DACTYL, in poetry, a metrical foot, consisting of one long and two short syllables; as, carmina, evident, excellence.
The dactyl and spondee are the only feet used in hexameter verses. See HEXAMETER.
DACTYLI 1281; the Fingers of Mount Ida. Concerning these, Pagan theology and fable give very different
Daetyli different accounts. The Cretans paid divine worship to them, as those who had nursed and brought up the god Jupiter; whence it appears, that they were the same as the Corybantes and Curetes. Nevertheless Strabo makes them different; and says, that the tradition in Phrygia was, that "Curetes and Corybantes were descended from the Daetyli Idæi: that there were originally an hundred men in the island, who were called Daetyli Idæi; from whom sprang nine Curetes, and each of these nine produced ten men, as many as the fingers of a man's two hands; and that this gave the name to the ancestors of the Daetyli Idæi." He relates another opinion, which is, that there were but five Daetyli Idæi; who, according to Sophocles, were the inventors of iron: that these five brothers had five sisters, and that from this number they took the name of fingers of mount Ida, because they were in number ten; and that they worked at the foot of this mountain. Diodorus Siculus reports the matter a little differently. He says "the first inhabitants of the Island of Crete were the Daetyli Idæi, who had their residence on mount Ida: that some said, they were an hundred; others only five, in number equal to the fingers of a man's hand, whence they had the name of Daetyli: that they were magicians, and addicted to mystical ceremonies: that Orpheus was their disciple, and carried their mysteries into Greece: that the Daetyli invented the use of iron and fire, and that they had been recompensed with divine honours."
Diomedes the Grammarian says, The Daetyli Idæi were priests of the goddess Cybele: called Idæi, because that goddess was chiefly worshipped on mount Ida in Phrygia; and Daetyli, because that, to prevent Saturn from hearing the cries of infant Jupiter, whom Cybele had committed to their custody, they used to sing certain verses of their own invention, in the Dactylic measure. See CURETES and CORYBANTES.