Hera gave his heart to Zeus. The tearing in pieces is referred by some to the torture experienced by the grape (Naturschmerz) when crushed for making into wine (cf. Burns’s John Barleycorn); but it is better to refer it to the tearing of the flesh of the victim at sacrifices at which the deity or the sacred animal was slain, and sacramentally eaten raw (cf. the title ὠμηστής given to Dionysus in certain places, probably pointing to human sacrifice.) To connect this with the myth of the Theban birth of Dionysus, it is said that Zeus gave the child’s heart to Semele, or himself swallowed it and gave birth to the new Dionysus (called Iacchus from his worshippers’ cry of rejoicing), who was cradled and swung in a winnowing fan (λίκνος; see J. E. Harrison, Journ. Hellenic Studies, xxiii.), the swinging being supposed to act as a charm in awakening vegetation from its winter sleep. The conception of Zagreus, or the winter Dionysus, appears to have originated in Crete, but it was accepted also in Delphi, where his grave was shown, and sacrifice was secretly offered at it annually on the shortest day. The story is in many respects similar to that of Osiris. According to others, Zagreus was originally a god of the chase, who became a hunter of men and a god of the underworld, more akin to Hades than to Dionysus (see also [Titans]).

Dionysus further possessed the prophetic gift, and his oracle at Delphi was as important as that of Apollo. Like Hermes, Dionysus was a god of the productiveness of nature, and hence Priapus was one of his regular companions, while not only in the mysteries but in the rural festivals his symbol, the phallus, was carried about ostentatiously. His symbols from the animal kingdom were the bull (perhaps a totemistic attribute and identified with him), the panther, the lion, the tiger, the ass, the goat, and sometimes also the dolphin and the snake. His personal attributes are an ivy wreath, the thyrsus (a staff with pine cone at the end), the laurel, the pine, a drinking cup, and sometimes the horn of a bull on his forehead. Artistically he was represented mostly either as a youth of soft, nearly feminine form, or as a bearded and draped man, but frequently also as an infant, with reference to his birth or to his bringing up in “Nysa.” His earliest images were of wood with the branches still attached in parts, whence he was called Dionysus Dendrites, an allusion to his protection of trees generally (according to Pherecydes in C. W. Müller, Frag. Hist. Graec. iv. p. 637, the word νῦσα signified “tree”). It is suggested that the cult of Dionysus absorbed that of an old tree-spirit. He was figured also, like Hermes, in the form of a pillar or term surmounted by his head. For the connexion of Dionysus with Greek tragedy see [Drama].

See Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, v. (1910); also O. Rapp, Beziehungen des Dionysuskultus zu Thrakien (1882); O. Ribbeck, Anfange und Entwickelung des Dionysuskultes in Attica (1869); A. Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, ii. p. 241; L. Dyer, The Gods in Greece (1891); J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903); J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, ii (1900), pp. 160, 291, who regards the bull and goat form of Dionysus as expressions of his proper character as a deity of vegetation; F. A. Voigt in Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie (4th ed. by C. Robert); F. Lenormant (s.v. “Bacchus”) in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités; O. Kern in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopadie (with list of cult titles); W. Pater, Greek Studies (1895); E. Rohde, Psyche, ii., who finds the origin of the Hellenic belief in the immortality of the soul in the “enthusiastic” rites of the Thracian Dionysus, which lifted persons out of themselves, and exalted them to a fancied equality with the gods; O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, ii. (1907), who considers Boeotia, not Thrace, to have been the original home of Dionysus; P. Foucart, “Le Culte de Dionysos en Attique” in Mémoires de l’Institut national de France, xxxvii. (1906), who finds the prototype of Dionysus in Egypt. The Great Dionysiak Myth (1877-1878) by R. Brown contains a wealth of material, but is weak in scholarship. For a striking survival of Dionysiac rites in Thrace (Bizye), see Dawkins, in J.H.S. (1906), p. 191.

DIOPHANTUS, of Alexandria, Greek algebraist, probably flourished about the middle of the 3rd century. Not that this date rests on positive evidence. But it seems a fair inference from a passage of Michael Psellus (Diophantus, ed. P. Tannery, ii. p. 38) that he was not later than Anatolius, bishop of Laodicea from a.d. 270, while he is not quoted by Nicomachus (fl. c. a.d. 100), nor by Theon of Smyrna (c. a.d. 130), nor does Greek arithmetic as represented by these authors and by Iamblichus (end of 3rd century) show any trace of his influence, facts which can only be accounted for by his being later than those arithmeticians at least who would have been capable of understanding him fully. On the other hand he is quoted by Theon of Alexandria (who observed an eclipse at Alexandria in a.d. 365); and his work was the subject of a commentary by Theon’s daughter Hypatia (d. 415). The Arithmetica, the greatest treatise on which the fame of Diophantus rests, purports to be in thirteen Books, but none of the Greek MSS. which have survived contain more than six (though one has the same text in seven Books). They contain, however, a fragment of a separate tract on Polygonal Numbers. The missing books were apparently lost early, for there is no reason to suppose that the Arabs who translated or commented on Diophantus ever had access to more of the work than we now have. The difference in form and content suggests that the Polygonal Numbers was not part of the larger work. On the other hand the Porisms, to which Diophantus makes three references (“we have it in the Porisms that ...”), were probably not a separate book but were embodied in the Arithmetica itself, whether placed all together or, as Tannery thinks, spread over the work in appropriate places. The “Porisms” quoted are interesting propositions in the theory of numbers, one of which was clearly that the difference between two cubes can be resolved into the sum of two cubes. Tannery thinks that the solution of a complete quadratic promised by Diophantus himself (I. def. 11), and really assumed later, was one of the Porisms.

Among the great variety of problems solved are problems leading to determinate equations of the first degree in one, two, three or four variables, to determinate quadratic equations, and to indeterminate equations of the first degree in one or more variables, which are, however, transformed into determinate equations by arbitrarily assuming a value for one of the required numbers, Diophantus being always satisfied with a rational, even if fractional, result and not requiring a solution in integers. But the bulk of the work consists of problems leading to indeterminate equations of the second degree, and these universally take the form that one or two (and never more) linear or quadratic functions of one variable x are to be made rational square numbers by finding a suitable value for x. A few problems lead to indeterminate equations of the third and fourth degrees, an easy indeterminate equation of the sixth degree being also found. The general type of problem is to find two, three or four numbers such that different expressions involving them in the first and second, and sometimes the third, degree are squares, cubes, partly squares and partly cubes, &c. E.g. To find three numbers such that the product of any two added to the sum of those two gives a square (III. 15, ed. Tannery); To find four numbers such that, if we take the square of their sum ± any one of them singly, all the resulting numbers are squares (III. 22); To find two numbers such that their product ± their sum gives a cube (IV. 29); To find three squares such that their continued product added to any one of them gives a square (V. 21). Book VI. contains problems of finding rational right-angled triangles such that different functions of their parts (the sides and the area) are squares. A word is necessary on Diophantus’ notation. He has only one symbol (written somewhat like a final sigma) for an unknown quantity, which he calls ἀριθμός (defined as “an undefined number of units”); the symbol may be a contraction of the initial letters αρ, as ΔΥ, ΚΥ, ΔΥΔ, &c., are for the powers of the unknown (δύναμις, square; κύβος, cube; δυναμοδύναμις, fourth power, &c.). The only other algebraical symbol is

for minus; plus being expressed by merely writing terms one after another. With one symbol for an unknown, it will easily be understood what scope there is for adroit assumptions, for the required numbers, of expressions in the one unknown which are at once seen to satisfy some of the conditions, leaving only one or two to be satisfied by the particular value of x to be determined. Often assumptions are made which lead to equations in x which cannot be solved “rationally,” i.e. would give negative, surd or imaginary values; Diophantus then traces how each element of the equation has arisen, and formulates the auxiliary problem of determining how the assumptions must be corrected so as to lead to an equation (in place of the “impossible” one) which can be solved rationally. Sometimes his x has to do duty twice, for different unknowns, in one problem. In general his object is to reduce the final equation to a simple one by making such an assumption for the side of the square or cube to which the expression in x is to be equal as will make the necessary number of coefficients vanish. The book is valuable also for the propositions in the theory of numbers, other than the “porisms,” stated or assumed in it. Thus Diophantus knew that no number of the form 8n + 7 can be the sum of three squares. He also says that, if 2n + 1 is to be the sum of two squares, “n must not be odd” (i.e. no number of the form 4n + 3, or 4n − 1, can be the sum of two squares), and goes on to add, practically, the condition stated by Fermat, “and the double of it [n] increased by one, when divided by the greatest square which measures it, must not be divisible by a prime number of the form 4n − 1,” except for the omission of the words “when divided ... measures it.”

Authorities.—The first to publish anything on Diophantus in Europe was Rafael Bombelli, who embodied in his Algebra (1572) all the problems of Books I.-IV. and some of Book V. interspersing them with his own problems. Next Xylander (Wilhelm Holzmann) published a Latin translation (Basel, 1575), an altogether meritorious work, especially having regard to the difficulties he had with the text of his MS. The Greek text was first edited by C. G. Bachet (Diophanti Alexandrini arithmeticorum libri sex, et de numeris multangulis liber unus, nunc primum graece et latine editi atque absolutissimis commentariis illustrati ... Lutetiae Parisiorum ... MDCXXI.). A reprint of 1670 is only valuable because it contains P. de Fermat’s notes; as far as the Greek text is concerned it is much inferior to the other. There are two German translations, one by Otto Schulz (1822) and the other by G. Wertheim (Leipzig, 1890), and an English edition in modern notation (T. L. Heath, Diophantos of Alexandria: A Study in the History of Greek Algebra (Cambridge, 1885)). The Greek text has now been definitively edited (with Latin translation, Scholia, &c.) by P. Tannery (Teubner, vol. i., 1893; vol. ii., 1895). General accounts of Diophantus’ work are to be found in H. Hankel and M. Cantor’s histories of mathematics, and more elaborate analyses are those of Nesselmann (Die Algebra der Griechen, Berlin, 1842) and G. Loria (Le Scienze esatte nell’ antica Grecia, libro v., Modena, 1902, pp. 95-158).

(T. L. H.)

DIOPSIDE, an important member of the pyroxene group of rock-forming minerals. It is a calcium-magnesium metasilicate, CaMg(SiO3)2, and crystallizes in the monoclinic system. Usually some iron is present replacing magnesium, and when this predominates there is a passage to hedenbergite, CaFe(SiO3)2, a closely allied variety of monoclinic pyroxene. These are distinguished from augite by containing little or no aluminium. Diopside is colourless, white, pale green to dark green or nearly black in colour, the depth of the colour depending on the amount of iron present. The specific gravity and optical constants also vary with the chemical composition; the sp. gr. of diopside is 3.2, increasing to 3.6 in hedenbergite, and the angle of optical extinction in the plane of symmetry varies between 38° and 47° in the two extremes of the series. Crystals are usually prismatic in habit with a rectangular cross-section as shown in the figure: the angle between the prism faces m, parallel to which there are perfect cleavages, is 92° 50′.

Several varieties, depending on differences in structure and chemical composition, have been distinguished, viz. coccolite (from κόκκος, a grain), a granular variety; salite or sahlite, from Sala in Sweden; malacolite; diallage; violane, a lamellar variety of a dark violet-blue colour; chrome-diopside, a bright green variety containing a small amount of chromium; and many others. Belonging to the same series with diopside and hedenbergite is a manganese pyroxene, known as schefierite, which has the composition (Ca, Mg) (Fe, Mn) (Si03)2.

