Dionysios (envoy)

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Dionysios was an ancient Greek historian and envoy in the 3rd century BC. Chr.

Dionysius is mentioned by the scholar Pliny the Elder at one point in his Naturalis historia . At this point Pliny describes the greatness of India, about which the Greeks and Romans in antiquity had little concrete information. In this context, Pliny reports on the numerous cities and tribes there and refers to Greek writers who reported on India from their own perspective:

Megasthenes and Dionysius, for example , who were sent there by Philadelphus for this very reason, also reported on the power of those peoples.

Accordingly, Dionysius was commissioned by the Ptolemaic king Ptolemy II , i.e. between 285 and 246 BC. BC, traveled to India. Megasthenes, who is also mentioned in the Pliny quote, is known to have stayed as envoy of the Seleucids at the court of the Maurya kings in Pataliputra . Therefore, as well as because of the political conditions at the time, it is assumed that Dionysius was also envoy to the court of the Maurya. Then he apparently wrote down his experiences, such as Megasthenes and Daimachos , in a historical work (see also Indica ). However, nothing has come down to us from this writing.

This Dionysius may be identical to an author of the same name who is mentioned in a scholion on the work of Apollonios of Rhodes . There is talk of a war campaign by the god Dionysus against the Indians, which was described by a certain Dionysius. But this is just as speculative as the assumption that he is identical to an astronomer of the same name from Alexandria.

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literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 6.58 (based on the translation by Kai Brodersen ).
  2. ↑ Eckart Olshausen: Prosopography of the Hellenistic royal ambassadors. Part 1: From Triparadeisos to Pydna. Löwen 1974, p. 34.
  3. ↑ Brill's New Jacoby , No. 717, Fragment 1.
  4. ^ So Wolfgang Huebner : Dionysios (25). In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 3, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01473-8 , column 640 f.
personal data
SURNAME Dionysius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek historian and diplomatic envoy
DATE OF BIRTH 3rd century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 3rd century BC Chr.