DICE'CIOUS (Gr. dis, twice; and &don, a habitation), in botany, a term applied either to plants or flowers, when not only the flowers but the individual plants are unisexual— i.e.. when male and female flowers are produced upon separate plants. D. plants form a distinct class in the Linotean sexual system; but in thus placing them apart, if the principle of arrangement had been strictly maintained, great violence would often have been done to natural affinities; D. species frequently occurring in genera and families usually raonacious (q.v.) or hermaphrodite, and also moncecious and hermaphrodite spe cies in those which are usually dimcious. Familiar examples of D. plants may be seen in most species of willow. Amongst cultivated plants, hemp, spinach; and the date palm may be instanced.
DIOTENfS, the cynic philosopher, was a native of Sinope, in Pontus, where be was born about 412 B.C. His father, Icesias, or Icetas, by name, and a banker by occupa tion, was convicted of having swindled, and so the young D.had to leave Sinope. His youth had been that of a spendthrift and a rake; but on coming from Sinope to Athens, lie became interested in the character of Antisthenes, by whom, however, his first advances were repelled. In spite of his inhospitable reception, D. renewed the attempt to find favor with Antisthenes; but though often driven away by blows, his perseverance at last prevailed; and Antisthenes, moved with compassion, consented to admit hint as a pupil. D., from being an extravagant debauchee, plunged into the opposite extreme of austerity and self-mortification. He would roll in hot sand during the heat of sum mer; in winter, he would embrace a statue covered with snow. His clothing was of the coarsest, his food of the plainest. Ilis bed was the bare ground, whether in the open street or under the porticoes. His permanent residence (if such it could be called) was a tub, which belonged to the Metroum, or the temple of the Mother of the Gods. His
eccentric life did not, however, cost him the respect of the Athenians, who admired his contempt for comfort, and allowed him a wide latitude of comment and rebuke. Prac tical good was the chief aim of his philosophy; for literature and the fine arts be did not conceal his disdain. lie laughed at men of letters for reading the sufferings of Ulysses, while neglecting their own; at musicians who spent in stringing their lyres the time which would have been much better employed in making their own discordant natures harmonious; pt savans f9r gazing at the heavenly bodies, while sub limely incognizant of earthly ones; at orators who studied how to enforce truth, but not how to practice it. He was seized by pirates on a voyage to lEgina, and carried to Crete, where he was sold as a slave. When asked what business he was proficient in, he answered: " To command men." His purchaser was Xeniades of Corinth; but the slave soon came to rule the master, acquired his freedom,was appointed tutor to the children, and spent his old age as one of the household. It was here that lie had his interview with Alexander the great. The king opened the conversation with: "I am Alexander the great," to which the philosopher answered: " And I am Diogenes the cynic." Alex ander then asked him in what way lie could serve him, to which D. rejoined: "Yon can stand out of the sunshine." Alexander is said to have been so struck with the cyn ic's self-possession, that he went away, remarking: " If I were not Alexander, I should be Diogenes." In spite of his early excesses and his subsequent privations, D. lived at Corinth till 323 B.C., when he died, at the age of 00.