Diopside is the characteristic pyroxene of metamorphic rocks, occurring especially in crystalline limestones, and often in association with garnet and epidote. It is also an essential constituent of some pyroxene-granites, diorites and a few other igneous rocks, but the characteristic pyroxene of this class of rocks is augite. Fine transparent crystals of a pale green colour occur, with crystals of yellowish-red garnet (hessonite) and chlorite, in veins traversing serpentine in the Ala valley near Turin in Piedmont: a crystal of this variety (“alalite”) is represented in the accompanying figure. These, as well as the long, transparent, bottle-green crystals from the Zillerthal in the Tyrol, have occasionally been cut as gem-stones. Good crystals have been found also at Achmatovsk near Zlatoust in the Urals, Traversella near Ivrea in Piedmont (“traversellite”), Nordmark in Sweden, Monroe in New York, Burgess in Lanark county, Ontario, and several other places: at Nordmark the large, rectangular black crystals occur with magnetite in the iron mines.

(L. J. S.)

DIOPTASE, a rare mineral species consisting of acid copper orthosilicate, H2CuSiO4, crystallizing in the parallel-faced hemihedral class of the rhombohedral system. The degree of symmetry is the same as in the mineral phenacite, there being only an axis of triad symmetry and a centre of symmetry. The crystals have the form of a hexagonal prism m terminated by a rhombohedron r, the alternate edges between these being sometimes replaced by the faces of a rhombohedron s. The faces are striated parallel to the edges between r, s and m. There are perfect cleavages parallel to the faces of a rhombohedron which truncate the polar edges of r: from the cleavage cracks internal reflections are often to be seen in the crystal, and it was on account of this that the mineral was named dioptase, by R. J. Haüy in 1797, from διοπτεύειν, “to see into.” The crystals vary from transparent to translucent with a vitreous lustre, and are bright emerald-green in colour; they thus have a certain resemblance to emerald, hence the early name emerald-copper (German, Kupfer-Smaragd). Hardness 5; sp. gr. 3.3. The mineral is decomposed by hydrochloric acid with separation of gelatinous silica. At a red heat it blackens and gives off water. The fine crystals from Mount Altyn-Tübe on the western slopes of the Altai Mountains in the Kirghiz Steppes, Asiatic Russia, line cavities in a compact limestone; they were first sent to Europe in 1785 by Achir Mahmed, a Bucharian merchant, after whom the mineral has been named archirite. More recently, in 1890, good crystals of similar habit, but rather darker in colour, have been found with quartz and malachite near Komba in the French Congo. As drusy crystalline crusts it has been found at Copiapo in Chile and in Arizona.

Dioptase has occasionally been used as a gem-stone, especially in Russia and Persia; it has a fine colour, but a low degree of hardness and the transparency is imperfect.

(L. J. S.)

DIORITE (from the Gr. διορίζειν to distinguish, from διά through, ὅρος, a boundary), in petrology, the name given by Haüy to a family of rocks of granitic texture, composed of plagioclase felspar and hornblende. As they are richer in the dark coloured ferromagnesian minerals they are usually grey or dark grey, and have a higher specific gravity than granite. They also rarely show visible quartz. But there are diorites of many kinds, as the name applies rather to a family of rocks than to a single species. Some contain biotite, others augite or hypersthene; many have a small amount of quartz. Orthoclase is rarely entirely absent, and when it is fairly common the rock becomes a tonalite; in this way a transition is furnished between diorites and granites. It is rare to find the pure types of “hornblende-diorite,” “augite-diorite,” &c., but in most cases the rocks contain two or more ferromagnesian silicates, and such combinations as “hornblende-biotite-diorite” are commonest in nature.

The felspar of the diorites ranges in composition from oligoclase to labradorite, and is often remarkably zonal, the external layers being more alkaline than the internal. Small fluid enclosures and black grains, probably iron oxides, often occur in it in great numbers. Weathering produces epidote, calcite, sericite and kaolin. The biotite is always brown or yellow; the hornblende usually green, but sometimes brown or yellowish brown in those diorites which have affinities to lamprophyres. The augite is nearly always green but sometimes has a reddish tinge; bronzite and hypersthene have their usual green and brown shades. Apatite, iron oxides and zircon are almost invariably present; sphene, garnet and orthite are occasionally observed; calcite, chlorite, muscovite, kaolin, epidote and bastite are secondary. The structure is not essentially different from that of granite. The ferromagnesian minerals crystallize comparatively early and have some idiomorphism; the felspar usually follows and only in part shows good crystalline outlines. Orthoclase and quartz, if present, are last to separate out, and fill the spaces between the other minerals; often they interpenetrate to form micropegmatite. In many diorites the plagioclase felspar has crystallized before the hornblende, which consequently has less perfect outlines and forms irregular plates which enclose sharply formed individuals of felspar. This produces the ophitic structure (very common also in the dolerites). More rarely biotite and augite exhibit the same relations to the plagioclase. Orbicular structure also occasionally appears in these rocks; in fact the orbicular diorite of Corsica (also called “Napoleonite” or “Corsite”) was for a long time the best-known example of this structure. The rock seems composed of spheroids, about an inch in diameter, surrounded by a smaller amount of dark-coloured dioritic matrix. The spheroids have a radiate structure and often show concentric dark and pale shells. These consist of hornblende (dark green) and basic plagioclase felspar, labradorite and bytownite (grey or nearly white). Occasionally diorites have a parallel banded or foliated structure, but these must not be confounded with the epidiorites, which are metamorphic rocks and also have a conspicuous foliation.

Diorites must also be distinguished from hornblendic gabbros, which contain more basic felspars, rarely quartz and occasionally olivine; but the boundary lines between diorites and gabbros are admittedly somewhat vague, e.g. some authors would call rocks gabbro which others would regard as augite-diorite. The hornblendites differ from the diorites in containing little felspar, and consist principally of hornblende. Among varietal designations given to rocks of the diorite family are “banatite” for an augite-diorite with or without quartz (from the Schemnitz district), “granodiorite” for a quartz-hornblende-diorite (essentially the same as tonalite) from California, &c., “adamellite” for the quartz-mica-diorite or tonalite of Monte Adamello (Alps), “ornite” for a hornblende-diorite rich in felspar, from Sweden.

(J. S. F.)

DIP (Old Eng. dyppan, connected with the common Teutonic root seen in “deep”), the angle which the magnetic needle makes with the horizon. A freely suspended magnetic needle will not maintain a horizontal position except at the magnetic equator. Over the N. magnetic pole the north-seeking end of the needle points directly downwards and dips at an intermediate angle at intermediate distances between the magnetic poles and equator. There are secular progressive variations of dip as well as of declination and the maxima are independent of each other. In 1576 the dip at London was 71° 50′, in 1720 (max.) 74° 42′, in 1900 67° 9′. (For Dip Circle see [Inclinometer].)

DIPHENYL (phenyl benzene), C6H5·C6H5, a hydrocarbon found in that fraction of the coal-tar distillate boiling between 240-300° C., from which it may be obtained by warming with sulphuric acid, separating the acid layer and strongly cooling the undissolved oil. It may be artificially prepared by passing benzene vapour through a red-hot tube; by the action of sodium on brombenzene dissolved in ether; by the action of stannous chloride on phenyldiazonium chloride; or by the addition of solid phenyldiazonium sulphate to warm benzene (R. Möhlau, Berichte, 1893, 26, 1997) C6H5N2·HSO4 + C6H6 = H2SO4 + N2 + C6H5·C6H5. L. Gattermann (Berichte, 1890, 23, 1226) has also prepared it by the decomposition of a solution of phenyldiazonium sulphate with alcohol and copper powder. It crystallizes in plates (from alcohol) melting at 70-71° C. and boiling at 254° C. It is oxidized by chromic acid in glacial acetic acid solution to benzoic acid, dilute nitric acid and chromic acid mixture being without effect. It is not reduced by hydriodic acid and phosphorus, but sodium in the presence of amyl alcohol reduces it to tetrahydrodiphenyl C12H14.

Many substitution derivatives are known: the monosubstitution derivatives being capable of existing in three isomeric forms. Of the disubstitution derivatives the most important are those derived from diparadiaminodiphenyl or benzidine (q.v.).

Orthoaminodiphenyl,

is prepared by the action of bromine and caustic soda on orthophenylbenzamide (R. Hirsch, Berichte, 1892, 25, 1974); when its vapour is passed over heated lime, carbazol (q.v.) is formed.

Diorthodiaminodiphenyl,

is obtained by the reduction of the corresponding nitro compound (obtained by the action of ethyl nitrite at 0° C. on metadinitrobenzidine hydrochloride). Its tetrazo compound on reduction gives a hydrazine which, on warming with hydrochloric acid at 150° C., decomposes into ammonium chloride and phenazone,

One of the most important derivatives of diphenyl, from the theoretical point of view, is diphenic acid or diorthodiphenyl carboxylic acid, which can be obtained from diparadiaminodiphenyldiorthocarboxylic acid,

or from phenanthrene (q.v.), the constitution of which it determines. See [Benzidine] for diparadiaminodiphenyl.

DIPHILUS, of Sinope, poet of the new Attic comedy and contemporary of Menander (342-291 b.c.). Most of his plays were written and acted at Athens, but he led a wandering life, and died at Smyrna. He was on intimate terms with the famous courtesan Gnathaena (Athenaeus xiii. pp. 579, 583). He is said to have written 100 comedies, the titles of fifty of which are preserved. He sometimes acted himself. To judge from the imitations of Plautus. (Casina from the Κληρούμενοι, Asinaria from the Όναγός, Rudens from some other play), he was very skilful in the construction of his plots. Terence also tells us that he introduced into the Adelphi (ii. 1) a scene from the Συναποθνήσκοντες, which had been omitted by Plautus in his adaptation (Commorientes) of the same play. The style of Diphilus was simple and natural, and his language on the whole good Attic; he paid great attention to versification, and was supposed to have invented a peculiar kind of metre. The ancients were undecided whether to class him among the writers of the New or Middle comedy. In his fondness for mythological subjects (Hercules, Theseus) and his introduction on the stage (by a bold anachronism) of the poets Archilochus and Hipponax as rivals of Sappho, he approximates to the spirit of the latter.

Fragments in H. Koch, Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta, ii.; see J. Denis, La Comédie grecque (1886), ii. p. 414; R. W. Bond in Classical Review (Feb. 1910, with trans. of Emporos fragm.).

DIPHTHERIA (from διφθέρα, a skin or membrane), the term applied to an acute infectious disease, which is accompanied by a membranous exudation on a mucous surface, generally on the tonsils and back of the throat or pharynx.

