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
