DIO CHRYSOSTOM (the "golden-mouthed"), (c. A.D. 40 Greek sophist and rhetorician, was born at Prusa (mod. Brusa), a town at the foot of Mount Olympus in Bithynia. Al though 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. 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 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 ora tions the following are the most important : Borysthenitica (xxxvi.), on the advantages of monarchy, addressed to the people of Olbia, and containing information about the Greek colonies on 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 to those of famous men of the day; De regno (i.-iv.) addressed to Trajan and describing the stoic ideal kingship; De Aeschylo et Sophocle et Euripide (lii.), a comparison of the treatment of the story of Philoctetes by the three 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 con vert to Stoicism. To this period belong the essays on moral sub jects, such as the denunciation of various cities (Tarsus, Alex andria) for their immorality. Most pleasing of all is the Euboica (vii.), a description of the simple life of the herdsmen and hunts men of Euboea. Amongst his lost works were attacks on phi losophers and Domitian, and Getica, an account of the manners and customs of the Getae.