In general the symptoms at the commencement of an attack of diphtheria are comparatively slight, being those commonly accompanying a cold, viz. chilliness and depression. Sometimes more severe phenomena usher in the attack, such as vomiting and diarrhoea. A slight feeling of uneasiness in the throat is experienced along with some stiffness of the back of the neck. When looked at the throat appears reddened and somewhat swollen, particularly in the neighbourhood of the tonsils, the soft palate and upper part of pharynx, while along with this there is tenderness and swelling of the glands at the angles of the jaws. The affection of the throat spreads rapidly, and soon the characteristic exudation appears on the inflamed surface in the form of greyish-white specks or patches, increasing in extent and thickness until a yellowish-looking false membrane is formed. This deposit is firmly adherent to the mucous membrane beneath or incorporated with it, and if removed leaves a raw, bleeding, ulcerated surface, upon which it is reproduced in a short period. The appearance of the exudation has been compared to wet parchment or washed leather, and it is more or less dense in texture. It may cover the whole of the back of the throat, the cavity of the mouth, and the posterior nares, and spread downwards into the air-passages on the one hand and into the alimentary canal on the other, while any wound on the surface of the body is liable to become covered with it. This membrane is apt to be detached spontaneously, and as it loosens it becomes decomposed, giving a most offensive and characteristic odour to the breath. There is pain and difficulty in swallowing, but unless the disease has affected the larynx no affection of the breathing. The voice acquires a snuffling character. When the disease invades the posterior nares an acrid, fetid discharge, and sometimes also copious bleeding, takes place from the nostrils. Along with these local phenomena there is evidence of constitutional disturbance of the most severe character. There may be no great amount of fever, but there is marked depression and loss of strength. The pulse becomes small and frequent, the countenance pale, the swelling of the glands of the neck increases, which, along with the presence of albumen in the urine, testifies to a condition of blood poisoning. Unless favourable symptoms emerge death takes place within three or four days or sooner, either from the rapid extension of the false membrane into the air-passage, giving rise to asphyxia, or from a condition of general collapse, which is sometimes remarkably sudden. In cases of recovery the change for the better is marked by an arrest in the extension of the false membrane, the detachment and expectoration of that already formed, and the healing of the ulcerated mucous membrane beneath. Along with this there is a general improvement in the symptoms, the power of swallowing returns, and the strength gradually increases, while the glandular enlargement of the neck diminishes, and the albumen disappears from the urine. Recovery, however, is generally slow, and it is many weeks before full convalescence is established. Even, however, where diphtheria ends thus favourably, the peculiar sequelae already mentioned are apt to follow, generally within a period of two or three weeks after all the local evidence of the disease has disappeared. These secondary affections may occur after mild as well as after severe attacks, and they are principally in the form of paralysis affecting the soft palate and pharynx, causing difficulty in swallowing with regurgitation of food through the nose, and giving a peculiar nasal character to the voice. There are, however, other forms of paralysis occurring after diphtheria, especially that affecting the muscles of the eye, which produces a loss of the power of accommodation and consequent impairment of vision. There may be, besides, paralysis of both legs, and occasionally also of one side of the body (hemiplegia). These symptoms, however, after continuing for a variable length of time, almost always ultimately disappear.

Under the name of the Malum Egyptiacum, Aretaeus in the 2nd century gives a minute description of a disease which in all its essential characteristics corresponds to diphtheria. In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries epidemics of diphtheria appear to have frequently prevailed in many parts of Europe, particularly in Holland, Spain, Italy, France, as well as in England, and were described by physicians belonging to those countries under various titles; but it is probable that other diseases of a similar nature were included in their descriptions, and no accurate account of this affection had been published till M. Bretonneau of Tours in 1821 laid his celebrated treatise on the subject before the French Academy of Medicine. By him the term La Diphthérite was first given to the disease.

Great attention has been paid to diphtheria in recent years, with some striking results. Its cause and nature have been definitely ascertained, the conditions which influence its prevalence have been elucidated, and a specific “cure” has been found. In the last respect it occupies a unique position at the present time. In the case of several other zymotic diseases much has been done by way of prevention, little or nothing for treatment; in the case of diphtheria prevention has failed, but treatment has been revolutionized by the introduction of antitoxin, which constitutes the most important contribution to practical medicine as yet made by bacteriology.

The exciting cause of diphtheria is a micro-organism, identified by Klebs and Loffler in 1883 (see [Parasitic Diseases]). It has been shown by experiment that the symptoms of diphtheria, including the after-effects, are produced by Causation. a toxin derived from the micro-organisms which lodge in the air-passages and multiply in a susceptible subject. The natural history of the organism outside the body is not well understood, but there is some reason to believe that it lives in a dormant condition in suitable soils. Recent research does not favour the theory that it is derived from defective drains or “sewer gas,” but these things, like damp and want of sunlight, probably promote its spread, by lowering the health of persons exposed to them, and particularly by causing an unhealthy condition of the throat, rendering it susceptible to the contagion. Defective drainage, or want of drainage, may also act, by polluting the ground, and so providing a favourable soil for the germ, though it is to be noted that “the steady increase in the diphtheria mortality has coincided, in point of time, with steady improvement in regard of such sanitary circumstances as water supply, sewerage, and drainage” (Thorne Thorne). Cats and cows are susceptible to the diphtheritic bacillus, and fowls, turkeys and other birds have been known to suffer from a disease like diphtheria, but other domestic animals appear to be more or less resistant or immune. In human beings the mere presence of the germ is not sufficient to cause disease; there must also be susceptibility, but it is not known in what that consists. Individuals exhibit all degrees of resistance up to complete immunity. Children are far more susceptible than adults, but even children may have the Klebs-Loffler bacillus in their throats without showing any symptoms of illness. Altogether there are many obscure points about this micro-organism, which is apt to assume a puzzling variety of forms. Nevertheless its identification has greatly facilitated the diagnosis of the disease, which was previously a very difficult matter, often determined in an arbitrary fashion on no particular principles.

Diphtheria, as at present understood, may be defined as sore throat in which the bacillus is found; if it cannot be found, the illness is regarded as something else, unless the clinical symptoms are quite unmistakable. One result of this is a large transference of registered mortality from other throat affections, and particularly from croup, to diphtheria. Croup, which never had a well-defined application, and is not recognized by the College of Physicians as a synonym for diphtheria, appears to be dying out from the medical vocabulary in Great Britain. In France the distinction has never been recognized.

Diphtheria is endemic in all European and American countries, and is apparently increasing, but the incidence varies greatly. It is far more prevalent on the continent than in England, and still more so in the United States and Prevalence. Canada. The following table, compiled from figures collected by Dr Newsholme, shows how London compares with some foreign cities. The figures give the mean death-rate from diphtheria and croup for the term of years during which records have been kept. The period varies in different cases, and therefore the comparison is only a rough one.

Mean Death-Rates from Diphtheria and Croup per Million living.

There is comparatively little diphtheria in India and Japan, but in Egypt, the Cape and Australasia it prevails very extensively among the urban populations. The mortality varies greatly from year to year in all countries and cities. In Berlin, for instance, it has oscillated between a maximum of 2420 in 1883 and a minimum of 340 in 1896; in New York between 2760 in 1877 and 680 in 1868; in Christiania between 3290 in 1887 and 170 in 1871. In some American cities still higher maxima have been recorded. In other words, diphtheria, though always endemic, exhibits at times a great increase of activity, and becomes epidemic or even pandemic. The following table for 1859-99 shows fairly well the periodical rise and fall in England and Wales. Diphtheria and croup are given both separately and together, showing the increasing transference from one to the other of late years. Diphtheria was first entered separately in the year 1859.

Deaths from Diphtheria and Croup per Million living in England and Wales.

The combined figures for diphtheria and croup in later years are:— (1900) 316; (1901) 296; (1902) 255; (1903) 195; (1904) 184; (1905) 174; (1906) 190; (1907) 175; (1908) 166.

Several facts are roughly indicated by the table. It begins with an extremely severe epidemic, which has not been approached since. Then follows a fall extending over twenty years. On the whole this diminution was progressive, though not in reality so steady as the decennial grouping makes it appear, being interrupted by smaller oscillations in single years and groups of years. Still the main fact holds good. After 1880 an opposite movement began, likewise interrupted by minor oscillations, but on the whole progressive, and culminating in the year 1893 with a death-rate of 389, the highest recorded since 1865. After 1896 a marked fall again took place. This is partly accounted for by the use of antitoxin, which only began on a considerable scale in 1895, and did not become general until a year or two later at least. Its effects were only then fully felt. The registrar-general’s returns record mortality, not prevalence—that is to say, the number of deaths, not of cases.

On the whole, we get clear evidence of an epidemic rise and fall, which may serve to dispose of some erroneous conceptions. The belief, held until recently, that diphtheria is steadily increasing in Great Britain was obviously premature; it did rise over a series of years, but has now ebbed again. Moreover, the general prevalence during the last thirty years has been notably less than in the previous twelve years. Yet it is during years since 1870 that compulsory education has been in existence and main drainage chiefly carried out. It follows that neither school attendance nor sewer gas exercises such an important influence over the epidemicity of diphtheria as some other conditions. What are those conditions? Dr Newsholme has advanced the theory, based on an elaborate examination of statistics in various countries, that the activity of diphtheria is connected with the rainfall, and he lays down the following general induction from the facts: “Diphtheria only becomes epidemic in years in which the rainfall is deficient, and the epidemics are on the largest scale when three or more years of deficient rainfall follow each other.” He points out that the comparative rarity of diphtheria in tropical climates, which are characterized by excessive rainfall, and its greater prevalence in continental than in insular countries, confirm his theory. His observations seem quite contrary to the view laid down by various authorities, and hitherto accepted, that wet weather favours diphtheria. The two, however, are not irreconcilable. The key to the problem—and possibly to many other epidemiological problems—may perhaps be found in the movements of the subsoil water. It has been suggested by different observers, and particularly by Mr M. A. Adams, who has for some years made a study of the subsoil water at Maidstone, that there is a definite connexion between it and diphtheria. In England the underground water normally reaches its lowest level at the end of the summer; then it gradually rises, fed by percolation from the winter rains, reaching a maximum level about the end of March, after which it gradually sinks. This maximum level Mr Adams calls the annual spring cleaning of the soil, and his observations go to show that when the normal movement is arrested or disturbed, diphtheria becomes active. Now that is what happens in periods of drought. The underground water does not rise to its usual level, and there is no spring cleaning. The hypothesis, then, is this: The diphtheria bacillus lives in the soil, but is “drowned out” in wet periods by the subsoil water. In droughty ones it lives and flourishes in the warm, dry soil; then when rain comes, it is driven out with the ground air into the houses. This process will continue for some time, so that epidemic outbreaks may well seem to be associated with wet. But they begin in drought, and are stopped by long-continued periods of copious rainfall. This is quite in keeping with the observed fact that diphtheria is a seasonal disease, always most prevalent in the last quarter of the year. The summer develops the poison in the soil, the autumnal rains bring it out. The fact that the same cause does not produce the same effect in tropical countries may perhaps be explained by the extreme violence of the alternations, which are too great to suit this particular micro-organism, or possibly the regularity of the rainfall prevents its development.

The foregoing hypothesis is supported by a good deal of evidence, and notably by the concurrence of the great epidemic or pandemic prevalence in Great Britain, culminating in 1859, with a prolonged period of exceptionally deficient rainfall. Again, the highest death-rate registered since 1865 was in 1893, a year of similarly exceptional drought. But it is no more than an hypothesis, and the fate of former theories is a warning against drawing conclusions from statistics and records extending over too short a period of time. The warning is particularly necessary in connexion with meteorological conditions, which are apt to upset all calculations. As it happens, a period of deficient rainfall even greater than that of 1854-1858 has recently been experienced. It began in 1893 and culminated in the extraordinary season of 1899. The dry years were 1893, 1895, 1896, 1898 and 1899, and the deficiency of rainfall was not made good by any considerable excess in 1894 and 1897. It surpassed all records at Greenwich; streams and wells ran dry all over the country, and the flow of the Thames and Lea was reduced to the lowest point ever recorded. There should be, according to the theory, at least a very large increase in the prevalence of diphtheria. To a certain extent it has held good. There was a marked rise in 1893-1896 over the preceding period, though not so large as might have been expected, but it was followed by a decided fall in 1897-1898. The experience of 1898 contradicts, that of 1899 supports, the theory. Further light is therefore required; but perhaps the failure of the recent drought to produce results at all comparable with the epidemic of the ’fifties may be due to variations in the resistance of the disease, which differs widely in different years. It may also be due in part to improved sanitation, to the notification of infectious diseases, the use of isolation hospitals, which have greatly developed in quite recent years, and, lastly, to the beneficial effects of antitoxin. If these be the real explanations, then scientific and administrative work has not been thrown away after all in combating this very painful and fatal enemy of the young.

