Dionysius of Halicarnassus (
Greek: , Dionysios son of Aléxandros, of
Halikarnassós, c. 60 BC–after 7 BC) was a
Greek historian and teacher of
rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of
Caesar Augustus.
Life
He went to
Rome
after the termination of the civil wars, and spent
twenty-two years in studying the Latin
language and literature and preparing materials for his
history. During this period he gave lessons in
rhetoric, and enjoyed the society of many
distinguished men. The date of his death is unknown. It is commonly
supposed he is the ancestor of
Aelius
Dionysius of Halicarnassus.
Work
His great work, entitled (
Rhōmaikē archaiologia,
Roman
Antiquities), embraced the history of Rome from the mythical
period to the beginning of the
First
Punic War. It was divided into twenty books, of which the first
nine remain entire, the tenth and eleventh are nearly complete, and
the remaining books exist in fragments in the excerpts of
Constantine Porphyrogenitus and an epitome
discovered by
Angelo Mai in a Milan
manuscript. The first three books of
Appian,
and
Plutarch's
Life of Camillus
also embody much of Dionysius.
His chief object was to reconcile the Greeks to the rule of
Rome, by dilating upon the good
qualities of their conquerors and also by arguing, using more
ancient sources, that the Romans were genuine descendants
[24171](bοοκ 1,11) of the older Greeks .
According to him, history is philosophy teaching by examples, and
this idea he has carried out from the point of view of the Greek
rhetorician. But he has carefully consulted the best authorities,
and his work and that of
Livy are the only
connected and detailed extant accounts of early Roman
history.
Dionysius was also the author of several rhetorical treatises, in
which he shows that he has thoroughly studied the best Attic
models:
The Art of Rhetoric (which is rather a collection
of essays on the theory of rhetoric), incomplete, and certainly not
all his work;
The Arrangement of Words (
Peri
syntheseōs onomatōn), treating of the combination of words
according to the different styles of oratory;
On Imitation
(
Peri mimēseōs), on the best models in the different
kinds of literature and the way in which they are to be imitated—a
fragmentary work;
Commentaries on the Attic Orators ( ,
Peri tōn Attikōn rhētorōn), which, however, only deal with
Lysias,
Isaeus,
Isocrates and (by way of supplement)
Dinarchus;
On the Admirable Style of
Demosthenes (
Peri lektikēs
Dēmosthenous deinotētos); and On the Character of Thucydides (
,
Peri Thoukudidēs charaktēros). These two treatises are
supplemented by letters to
Gn. Pompeius and
Ammaeus
(two).
He is often cited as Dion. Halic. in print publications.
Editions
- English translation by Edward
Spelman (1758) available at Google Books
- Trans. Earnest Cary, Harvard University Press, Loeb
Classical Library:
- Roman Antiquities, I, 1937.
- Roman Antiquities, II, 1939.
- Roman Antiquities, III, 1940.
- Roman Antiquities, IV, 1943.
- Roman Antiquities, V, 1945.
- Roman Antiquities, VI, 1947.
- Roman Antiquities, VII, 1950.
- Trans. Stephen Usher, Critical
Essays, I, Harvard University Press, 1974, ISBN
978-0-674-99512-3
- Trans. Stephen Usher, Critical Essays, II, Harvard
University Press, 1985, ISBN 978-0-674-99513-0
References
- E. Gabba, Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome (Berkeley
1991)
Other sources
Further reading
A full bibliography of the rhetorical works is given in
W. Rhys
Roberts's edition of the
Three Literary Letters
(1901); the same author published an edition of the
De
compositione verborum (1910, with trans.).
- M. Egger,
Denys d'Halicarnasse (1902).
- O. Bocksch,
"De fontibus Dion. Halicarnassensis" in Leipziger Studien,
xvii. (1895). Cf. also J. E. Sandys,
Hist. of Class. Schol. i. (1906).
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