DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE and PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS (di'o-nrsi-us the ar'e Op'a-jlte), (Gr. Atov6etos,dee-on-oo'see-os).
The name of 'Dionysius the Areopagite' enliv ens the scanty account of success which attended the visit of Paul to Athens (Acts xvii :34). Noth ing further is related of him in the New Testa ment; but ecclesiastical historians record some par ticulars concerning his career, both before and after his conversion. Suidas recounts that he was an Athenian by birth, and eminent for his literary attainments, that he studied first at Athens and afterward at Heliopolis in Egypt ; and that, while in the latter city, he beheld that remarkable eclipse of the sun, as he terms it, which took place at the death of Christ, and exclaimed to his friend Apol lophanes, 'Either the Divinity suffers, or sympa thizes with some sufferer.' He further details that after Dionysius returned to Athens, he was ad mitted into the Areopagus, and, having embraced Christianity about A. D. 5o, was constituted Bishop of Athens by the Apostle Paul himself. Syncellus and Nicephorus both record the last particular.
Aristides, an Athenian philosopher, asserts that he suffered martyrdom—a fact generally admitted by historians; bid the precise period of his death, whether under Trajan or Adrian, or, which is most likely, under Domitian, they do not deter mine. Whatever credit may he given to these traditions, the name of Dionysius is certainly in teresting in a literary point of view, owing to an attempt made by some writer, in after times, to personate the Areopagite; and who contrived to pass his productions on the Christian world as of the apostolic age, and thereby greatly influenced the spirit both of the Eastern and Western Churches.
The resemblance between the Areopagitica and the writings of Proclus and Plotinus is so obvious as to afford great probability that the Pseudo Dionysitts did not write much earlier than the fifth century (Cave's Hist. Literor. Colonim, 172o, pp. 142, 143; Lardner's works, vol. vii, p. 371, ed. 1788; Fabric. Bib. Bibliog). J. F. D.