The conditions governing the general prevalence of diphtheria, and its epidemic rise and fall, which have just been discussed, do not touch the question of actual dissemination. The contagion is spread by means which are in constant Dissemination. operation, whether the general amount of disease is great or small. Water, so important in some epidemic diseases, is believed not to be one of them, though a negative proof based on absence of evidence cannot be accepted as conclusive. On the other hand, milk is undoubtedly a means of dissemination. Several outbreaks of an almost explosive character, besides minor extensions of disease from one place to another, have been traced to this cause. Milk may be contaminated in various ways—at the dairy, for instance, or on the way to customers,—but several cases, investigated by the officers of the Local Government Board and others, have been thought to point to infection from cows suffering from a diphtheritic affection of the udder. The part played by aërial convection is undetermined, but there is no reason to suppose that the infecting material is conveyed any distance by wind or air currents. Instances which seem to point to the contrary may be explained in other ways, and particularly by the fact, now fully demonstrated, that persons suffering from minor sore throats, not recognized as diphtheria, may carry the disease about and introduce it into other localities. Human intercourse is the most important means of dissemination, the contagion passing from person to person either by actual contact, as in kissing, or by the use of the same utensils and articles, or by mere proximity. In the last case the germs must be supposed to be air-borne for short distances, and to enter with the breath. Rooms appear liable to become infected by the presence of diphtheritic cases, and so spread the disease among other persons using them. At a small outbreak which occurred at Darenth Asylum in 1898 the infection clung obstinately to a particular ward, in spite of the prompt removal of all cases, and fresh ones continued to occur until it had been thoroughly disinfected, after which there were no more. The part played by human intercourse in fostering the spread of the disease suggests that it would naturally be more prevalent in urban communities, where people congregate together more, than in rural ones. This is at variance with the conclusion laid down by some authorities, that in this country diphtheria used to affect chiefly the sparsely populated districts, and though tending to become more urban, is still rather a rural disease. That view is based upon an analysis of the distribution by counties in England and Wales from 1855 to 1880, and it has been generally accepted and repeated until it has become a sort of axiom. Of course the facts of distribution are facts, but the general inference drawn from them, that diphtheria peculiarly affects the country and is changing its habitat, may be erroneous. Dr Newsholme, by taking a wider basis of experience, has arrived at the opposite conclusion, and finds that diphtheria does not, in fact, flourish more in sparsely-peopled districts. “When a sufficiently long series of years is taken,” he says, “it appears clear that there is more diphtheria in urban than in rural communities.” The rate for London has always been in excess of that for the whole of England and Wales. Its distribution at any given time is determined by a number of circumstances, and by their incidental co-operation, not by any property or predilection for town or country inherent in the disease. There are the epidemic conditions of soil and rainfall, previously discussed, which vary widely in different localities at different times; there is the steady influence of regular intercourse, and the accidental element of special distribution by various means. These things may combine to alter the incidence. In short, accident plays too great a part to permit any general conclusion to be drawn from distribution, except from a very wide basis of experience. The variations are very great and sometimes very sudden. For instance, the county of London for some years headed the list, having a far higher death-rate than any other. In 1898 it dropped to the fifth place, and was surpassed by Rutland, a purely rural county, which had the lowest mortality of all in the previous year and very nearly the lowest for the previous ten years. Again, South Wales, which had had a low mortality for some years, suddenly came into prominence as a diphtheria district, and in 1898 had the highest death-rate in the country. Staffordshire and Bedfordshire show a similar rise, the one an urban, the other a rural, county. All the northern counties, both rural and urban,—namely, Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, Westmorland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire and Lincolnshire,—had a very high rate in 1861-1870, and a low one in 1896-1898. It is obviously unsafe to draw general conclusions from distribution data on a small scale. Diphtheria appears to creep about very slowly, as a rule, from place to place, and from one part of a large town to another; it forsakes one district and appears in another; occasionally it attacks a fresh locality with great energy, presumably because the local conditions are exceptionally favourable, which may be due to the soil or, possibly, to the susceptibility of the inhabitants, who are, so to speak, virgin ground. But through it all personal infection is the chief means of spread.

The acceptance of this doctrine has directed great attention to the practical question of school influence. There is no doubt whatever that it plays a very considerable part in spreading diphtheria. The incidence of the disease is chiefly on children, and nothing so often and regularly brings large numbers together in close contact under the same roof as school attendance. Nothing, in fact, furnishes such constant and extensive opportunities for personal infection. Many outbreaks have definitely been traced to schools. In London the subject has been very fully investigated by Sir Shirley Murphy, the medical officer of health to the London County Council, and by Dr W. R. Smith, formerly medical officer of health to the London School Board. Sir Shirley Murphy has shown that a special incidence on children of school age began to manifest itself after the adoption of compulsory education, and that the summer holidays are marked by a distinct diminution of cases, which is succeeded by an increase on the return to school. Dr W. R. Smith’s observations are directed rather to minimizing the effect of school influence, and to showing that it is less important than other factors; which is doubtless true, as has been already remarked. It appears that the heaviest incidence falls upon infants under school age, and that liability diminishes progressively after school age is reached. But this by no means disposes of the importance of school influence, as the younger children at home may be infected by older ones, who have picked up the contagion at school, but, being less susceptible, are less severely affected and exhibit no worse symptoms than a sore throat. From a practical point of view the problem is a difficult one to deal with, as it is virtually impossible to ensure the exclusion of all infection, on account of the deceptively mild forms it may assume; but considering how very often outbreaks of diphtheria necessitate the closing of schools, it would probably be to the advantage of the authorities to discourage, rather than to compel, the attendance of children with sore throats. A fact of some interest revealed by statistics is that in the earliest years of life the incidence of diphtheria is greater upon male than upon female children, but from three years onwards the position is reversed, and with every succeeding year the relative female liability becomes greater. This is probably due to the habit of kissing maintained among females, but more and more abandoned by boys from babyhood onwards.

All these considerations suggest the importance of segregating the sick in isolation hospitals. Of late years this preventive measure has been carried out with increasing efficiency, owing to the better provision of such hospitals and the greater willingness of the public to make use of them; and probably the improvement so effected has had some share in keeping down the prevalence of the disease to comparatively moderate proportions. Unfortunately, the complete segregation of infected persons is hardly possible, because of the mild symptoms, and even absence of symptoms, exhibited by some individuals. A further difficulty arises with reference to the discharge of patients. It has been proved that the bacillus may persist almost indefinitely in the air-passages in certain cases, and in a considerable proportion it does persist for several weeks after convalescence. On returning home such cases may, and often do, infect others.

Since the antitoxin treatment was introduced in 1894 it has overshadowed all other methods. We owe this drug originally to the Berlin school of bacteriologists, and particularly to Dr Behring. The idea of making use of serum arose Treatment. about 1890, out of researches made in connexion with Mechnikov’s theory of phagocytosis, by which is meant the action of the phagocytes or white corpuscles of the blood in destroying the bacteria of disease. It was shown by the German bacteriologists that the serum or liquid part of the blood plays an equally or more important part in resisting disease, and the idea of combating the toxins produced by pathogenic bacteria with resistant serum injected into the blood presented itself to several workers. The idea was followed up and worked out independently in France and Germany, so successfully that by the year 1894 the serum treatment had been tried on a considerable scale with most encouraging results. Some of these were published in Germany in the earlier part of that year, and at the International Hygienic Congress, held in Budapest a little later, Dr Roux, of the Institut Pasteur, whose experience was somewhat more extensive than that of his German colleagues, read a paper giving the result of several hundred cases treated in Paris. When all allowance for errors had been made, they showed a remarkable and even astonishing reduction of mortality, fully confirming the conclusions drawn from the German experiments. This consensus of independent opinion proved a great stimulus to further trial, and before long one clinique after another told the same tale. The evidence was so favourable that Professor Virchow—the last man to be carried away by a novelty—declared it “the imperative duty of medical men to use the new remedy” (The Times, 19th October 1894). Since then an enormous mass of facts has accumulated from all quarters of the globe, all testifying to the value of antitoxin in the treatment of diphtheria. The experience of the hospitals of the London Metropolitan Asylums Board for five years before and after antitoxin may be given as a particularly instructive illustration; but the subsequent reduction in the rate of mortality (12 in 1900, 11.3 in 1901, 10.8 in 1902, 9.3 in 1903, and an average of 9 in 1904-1908) added further confirmation.

Annual Case Mortality in Metropolitan Asylums Board’s Hospitals.

The number of cases dealt with in these five antitoxin years was 32,835, or an average of 6567 a year, and the broad result is a reduction of mortality by more than one-half. It is a fair inference that the treatment saves the lives of about 1000 children every year in London alone. This refers to all cases. Those which occur in the hospitals as a sequel to scarlet fever, and consequently come under treatment from the commencement, show very much more striking results. The case mortality, which was 46.8% in 1892 and 58.8% in 1893, has been reduced to 3.6% since the introduction of antitoxin. But the evidence is not from statistics alone. The beneficial effect of the treatment is equally attested by clinical observation. Dr Roux’s original account has been confirmed by a cloud of witnesses year after year. “One may say,” he wrote, “that the appearance of most of the patients is totally different from what it used to be. The pale and leaden faces are scarcely seen in the wards; the expression of the children is brighter and more lively.” Adult patients have described the relief afforded by inoculation; it acts like a charm, and lifts the deadly feeling of oppression off like a cloud in the course of a few hours. Finally, the counteracting effect of antitoxin in preventing the disintegrating action of the diphtheritic toxin on the nervous tissues has been demonstrated pathologically. There are some who still affect scepticism as to the value of this drug. They cannot be acquainted with the evidence, for if the efficacy of antitoxin in the treatment of diphtheria has not been proved, then neither can the efficacy of any treatment for anything be said to be proved. Prophylactic properties are also claimed for the serum; but protection is necessarily more difficult to demonstrate than cure, and though there is some evidence to support the claim, it has not been fully made out.

Authorities.—Adams, Public Health, vol. vii.; Thorne Thorne, Milroy Lectures (1891); Newsholme, Epidemic Diphtheria; W. R. Smith, Harben Lectures (1899); Murphy, Report to London County Council (1894); Sims Woodhead, Report to Metropolitan Asylums Board (1901).

DIPLODOCUS, a gigantic extinct land reptile discovered in rocks of Upper Jurassic age in western North America, the best-known example of a Sauropodous Dinosaur. The first scattered remains of a skeleton were found in 1877 by Prof. S.W. Williston near Cañon City, Colorado; and the tail and hind-limb of this specimen were described in the following year by Prof. O.C. Marsh. He noticed that in the part of the tail which dragged on the ground, each chevron bone below the vertebral column consisted of a pair of bars; and as so peculiar an arrangement for the protection of the artery and vein beneath the tail had not previously been observed in any animal, he proposed the name Diplodocus (“double beam” or “double bar”) for the new reptile, adding the specific name longus in allusion to the elongated shape of the tail vertebrae. In 1884 Prof. Marsh described the head, vertebrae and pelvis of the same skeleton, which is now in the National Museum, Washington. In 1897 the next important specimen, a tail associated with other fragments, apparently of Diplodocus longus, was obtained by the American Museum of Natural History, New York, from Como Bluffs, Wyoming. In 1899-1900 large parts of two skeletons of another species, in a remarkable state of preservation, were disinterred by Messrs J. L. Wortman, O. A. Peterson and J. B. Hatcher in Sheep Creek, Albany county, Wyo., and these are now exhibited with minor discoveries in the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburg. There are also other specimens in New York, Chicago and the University of Wyoming. In 1901 Mr J. B. Hatcher studied the new species at Pittsburg, named it Diplodocus carnegii, and published the first restored sketch of a complete skeleton. Shortly afterwards plaster casts of the finest specimens were prepared under the direction of Mr J. B. Hatcher and Dr W. J. Holland, and these were skilfully combined to form the cast of a completely reconstructed skeleton, which was presented to the British Museum by Andrew Carnegie in 1905. This reconstruction is based primarily on a well-preserved chain of vertebrae, extending from the second cervical to the twelfth caudal, associated with the ribs, pelvis and several limb-bones. The tail is completed from two other specimens in the Carnegie Museum, having caudals 13 to 36 and 37 to 73 respectively in apparently unbroken series. Prof. Marsh’s specimen in Washington supplied the greater part of the skull; and the fore-foot is copied from a specimen in New York.

