DIONYSIUS OF HAIIICARNAS'SUS. A learned critic. antiquarian, and rhetorician. He was the soa of one Alexander of Haliearnassu4, and was born probably about the middle of the first century n.c. lie came to Rome at the termination of the civil wars (n.c. 29), and re• sided there for twenty-two years, familiarizing himself with the language, literature. and an tiquities of the Romans. His death occurred shortly after n.c. 7. Dionysius's most valuable work is unquestionably his Antiquities of Rome, although it does not exhibit the finest qualities of his mind. The author was an admirable rhetorician, but had very little political discrimi nation, and no perception of the difference be tween a myth and a historic fact. Yet, inas nmeh as this work contains a mine of infor mation about the constitution, religion, history, laws, and private life of the Romans, it will always command the regard of scholars. Of
the twenty books of which it originally eon sisted. we possess only the first nine in a complete form. the tenth and eleventh nearly so: and of the rest, only a few fragments. The first edition of the Greek original was that by Stephens (Paris. 1546), but a very good Latin version was published as early as 1480. Angelo Mai published (Milan. ISM a collection of the fragments of the lost hooks from a MS. in the library at Milan, the genuineness of which has been doubted. The rhetorical and critical works of Dionysius are of the highest literary merit. The principal are his Censure l'eterum Scripto rum, his Ars Rhetorica, and his De rompositione Verborum, all in Greek. The complete works are edited by Usenet. and Rademacher (Leipzig. I899) a good edition of the Antiquities is that of Jacoby (Leipzig. 1885).