The cast of the reconstructed skeleton of Diplodocus carnegii measures 84 ft. in length and 12 ft. 9 in. in maximum height at the hind-limbs. It displays the elongated neck and tail and the relatively small head so characteristic of the Sauropodous Dinosaurs. The skull is inclined to the axis of the neck, denoting a browsing animal; while the feeble blunt teeth and flat expanded snout suggest feeding among succulent water-weeds. The large narial opening at the highest point of the head probably indicates an aquatic mode of life, and there seems to have been a soft valve to close the nostrils when under water. The diminutive brain-cavity, scarcely large enough to contain a walnut, is noteworthy. There are 104 vertebrae, namely, 15 in the neck, 11 in the back, 5 in the sacrum and 73 in the tail. The presacral vertebrae are of remarkably light construction, the plates and struts of bone being arranged to give the greatest strength with the least weight. The end of the tail is a flexible lash, which would probably be used as a weapon, like the tail of some existing lizards. The feet, notwithstanding the weight they had to support, are as unsymmetrical as those of a crocodile, with claws only on the three inner toes. There is no external armour.

See O. C. Marsh, Amer. Journ. Sci. ser. 3, vol. xvi. (1878), p. 414, pl. viii., and loc. cit. vol. xxvii. (1884), p. 161, pls. iii., iv.; H. F. Osborn, Mem. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. vol. i. pt. v. (1899); J. B. Hatcher, Mem. Carnegie Mus. vol. i. No. 1 (1901), and vol. ii. No. 1 (1903); W. J. Holland, Mem. Carnegie Mus. vol. ii. No. 6 (1906).

(A. S. Wo.)

DIPLOMACY (Fr. diplomatie), the art of conducting international negotiations. The word, borrowed from the French, has the same derivation as Diplomatic (q.v.), and, according to the New English Dictionary, was first used in England so late as 1796 by Burke. Yet there is no other word in the English language that could supply its exact sense. The need for such a term was indeed not felt; for what we know as diplomacy was long regarded, partly as falling under the Jus gentium or international law, partly as a kind of activity morally somewhat suspect and incapable of being brought under any system. Moreover, though in a certain sense it is as old as history, diplomacy as a uniform system, based upon generally recognized rules and directed by a diplomatic hierarchy having a fixed international status, is of quite modern growth even in Europe. It was finally established only at the congresses of Vienna (1815) and Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), while its effective extension to the great monarchies of the East, beyond the bounds of European civilization, was comparatively an affair of yesterday. So late as 1876 it was possible for the writer on this subject in the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica to say that “it would be an historical absurdity to suppose diplomatic relations connecting together China, Burma and Japan, as they connect the great European powers.”

Principles.—Though diplomacy has been usually treated under the head of international law, it would perhaps be more consonant with the facts to place international law under diplomacy. The principles and rules governing the intercourse of states, defined by a long succession of international lawyers, have no sanction save the consensus of the powers, established and maintained by diplomacy (see [Balance of Power]); in so far as they have become, by international agreement, more than mere pious opinions of theorists, they are working rules established for mutual convenience, which it is the function of diplomacy to safeguard or to use for its own ends. In any case they by no means cover the whole field of diplomatic activity; and, were they swept away, the art of diplomacy, developed through long ages of experience, would survive.

This experience may perhaps be called the science, as distinct from the art, of diplomacy. It covers not only the province of international law, but the vast field of recorded experience which we know as history, of which indeed international law is but a part; for, as Bielfeld in his Institutions politiques (La Haye, 1760, t. I. ch. ii. § 13) points out, “public law is founded on facts. To know it we must know history, which is the soul of this science as of politics in general.” The broad outlook on human affairs implied in “historical sense” is more necessary to the diplomatist under modern conditions than in the 18th century, when international policy was still wholly under the control of princes and their immediate advisers. Diplomacy was then a game of wits played in a narrow circle. Its objects too were narrower; for states were practically regarded as the property of their sovereigns, which it was the main function of their “agents” to enlarge or to protect, while scarcely less important than the preservation or rearrangement of territorial boundaries was that of precedence and etiquette generally, over which an incredible amount of time was wasted. The haute diplomatie thus resolved itself into a process of exalted haggling, conducted with an utter disregard of the ordinary standards of morality, but with the most exquisite politeness and in accordance with ever more and more elaborate rules. Much of the outcome of these dead debates has become stereotyped in the conventions of the diplomatic service; but the character of diplomacy itself has undergone a great change. This change is threefold: firstly, as the result of the greater sense of the community of interests among nations, which was one of the outcomes of the French Revolution; secondly, owing to the rise of democracy, with its expression in parliamentary assemblies and in the press; thirdly, through the alteration in the position of the diplomatic agent, due to modern means of communication.

The first of these changes may be dated to the circular of Count Kaunitz of the 17th of July 1791, in which, in face of the Revolution, he impressed upon the powers the duty of making common cause for the purpose of preserving “public peace, the tranquillity of states, the inviolability of possessions, and the faith of treaties.” The duty of watching over the common interests of Europe, or of the world, was thus for the first time officially recognized as a function of diplomacy, since common action could only be taken as the result of diplomatic negotiations. It would be easy to exaggerate the effective results of this idea, even when it had crystallized in the Grand Alliance of 1814 and been proclaimed to the world in the Holy Alliance of the 26th of September 1815 and the declaration of Aix-la-Chapelle. The cynical picture given by La Bruyère of the diplomatist of the 18th century still remained largely true: “His talk is only of peace, of alliances, of the public tranquillity, and of the public interests; in reality he is thinking only of his own, that is to say, of those of his master or of his republic.”[1] The proceedings of the congress of Vienna proved how little the common good weighed unless reinforced by particular interests; but the conception of “Europe” as a political entity none the less survived. The congresses, notably the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (q.v.) in 1818, were in a certain sense European parliaments, and their ostensible object was the furtherance of common interests. Had the imperial dreamer Alexander I. of Russia had his way, they would have been permanently established on the broad basis of the Holy Alliance, and would have included, not the great powers only, but representatives of every state (see [Alexander I.] and [Europe] : History). Whatever the effective value of that “Concert of Europe” which was the outcome of the period of the congresses, it certainly produced a great effect on the spirit and the practice of diplomacy. In the congresses and conferences diplomacy assumes international functions both legislative and administrative. The diplomat is responsible, not only to his own government, but to “Europe.” Thus Castlereagh was accused of subordinating the interests of Great Britain to those of Europe; and the same charge was brought, perhaps with greater justice, against Metternich in respect of Austria. Canning’s principle of “Every nation for itself and God for us all!” prevailed, it is true, over that of Alexander’s “Confederation of Europe”; yet, as one outcome of the congresses, every diplomatic agent, though he represents the interests of his own state, has behind him the whole body of the treaties which constitute the public law of the world, of which he is in some sort the interpreter and the guardian.

Parallel with this development runs the second process making for change: the increasing responsibility of diplomacy to public opinion. To discuss all the momentous issues involved in this is impossible; but the subject is too important to be altogether passed over, since it is one of the main problems of modern international intercourse, and concerns every one who by his vote may influence the policy of the state to which he belongs. The question, broadly speaking, is: how far has the public discussion of international affairs affected the legitimate functions of diplomacy for better or for worse? To the diplomatist of the old school the answer seems clear. For him diplomacy was too delicate and too personal an art to survive the glare and confusion of publicity. Metternich, the last representative of the old haute diplomatie, lived to moralize over the ruin caused by the first manifestations of the “new diplomacy,” the outcome of the rise of the power of public opinion. He had early, from his own point of view, unfavourably contrasted the “limited” constitutional monarchies of the west with the “free” autocracies of the east of Europe, free because they were under no obligation to give a public account of their actions. He himself was a master of the old diplomatic art, of intrigue, of veiling his purpose under a cloud of magniloquence, above all, of the art of personal fascination. But public opinion was for him only a dangerous force to be kept under control; and, even had he realized the necessity for appealing to it, he had none of the qualities that would have made the appeal successful. In direct antagonism to him was George Canning, who may be called the great prototype of the “new diplomacy,” and to Metternich was a “malevolent meteor hurled by divine providence upon Europe.” Canning saw clearly the immense force that would be added to his diplomatic action if he had behind him the force of public opinion. In answer to Metternich’s complaint of the tone of speeches in parliament and of the popular support given in England to revolutionary movements, he wrote, “Our influence, if it is to be maintained abroad, must be secure in its sources of strength at home: and the sources of that strength are in the sympathy between the people and the government; in the union of the public sentiment with the public counsels; in the reciprocal confidence of the House of Commons and the crown.”[2]

It would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that Canning was wholly right and Metternich wholly wrong. The conditions of the Habsburg monarchy were not those of Great Britain,[3] and even if it had been possible to speak of a public opinion in the Austrian empire at all, it certainly possessed no such organ as the British parliament. But the argument may be carried yet further. In the abstract the success of the policy of a minister in a democratic state must ultimately rest upon the support of public opinion; yet the necessity for this support has in the conduct of foreign affairs its peculiar dangers. In the difficult game of diplomacy a certain reticence is always necessary. Secret sources of information would be dried up were they to be lightly revealed; a plain exposition of policy would often give an undue advantage to the other party to a negotiation. Thus, even in Great Britain, the diplomatic correspondence laid before parliament is carefully edited, and all governments are jealous of granting access to their modern archives. Yet a representative assembly is apt to be resentful of such reservations. Its members know little or nothing of the conditions under which foreign affairs are conducted, and they are not unnaturally irritated by explanations which seem to lack candour or completeness. Canning himself had experience of this in the affair of the capture of the Danish fleet at Copenhagen; and Castlereagh’s diplomacy was hampered by the bitter attacks of an opposition which accused him, with little justice, of pursuing a policy which he dared not reveal in its full scope to parliament. Moreover, the appeal to public opinion may be used as a diplomatic weapon for ends no less “selfish” than any aimed at by the old diplomacy. Bismarck, whose statesmanship was at least as cynical as that of Metternich, was a master of the art of taking the world into his confidence—when it suited him to do so; and the “reptile press,” hired to give a seemingly independent support to his policy, was one of his most potent weapons. So far the only necessary consequence of the growth of the power of public opinion on the art of diplomacy has been to extend the sphere of its application; it is but one more factor to be dealt with; and experience has proved that it is subject to the wiles of a skilful diplomatist no less than were the princes and statesmen with whom the old diplomacy was solely concerned.

The third factor making for change—the revolution in the means of communication which has brought all the world into closer touch—remains to be discussed. It is obvious that before the invention of the telegraph, the diplomatic agent was in a far more responsible position than he is now, when he can, in most cases, receive immediate instructions from his government on difficult questions as they arise. When communication was still slow there was often no time to await instructions, or the instructions when they arrived were not seldom already out of date and had to be set aside on the minister’s own responsibility. It would, however, be easy to exaggerate the importance of this change as affecting the character and status of diplomatic agents. It is true that the tendency has been for ministers of foreign affairs to hold the threads of diplomacy in their own hands to a far greater extent than was formerly the case; but they must still depend for information and advice on the “man on the spot,” and the success of their policy largely depends upon his qualities of discretion and judgment. The growth of democracy, moreover, has given to the ambassador a new and peculiar importance; for he represents not only the sovereign to the sovereign, but the nation to the nation; and, as a succession of notable American ambassadors to Great Britain has proved, he may by his personal qualities do a large amount to remove the prejudices and ignorances which stand as a barrier between the nations. It marks an immense advance in the comity of international intercourse when the representatives of friendly powers are no longer regarded as “spies rather than ambassadors,” to be “quickly heard and dismissed,” as Philippe de Commines would have them, but as agreeable guests to be parted from with regret.

As to the qualifications for an ambassador, it is clearly impossible to lay down a general rule, for the same qualities are obviously not required in Washington as in Vienna, nor in Paris as in Pekin. Yet the effort to depict the ideal ambassador bulks largely in the works of the earlier theorists, and the demands they make are sufficiently alarming. Ottaviano Maggi, himself a diplomatist of the brilliant age of the Renaissance, has left us in his De legato (Hanoviae, 1596) his idea of what an ambassador should be. He must not only be a good Christian but a learned theologian; he must be a philosopher, well versed in Aristotle and Plato, and able at a moment’s notice to solve in correct dialectical form the most abstruse problems; he must be well read in the classics, and an expert in mathematics, architecture, music, physics and civil and canon law. He must not only know how to write and speak Latin with classical refinement, but he must be a master of Greek, Spanish, French, German and Turkish. He must have a sound knowledge of history, geography and the science of war; but at the same time is not to neglect the poets, and never to be without his Homer. Add to this that he must be well born, rich and of a handsome presence, and we have a portrait of a diplomatist whose original can hardly have existed even in that age of brilliant versatility. The Dutchman Frederikus de Marselaer, in his κηρυκεῖον sive legationum insigne (Antwerp, 1618), is scarcely less exacting than the Venetian. His ideal ambassador is a nobleman of fine presence and in the prime of life, famous, rich, munificent, abstemious, not violent, nor quarrelsome, nor morose, no flatterer, learned, eloquent, witty without being talkative, a good linguist, widely read, prudent and cautious, but brave and—as he adds somewhat superfluously—many-sided.

With these theoretical perfections one or two instances of the qualifications demanded by the exigencies of practical politics may be cited by way of illuminating contrast. At the court of the empress Elizabeth of Russia good looks were a surer means of diplomatic success than all the talents and virtues, and the princess of Zerbst (mother of the empress Catherine II.) wrote to Frederick of Prussia advising him to replace his elderly ambassador by a handsome young man with a good complexion; and the essential qualification for an ambassador to Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Denmark and Russia used to be that he should be able to drink the native diplomatists, seasoned from babyhood to strong liquors, under the table.

History.—In its widest sense the history of diplomacy is that of the intercourse between nations, in so far as this has not been a mere brute struggle for the mastery;[4] in a narrower sense, with which the present article is alone concerned, it is that of the methods and spirit of diplomatic intercourse and of the character and status of diplomatic agents. Earlier writers on the office and functions of ambassadors, such as Gentilis or Archbishop Germonius, conscientiously trace their origin to God himself, who created the angels to be his legates; and they fortify their arguments by copious examples drawn from ancient history, sacred and profane. But, whatever the influence upon it of earlier practice, modern diplomacy really dates from the rise of permanent missions, and the consequent development of the diplomatic hierarchy as an international institution. Of this the first beginnings are traceable to the 15th century and to Italy. There had, of course, during the middle ages been embassies and negotiations; but the embassies had been no more than temporary missions directed to a particular end and conducted by ecclesiastics or nobles of a dignity appropriate to each occasion; there were neither permanent diplomatic agents nor a professional diplomatic class. To the evolution of such a class the Italy of the Renaissance, the nursing-ground of modern statecraft, gave the first impetus. This was but natural; for Italy, with its numerous independent states, between which there existed a lively intercourse and a yet livelier rivalry, anticipated in miniature the modern states’ system of Europe. In feudal Europe there had been little room for diplomacy; but in northern and central Italy feudalism had never taken root, and in the struggles of the peninsula diplomacy had early played a part as great as, or greater than, war. Where all were struggling for the mastery, the existence of each depended upon alliances and counter-alliances, of which the object was the maintenance of the balance of power. In this school there was trained a notable succession of men of affairs. Thus, in the 13th and 14th centuries Florence counted among her envoys Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, and later on could boast of agents such as Capponi, Vettori, Guicciardini and Machiavelli. Papal Rome, too, as was to be expected, had always been a fruitful nursing-mother of diplomatists; and some authorities have traced the beginnings of modern diplomacy to a conscious imitation of her legatine system.[5]

It is, however, in Venice, that the origins of modern diplomacy are to be sought.[6] So early as the 13th century the republic, with a view to safeguarding the public interests, began to lay down a series of rules for the conduct of its ambassadors. Thus, in 1236, envoys to the court of Rome are forbidden to procure a benefice for anyone without leave of the doge and little council; in 1268 ambassadors are commanded to surrender on their return any gifts they may have received, and by another decree they are compelled to take an oath to conduct affairs to the honour and advantage of the republic. About the same time it was decided that diplomatic agents were to hand in, on their return, a written account of their mission; in 1288 this was somewhat expanded by a law decreeing that ambassadors were to deposit, within fifteen days of their return, a written account of the replies made to them during their mission, together with anything they might have seen or heard to the honour or in the interests of the republic. These provisions, which were several times renewed, notably in 1296, 1425 and 1533, are the origin of the famous reports of the Venetian ambassadors to the senate, which are at once a monument to the political genius of Venetian statesmen and a mine of invaluable historical material.[7]

These are but a few examples of a long series of regulations, many others also dating to the 13th century, by which the Venetian government sought to systematize its diplomatic service. That permanent diplomatic agencies were not established by it earlier than was the case is probably due to the distrust of its agents by which most of this legislation of the republic is inspired. In the 13th century two or three months was considered over-long a period for an ambassador to reside at a foreign court; in the 15th century the period of residence was extended to two years, and in the 16th century to three. This latter rule continued till the end of the republic; the embassy had become permanent, but the ambassador was changed every three years.

The origin of the change from temporary to permanent missions has been the subject of much debate and controversy. The theory that it was due, in the first instance, to the evolution of the Venetian consulates (bajulats) in the Levant into permanent diplomatic posts, and that the idea was thence transferred to the West, is disproved by the fact that Venice had established other permanent embassies before the baylo (q.v.) at Constantinople was transformed into a diplomatic agent of the first rank. Nor is the first known instance of the appointment of a permanent ambassador Venetian. The earliest record[8] is contained in the announcement by Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, in 1455, of his intention to maintain a permanent embassy at Genoa[9]; and in 1460 the duke of Savoy sent Eusebio Margaria, archdeacon of Vercelli, as his permanent representative to the Curia.[10] Though, however, the early records of such appointments are rare, the practice was probably common among the Italian states. Its extension to countries outside Italy was a somewhat later development. In 1494 Milan is already represented in France by a permanent ambassador. In 1495 Zacharia Contarini, Venetian ambassador to the emperor Maximilian, is described by Sanuto (Diarii, i. 294) as stato ambasciatore; and from the time of Charles V. onwards the succession of ambassadors of the republic at the imperial court is fairly traceable. In 1496 “as the way to the British Isles is very long and very dangerous,” two merchants resident in London, Pietro Contarini and Luca Valaressa, were appointed by the republic subambasciatores; and in June of the same year Andrea Trevisano arrived in London as permanent ambassador at the court of Henry VII.[11] Florence, too, from 1498 onwards, was represented at the courts of Charles V. and of France by permanent ambassadors.

During the same period the practice had been growing up among the other European powers. Spain led the way in 1487 by the appointment of Dr Roderigo Gondesalvi de Puebla as ambassador in England. As he was still there in 1500, the Spanish embassy in London may be regarded as the oldest still surviving post of the new permanent diplomacy. Other states followed suit, but only fitfully; it was not till late in the 16th century that permanent embassies were regarded as the norm. The precarious relations between the European powers during the 16th century, indeed, naturally retarded the development of the system. Thus it was not till after good relations had been established with France by the treaty of London that, in 1519, Sir Thomas Boleyn and Dr West were sent to Paris as resident English ambassadors, and, after the renewed breach between the two countries, no others were appointed till the reign of Elizabeth. Nine years before, Sir Robert Wingfield, whose simplicity earned him the nickname of “Summer-shall-be-green,” had been sent as ambassador to the court of Charles V., where he remained from 1510 to 1517; and in 1520 the mutual appointment of resident ambassadors was made a condition of the treaty between Henry VIII. and Charles V. In 1517 Thomas Spinelly, who had for some years represented England at the court of the Netherlands, was appointed “resident ambassador to the court of Spain,” where he remained till his death on the 22nd of August 1522. These are the most important early instances of the new system. Alone of the great powers, the emperor remained permanently unrepresented at foreign courts. In theory this was the result of his unique dignity, which made him superior to all other potentates; actually it was because, as emperor, he could not speak for the practically independent princes nominally his vassals. It served all practical purposes if he were represented abroad by his agents as king of Spain or archduke of Austria.

All the evidence now available goes to prove that the establishment of permanent diplomatic agencies was not an unconscious and accidental development of previous conditions, but deliberately adopted as an obvious convenience. But, while all the powers were agreed as to the convenience of maintaining such agencies abroad, all were equally agreed in viewing the representatives accredited to them by foreign states with extreme suspicion. This attitude was abundantly justified by the peculiar ethics of the new diplomacy. The old “orators” of the Summer-shall-be-green type could not long hold their own against the new men who had studied in the school of Italian statecraft, for whom the end justified the means. Machiavelli had gathered in The Prince and The Discourses on Livy the principles which underlay the practice of his day in Italy; Francis I., the first monarch to establish a completely organized diplomatic machinery, did most to give these principles a European extension. By the close of the 16th century diplomacy had become frankly “Machiavellian,” and the ordinary rules of morality were held not to apply to the intercourse between nations. This was admitted in theory as well as in practice. Germonius, after a vigorous denunciation of lying in general, argues that it is permissible for the safety or convenience (commodo) of princes, since salus populi suprema lex, and quod non permittit naturalis ratio, admittit civilis; and he adduces in support of this principle the answer given by Ulysses to Neoptolemus, in the Ajax of Sophocles, and the examples of Abraham, Jacob and David. Paschalius, while affirming that an ambassador must study to speak the truth, adds that he is not such a “rustic boor” as to say that an “official lie” (officiosum mendacium) is never to be employed, or to deny that an ambassador should be, on occasion, splendide mendax.[12] The situation is summed up in the famous definition of Sir Henry Wotton, which, though excused by himself as a jest, was held to be an indiscreet revelation of the truth: “An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”[13] The most successful liar, in fact, was esteemed the most successful diplomatist. “A prime article of the catechism of ambassadors,” says Bayle in his Dictionnaire critique (1699), “whatever their religion, is to invent falsehoods and to go about making society believe them.” So universally was this principle adopted that, in the end, no diplomatist even expected to be believed; and the best way to deceive was—as Bismarck cynically avowed—to tell the truth.

But, in addition to being a liar ex officio, the ambassador was also “an honourable spy.” “The principal functions of an envoy,” says Francois de Callières, himself an ex-ambassador of Louis XIV., “are two; the first is to look after the affairs of his own prince; the second is to discover the affairs of the other.” A clever minister, he maintains, will know how to keep himself informed of all that goes on in the mind of the sovereign, in the councils of ministers or in the country; and for this end “good cheer and the warming effect of wine” are excellent allies.[14] This being so, it is hardly to be wondered at that foreign ambassadors were commonly regarded as perhaps necessary, but certainly very unwelcome, guests. The views of Philippe de Commines have already been quoted above, and they were shared by a long series of theoretical writers as well as by men of affairs. Gentilis is all but alone in his protest against the view that all ambassadors were exploratores magis quam oratores, and to be treated as such. So early as 1481 the government of Venice had decreed the penalty of banishment and a heavy fine for any one who should talk of affairs of state with a foreign envoy, and though the more civilized princes did not follow the example of the sultan, who by way of precaution locked the ambassador of Ferdinand II., Jerome Laski, into “a dark and stinking place without windows,” they took the most minute precautions to prevent the ambassadors of friendly powers from penetrating into their secrets. Charles V. thought it safest to keep them as far away as possible from his court. So did Francis I.; and, when affairs were critical, he made his frequent changes of residence and his hunting expeditions the excuse for escaping from their presence. Henry VII. forbade his subjects to hold any intercourse with them, and, later on, set spies upon them and examined their correspondence—a practice by no means confined to England. If the system of permanent embassies survived, it is clear that this was mainly due to the belief of the sovereigns that they gained more by maintaining “honourable spies” at foreign courts than they lost by the presence of those of foreign courts at their own. It was purely a question of the balance of advantage. Neither among statesmen nor among theorists was there any premonition of the great part to be played by the permanent diplomatic body in the development and maintenance of the concert of Europe. To Paschalius the permanent embassies were “a miserable outgrowth of a miserable age.”[15] Grotius himself condemned them as not only harmful, but useless, the proof of the latter being that they were unknown to antiquity.[16]

Development of the Diplomatic Hierarchy.—The history of the diplomatic body[17] is, like that of other bodies, that of the progressive differentiation of functions. The middle ages knew no classification of diplomatic agents; the person sent on mission is described indifferently as legatus, orator, nuntius, ablegatus, commissarius, procurator, mandatarius, agens or ambaxator (ambassator, &c.). In Gundissalvus, De legato (1485), the oldest printed work on the subject, the word ambasiator, first found in a Venetian decree of 1268, is applied to any diplomat. Florence was the first to make distinction; the orator was appointed by the council of the republic; the mandatorio, with inferior powers, by the Council of Ten. In 1500 Machiavelli, who held only the latter rank, wrote from France urging the Signoria to send ambasiadori. This was, however, rather a question of powers than of dignity. But the causes which ultimately led to the elaborate differentiation of diplomatic ranks were rather questions of dignity than of functions.[18] The breakdown of feudalism, with the consequent rise of a series of sovereign states or of states claiming to be sovereign, of very various size and importance, led to a certain confusion in the ceremonial relation between them, which had been unknown to the comparatively clearly defined system of the middle ages. The smaller states were eager to assert the dignity of their actual or practical independence; the greater powers were equally bent on “keeping them in their place.” If the emperor, as has been stated above, was too exalted to send ambassadors, certain of the lesser states were soon esteemed too humble to be represented at the courts of the great powers save by agents of an inferior rank. By the second half of the 16th century, then, there are two classes of diplomatists, ambassadors and residents or agents, the latter being accounted ambassadors of the second class.[19] At first the difference of rank was determined by the status of the sovereign by whom or to whom the diplomatic agent was accredited; but early in the 16th century it became fairly common for powers of the first rank to send agents of the second class to represent them at courts of an equal status. The reasons were various, and not unamusing. First and foremost came the question of expense. The ambassador, as representing the person of his sovereign, was bound by the sentiment of the age to display an exaggerated magnificence. His journeys were like royal progresses, his state entries surrounded with every circumstance of pomp, and it was held to be his duty to advertise the munificence of his prince by boundless largesses. Had this munificence been as unlimited in fact as in theory, all might have been well, but, in that age of vaulting ambitions, depleted exchequers were the rule rather than the exception in Europe; the records are full of pitiful appeals from ambassadors for arrears of pay, and appointment to an embassy often meant ruin, even to a man of substance. To give but one example, Sir Richard Morison, Edward VI.’s ambassador in Germany, had to borrow money to pay his debts before he could leave Augsburg (Cal. State Pap. Edw. VI., No. 467), and later on he writes from Hamburg (April 9, 1552) that he could buy nothing, because everyone believed that he had packed up in readiness to flit secretly, for “How must they buy things, where men know their stuff is ready trussed up, and they fleeting every day?” (ib. No. 544). But the dignity of ambassador carried another drawback besides expense; his function of “honourable spy” was seriously hampered by the trammels of his position. He was unable to move freely in society, but lived a ceremonial existence in the midst of a crowd of retainers, through whom alone it was proper for him to communicate with the world outside. It followed that, though the office of ambassador was more dignified, that of agent was more generally useful.

Yet a third cause, possibly the most immediately potent, encouraged the growth of the lesser diplomatic ranks: the question of precedence among powers theoretically equal. Modern diplomacy has settled a difficulty which caused at one time much heart-burning and even bloodshed by a simple appeal to the alphabet. Great Britain feels no humiliation in signing after France, if the reason be that her name begins with G; had she not been Great, she would sign before. The vexed question of the precedence of ambassadors, too, has been settled by the rule, already referred to above, as to seniority of appointment. But while the question remained unsettled it was obviously best to evade it; and this was most easily done by sending an agent of inferior rank to a court where the precedence claimed for an ambassador would have been refused.

Thus set in motion, the process of differentiation continues until the system is stereotyped in the 19th century. It is unnecessary to trace this evolution here in any detail. It is mainly a question of names, and diplomatic titles are no exception to the general rule by which all titles tend to become cheapened and therefore, from time to time, need to be reinforced by fresh verbal devices. The method was the familiar one of applying terms that had once implied a particular quality in a fashion that implied actually nothing. The ambassador extraordinary had originally been one sent on an extraordinary mission; for the time and purpose of this mission his authority superseded that of the resident ambassador. But by the middle of the 17th century the custom had grown up of calling all ambassadors “extraordinary,” in order to place them on an equality with the others. The same process was extended to diplomatists of the second rank; and envoys (envoyé for ablegatus) were always “extraordinary,” and as such claimed and received precedence over mere “residents,” who in their day had asserted the same claim against the agents—all three terms having at one time been synonymous. Similarly a “minister plenipotentiary” had originally meant an agent armed with full powers (plein-pouvoir); but, by a like process, the combination came to mean as little as “envoy extraordinary”—though a plenipotentiary tout simple is still an agent, of no ceremonially defined dignity, despatched with full powers to treat and conclude. Finally, the evolution of the title of a diplomatist of the second rank is crowned by the high-sounding combination, now almost exclusively used, of “envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary.” The ultimate fate of the simple title “resident” was the same as that of “agent.” Both had been freely sold by needy sovereigns to all and sundry who were prepared to pay for what gave them a certain social status. The “agent” fell thus into utter discredit, and those “residents” who were still actual diplomatic agents became “ministers resident” to distinguish them from the common herd.

The classification of diplomatic agents was for the first time definitively included in the general body of international law by the Règlement of the 19th of March 1815 at Vienna[20]; and the whole question was finally settled at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (November 21, 1818) when, the proposal to establish precedence by the status of the accrediting powers having wisely been rejected, diplomatic agents were divided into four classes: (1) Ambassadors, legates, nuncios; (2) Envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary, and other ministers accredited direct to the sovereign; (3) Ministers resident; (4) Chargés d’affaires. With a few exceptions (e.g. Turkey), this settlement was accepted by all states, including the United States of America.

Rights and Privileges of Diplomatic Agents.—These are partly founded upon immemorial custom, partly the result of negotiations embodied in international law. The most important, as it is the most ancient, is the right of personal inviolability extended to the diplomatic agent and the members of his suite. This inviolability is maintained after a rupture between the two governments concerned, and even after the outbreak of war. The habit of the Ottoman government of imprisoning in the Seven Towers the ambassador of a power with which it quarrelled was but an exception which proved the rule. The second important right is that of exterritoriality (q.v.), a convenient fiction by which the house and equipages of the diplomatic agent are regarded as the territory of the power by whom he is accredited. This involves the further principle that the agent is in no way subject to the receiving government. He is exempt from taxation and from the payment at least of certain local rates. He also enjoys immunity (1) from civil jurisdiction, e.g. he cannot be sued, nor can his goods be seized, for debt; (2) from criminal jurisdiction, e.g. he cannot be arrested and tried for a criminal offence. For a crime of violence, however, or for plotting against the state, he can be placed under the necessary restraint and expelled the country.[21] These immunities extend to all the members of an envoy’s suite. The difficulties that might be supposed to arise from such exemptions have not in practice been found very serious; for though, in the case of crimes committed by servants of agents of the first or second class the procedure is not clearly defined, each case would easily be made the subject of arrangement. In certain cases, e.g. embassies in Turkey, the exterritoriality of ambassadors implies a fairly extensive criminal jurisdiction; in other cases the dismissal of the servant would deprive him of his diplomatic immunity and bring him under the law of the land. The right of granting asylum claimed by diplomatic agents in virtue of that of exterritoriality, at one time much abused, is now strictly limited. A political or criminal offender may seek asylum in a foreign embassy; but if, after a request has been formally made for his surrender, the ambassador refuses to deliver him up, the authorities may take the measures necessary to effect his arrest, and even force an entrance into the embassy for the purpose. The “right of chapel” (droit de chapelle, or droit de culte), enjoyed by envoys in reference to their exterritoriality, i.e. the right of free exercise of religious worship within their house, formerly of great importance, has been rendered superfluous by the spread of religious toleration. (See L. Oppenheim, Internat. Law (London, 1905) ,i. p. 441, &c.; A.W. Haffter, Das europäische Völkerrecht (Berlin, 1888), p. 435, &c.)

The Personnel of the “Corps diplomatique.”—The establishment of diplomacy as a regular branch of the civil service is of modern growth, and even now by no means universal. From old time states naturally chose as their agents those who would best serve their interests in the matter in hand. In the middle ages diplomacy was practically a monopoly of the clergy, who as a class alone possessed the necessary qualifications: and in later times, when learning had spread to the laity as well, there were still potent reasons why the clergy should continue to be employed as diplomatic agents. Of these reasons the most practical was that of expense; for the wealth of the church formed an inexhaustible reserve which was used without scruple for secular purposes. Francis I. of France, who by the Concordat with Rome had in his hands the patronage of all the sees and abbeys in France, used this partly to reward his clerical ministers, partly as a great secret service fund for bribing the ambassadors of other powers, partly for the payment of those high-placed spies at foreign courts maintained by the elaborately organized system known as the Secret du Roi.[22] None the less, in the 16th century, laymen as diplomats are already well in evidence. They are usually lawyers, rarely soldiers, occasionally even simple merchants. Not uncommonly they were foreigners, like the Italian Thomas Spinelly mentioned above, drawn from that cosmopolitan class of diplomats who were ready to serve any master. Though nobles were often employed as ambassadors by all the powers, Venice alone made nobility a condition of diplomatic service. They were professional in the sense that, for the most part, diplomacy was the main occupation of their lives; there was, however, no graded diplomatic service in which, as at present, it was possible to rise on a fixed system from the position of simple attaché to that of minister and ambassador. The “attaché to the embassy” existed[23]; but he was not, as is now the case, a young diplomat learning his profession, but an experienced man of affairs, often a foreigner employed by the ambassador as adviser, secret service agent and general go-between, and he was without diplomatic status.[24] The 18th century saw the rise of the diplomatic service in the modern sense. The elaboration of court ceremonial, for which Versailles had set the fashion, made it desirable that diplomatic agents should be courtiers, and young men of rank about the court began to be attached to missions for the express purpose of teaching them the art of diplomacy. Thus arose that aristocratic diplomatic class, distinguished by the exquisite refinement of its manners, which survived from the 18th century into the 19th. Modern democracy has tended to break with this tradition, but it still widely prevails. Even in Great Britain, where the rest of the public services have been thrown open to all classes, a certain social position is still demanded for candidates for the diplomatic service and the foreign office, and in addition to passing a competitive examination, they must be nominated by someone of recognized station prepared to vouch for their social qualifications. In America, where no regular diplomatic service exists, all diplomatic agents are nominated by the president.

The existence of an official diplomatic service, however, by no means excludes the appointment of outsiders to diplomatic posts. It is, in fact, one of the main grievances of the regular diplomatic body that the great rewards of their profession, the embassies, are so often assigned to politicians or others who have not passed through the drudgery of the service. But though this practice has, doubtless, sometimes been abused, it is impossible to criticize the wisdom of its occasional application.

A word may be added as to the part played by women in diplomacy. So far as their unofficial influence upon it is concerned, it would be impossible to exaggerate its importance; it would suffice to mention three names taken at random from the annals of the 19th century, Madame de Staël, Baroness von Krüdener, and Princess Lieven. Gentz comments on the “feminine intrigues” that darkened the counsels of the congresses of Vienna and Aix-la-Chapelle, and from which the powers so happily escaped in the bachelor seclusion of Troppau. Nor is it to be supposed that statesmen will ever renounce a diplomatic weapon so easy of disguise and so potent for use. A brilliant salon presided over by a woman of charm may be a most valuable centre of a political propaganda; and ladies are still widely employed in the secret diplomacy of the powers. Their employment as regularly accredited diplomatic agents, however, though not unknown, has been extremely rare. An interesting instance is the appointment of Catherine of Aragon, when princess of Wales, as representative of her father, Ferdinand the Catholic, at the court of Henry VII. (G. A. Bergenroth, Calendar of State Papers ... England and Spain—in the Archives at Simancas, &c., i. pp. xxxiii, cxix).

Literature.—Besides general works on international law (q.v.) which necessarily deal with the subject of diplomacy, a vast mass of treatises on diplomatic agents exists. The earliest printed work is the Tractatus de legato (Rome, 1485) of Gundissalvus (Gonsalvo de Villadiego), professor of law at Salamanca, auditor for Spain at the Roman court of the Rota, and bishop of Oviedo; but the first really systematic writer on the subject was Albericus Gentilis, De legationibus libri iii. (London, 1583, 1585, Hanover, 1596, 1607, 1612). For a full bibliography of works on ambassadors see Baron Diedrich H. L. von Ompteda, Litteratur des gesammten sowohl natürlichen als positiven Völkerrechts (Regensburg, 1785), p. 534, &c., which was completed and continued by the Prussian minister Karl Albert von Kamptz, in Neue Literatur des Völkerrechts seit dem Jahre 1784 (Berlin, 1817), p. 231. A list of writers, with critical and biographical remarks, is also given in Ernest Nys’s “Les Commencements de la diplomatie et le droit d’ambassade jusqu’à Grotius,” in the Revue de droit international, vol. xvi. p. 167. Other useful modern works on the history of diplomacy are: E. C. Grenville-Murray, Embassies and Foreign Courts, a History of Diplomacy (2nd ed., 1856); J. Zeller, La Diplomatie française vers le milieu du XVI^e siècle (Paris, 1881); A. O. Meyer, Die englische Diplomatie in Deutschland zur Zeit Eduards VI. und Mariens (Breslau, 1900); and, above all, Otto Krauske, Die Entwickelung der ständgien Diplomatie vom fünfzehnten Jahrhundert bis zu den Beschlüssen von 1815 und 1818, in Gustav Schmoller’s Staats- und socialwissenschaftliche Forschungen, vol. v. (Leipzig, 1885). To these may be added, as admirably illustrating in detail the early developments of modern diplomacy, Logan Pearsall Smith’s Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton (Oxford, 1907). Of works on modern diplomacy the most important are the Guide diplomatique of Baron Charles de Martens, new edition revised by F. H. Geffcken, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1866), and P. Pradier-Fodéré, Cours de droit diplomatique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1881).

(W. A. P.)

[1] La Bruyère, Caractères, ii. 77 (ed. P. Jouast, Paris, 1881).

[2] To Wellesley, in Stapleton’s Canning, i. 374.

[3] For the motives of Metternich’s foreign policy see [Austria-Hungary] : History (iii. 332-333).

[4] e.g. A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, by D. J. Hill (London and New York, 1905).

[5] For this see Hinschius, Kirchenrecht, i. p. 498.

[6] The Venetians, however, in their turn, doubtless learned their diplomacy originally from the Byzantines, with whom their trade expansion in the Levant early brought them into close contact. For Byzantine diplomacy see [Roman Empire, Later] : Diplomacy.

[7] See Eugenio Albèri, Le Relazioni degli ambasciatori Veneti al senato, 15 vols. (Florence, 1839-1863).

[8] The apocrisiarii (ἀποκρισιάριοι) or responsales should perhaps be mentioned, though they certainly did not set the precedent for the modern permanent missions. They were resident agents, practically legates, of the popes at the court of Constantinople. They were established by Pope Leo I., and continued until the Iconoclastic controversy broke the intimate ties between East and West. See Luxardo, Das vordekretalische Gesandtschaftsrecht der Päpste (Innsbruck, 1878); also Hinschius, Kirchenrecht, i. 501.

[9] N. Bianchi, Le Materie politiche relative all’ estero degli archivi di stato piemontese (Bologna, Modena, 1875), p. 29.

[10] Ib. Note 2, teneamus et deputemus ibidem continue mansurum.

[11] The first ambassador of Venice to visit England was Zuanne da Lezze, who came in 1319 to demand compensation for the plundering of Venetian ships by English pirates.

[12] Germonius, De legatis principum et populorum libri tres (Rome, 1627), chap. vi. p. 164; Paschalius, Legatus (Rouen, 1598), p. 302. Étienne Dolet, who had been secretary to Cardinal Jean du Bellay, and was burned for atheism in 1546, in his De officio legati (1541) advises ambassadors to surround themselves with taciturn servants, to employ vigilant spies, and to set afoot all manner of fictions, especially when negotiating with the court of Rome or with the Italian princes.

[13] See Pearsall Smith, Sir Henry Wotton, pp. 49, 126 et seq.

[14] François de Callières, De la manière de négocier avec les souverains (Brussels, 1716). See also A. Sorel, Recueil des instructions données aux ambassadeurs et ministres de France (Paris, 1884), e.g. vol. Autriche, pp. 77, 88, 102, 112.

[15] “Nova res est, quod sciam, et infelicis hujus aetatis infelix partus.... Hinc oriri securitatem universorum, hinc stabiliri pacem gentium. Quae utinam tam vere dicerentur, quam speciose. Ego quidem, ne quid dissimulem, ab istis seorsum sentio. Nimirum, effoeta virtutis, foecunda fraudis haec saecula video peperisse spissata haec imperia, sive summas potestates, unde, ut e vomitariis, hae legationes undatim se fundunt.” Paschalius, Legatus (1598), p. 447. So too Félix de la Mothe Le Vayer (1547-1625), in his Legatus (Paris, 1579), says “Legatos tunc primum aut non multum post institutos fuisse cum Pandora malorum omnium semina in hunc mundum ... demisit.”

[16] De jure belli et pacis (Amsterdam, 1621), ii. c. 18, § 3, n. 2.

[17] The term corps diplomatique originated about the middle of the 18th century. “The Chancellor Furst,” says Ranke (xxx. 47, note), “does not use it as yet in his report (1754) but he knows it,” and it would appear that it had just been invented at Vienna. “Corps diplomatique, nom qu’une dame donna un jour à ce corps nombreux de ministres étrangers à Vienne.”

[18] So too Pradier-Fodéré, vol. i. p. 262.

[19] Thus Charles V. would not allow the representatives of the duke of Mantua, Ferrara, &c., to style themselves “ambassadors,” on the ground that this title could be borne only by the agents of kings and of the republic of Venice, and not by those of states whose sovereignty was impaired by any feudal relation to a superior power. (See Krauske p. 155.)

[20] See Pradier-Fodéré, i. 265.

[21] Gentilis, who had been consulted by the government in the case of the Spanish ambassador, Don Bernardino de Mendoza, expelled for intriguing against Queen Elizabeth, lays this down definitely. An ambassador, he says, need not be received, and he may be expelled. In actual practice a diplomatic agent who has made himself objectionable is withdrawn by his government on the representations of that to which he is accredited, and it is customary, before an ambassador is despatched, to find out whether he is a persona grata to the power to which he is accredited.

[22] See Zeller.

[23] A. O. Meyer, p. 22.

[24] See the amusing account of the methods of these agents in Morysine to Cecil (January 23, 1551-1552), Cal. State Pap. Edw. VI., No. 530.

DIPLOMATIC, the science of diplomas, founded on the critical study of the “diplomatic” sources of history: diplomas, charters, acts, treaties, contracts, judicial records, rolls, chartularies, registers, &c. The employment of the word “diploma,” as a general term to designate an historical document, is of comparatively recent date. The Roman diploma, so called because it was formed of two sheets of metal which were shut together (Gr. διπλοῦν, to double) like the leaves of a book, was the passport or licence to travel by the public post; also, the certificate of discharge, conferring privileges of citizenship and marriage on soldiers who had served their time; and, later, any imperial grant of privileges. The word was adopted, rather pedantically, by the humanists of the Renaissance and applied by them to important deeds and to acts of sovereign authority, to privileges granted by kings and by great personages; and by degrees the term became extended and embraced generally the documents of the middle ages.

History of the Study.—The term “diplomatic,” the French diplomatique, is a modern adaptation of the Latin phrase res diplomatica employed in early works upon the subject, and more especially in the first great text-book, the De re diplomatica, issued in 1681 by the learned Benedictine, Dom Jean Mabillon, of the abbey of St Germain-des-Prés. Mabillon’s treatise was called forth by an earlier work of Daniel van Papenbroeck, the editor of the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists, who, with no great knowledge or experience of archives, undertook to criticize the historical value of ancient records and monastic documents, and raised wholesale suspicions as to their authenticity in his Propylaeum antiquarium circa veri ac falsi discrimen in vetustis membranis, which he printed in 1675. This was a rash challenge to the Benedictines, and especially to the congregation of St Maur, or confraternity of the Benedictine abbeys of France, whose combined efforts produced great literary works which still remain as monuments of profound learning. Mabillon was at that time engaged in collecting material for a great history of his order. He worked silently for six years before producing the work above referred to. His refutation of Papenbroeck’s criticisms was complete, and his rival himself accepted Mabillon’s system of the study of diplomatic as the true one. The De re diplomatica established the science on a secure basis; and it has been the foundation of all subsequent works on the subject, although the immediate result of its publication was a flood of controversial writings between the Jesuits and the Benedictines, which, however, did not affect its stability.